[amphibian]

Luv2B_Sassy, on 11 May 2018 - 07:10 PM, said:

Oh yah, my post was a joke, but I misread the year too, sorry.
That was the year Karl Rove pulled this: https://www.thenatio...nd-john-mccain/
It's hard to say if he would have been better than Bush or if we'd just be entangled in a slightly different set of hellwars, but I definitely get the impulse to wish he'd beaten him. You wouldn't have had Cheney/Rove/Rumsfeld at least.

I think for sure, we'd have invaded Afghanistan, but I think McCain would not have gone into Iraq because he didn't have Cheney so close or his father's ambition to get Saddam. McCain might have caused an even bigger financial problem with deregulation of housing, financial, and whatever else industries though.

[Vengeance]

amphibian, on 11 May 2018 - 08:04 PM, said:

Luv2B_Sassy, on 11 May 2018 - 07:10 PM, said:

Oh yah, my post was a joke, but I misread the year too, sorry.
That was the year Karl Rove pulled this: https://www.thenatio...nd-john-mccain/
It's hard to say if he would have been better than Bush or if we'd just be entangled in a slightly different set of hellwars, but I definitely get the impulse to wish he'd beaten him. You wouldn't have had Cheney/Rove/Rumsfeld at least.

I think for sure, we'd have invaded Afghanistan, but I think McCain would not have gone into Iraq because he didn't have Cheney so close or his father's ambition to get Saddam. McCain might have caused an even bigger financial problem with deregulation of housing, financial, and whatever else industries though.

That was pretty deregulated during Bush I can't imagine McCain being able to deregulate those industries even more.

I mean people where able to buy houses with no money and no proof of income or job. There isn't a lower regulation threshold that you can go to.

[HoosierDaddy]

Vengeance, on 11 May 2018 - 07:57 PM, said:

There was no nomination fight on the Democrates side. Al Gore was the parties guy from the word go.

Bill Bradley made a run at it but pulled out after 20 some primaries.

[Nicodimas]

Vengeance, on 11 May 2018 - 06:53 PM, said:

Malankazooie, on 11 May 2018 - 03:49 PM, said:

Uh, did McCain run in 2000?

He demonstrated how poor of a decision maker he is when he choose Palin for VP. So thank goodness he never won the presidency.

Yes he did and he lost the nomination for GHB. Then GHB went on to lose the popular vote to Al Gore and have the supreme court vote to stop counting the hanging chads and allow for Florida's electoral votes to go to GHB based on less then several hundred votes.

I liked McCain 2000, his tax plan was unlike Bushes too, surprised at how many of you forgot:

“I don’t think the governor’s tax cut is too big—it’s just misplaced. Sixty percent of the benefits from his tax cuts go to the wealthiest 10% of Americans—and that’s not the kind of tax relief that Americans need. … Gov. Bush wants to spend the entire surplus on tax cuts. I don’t believe the wealthiest 10% of Americans should get 60% of the tax breaks. I think the lowest 10% should get the breaks. …

“I’m not giving tax cuts for the rich.”

—Discussion with media, reported in “Bush, McCain Snip Over ”

“have never engaged in class warfare. I am very much in favor of tax cuts for middle-income and lower-income Americans. I’m deeply concerned about a kind of class warfare that’s going on right now. It’s unfortunate. There’s a growing gap between the haves and have-nots in America, and that gap is growing, and it’s unfortunately divided up along ethnic lines.

“I feel very strongly that we ought to have middle-income and lower-income tax cuts, and we’ll be getting into it, I’m sure, later on in this program. Mine are basically comparable to Gov. Bush’s, in some cases far better. But I’m not sure we need to give two-thirds of that tax cut, of that money, to the wealthiest 10% of America.”

“I always thought that class warfare was to take away from the rich. I always believed that that was what class warfare was all about. As I said, there are tax breaks and money for the richest in America and the very rich, but I think that it’s clear that there’s a growing gap between rich and poor in America, the haves and the have-nots. And many studies have indicated that, and I think that the people who need it most and need the relief most are working middle-income Americans and that’s what I want to give to them. And at the same time, the greatest benefit that I can give them is to make sure that their Social Security benefits are there. And I also don’t think it’s fair for us to lay a $ 5.6 trillion debt down on future generations of Americans.”

McCain lost a piece of himself losing to Bush 2k. I always wondered what if.. ?? too bad though.. McCain would have been a better president than GHB.

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 11 May 2018 - 11:34 PM

[worry]

Well you've got home field advantage on McCain!

[amphibian]

Vengeance, on 11 May 2018 - 08:12 PM, said:

That was pretty deregulated during Bush I can't imagine McCain being able to deregulate those industries even more.

I mean people where able to buy houses with no money and no proof of income or job. There isn't a lower regulation threshold that you can go to.

The key part about McCain is his role on the Keating Five thing. I'll quote from Rolling Stone:

Quote

Charlie Keating, the banker and anti-pornography crusader, would ultimately be convicted on 73 counts of fraud and racketeering for his role in the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s. That crisis, much like today's subprime-mortgage meltdown, resulted from misbegotten banking deregulation, and ultimately left taxpayers to pick up a tab of more than $124 billion. Keating, who raised more than $100,000 for McCain's race, lavished the first-term congressman with the kind of political favors that would make Jack Abramoff blush. McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating's expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul's estate in the Bahamas. There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as "Charlie Keating's Shangri-La." Keating also invited Cindy McCain and her father to invest in a real estate venture for which he promised a 26 percent return on investment. They plunked down more than $350,000.

McCain still attributes the attention to nothing more than Keating's "great respect for military people" and the duo's "political and personal affinity." But Keating, for his part, made no bones about the purpose of his giving. When asked by reporters if the investments he made in politicians bought their loyalty and influence on his behalf, Keating replied, "I want to say in the most forceful way I can, I certainly hope so."

THE KEATING FIVE

In Congress, Rep. John McCain quickly positioned himself as a GOP hard-liner. He voted against honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a national holiday in 1983 — a stance he held through 1989. He backed Reagan on tax cuts for the wealthy, abortion and support for the Nicaraguan contras. He sought to slash federal spending on social programs, and he voted twice against campaign-finance reform. He cites as his "biggest" legislative victory of that era a 1989 bill that abolished catastrophic health insurance for seniors, a move he still cheers as the first-ever repeal of a federal entitlement program.

McCain voted to confirm Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. In 1993, he was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for a group that sponsored an anti-gay-rights ballot initiative in Oregon. His anti-government fervor was renewed in the Gingrich revolution of 1994, when he called for abolishing the departments of Education and Energy. The following year, he championed a sweeping measure that would have imposed a blanket moratorium on any increase of government oversight.

In this context, McCain's recent record — opposing the new GI Bill, voting to repeal the federal minimum wage, seeking to deprive 3.8 million kids of government health care — looks entirely consistent. "When jackasses like Rush Limbaugh say he's not conservative, that's just total nonsense," says former Sen. Gary Hart, who still counts McCain as a friend.

Although a hawkish Cold Warrior, McCain did show an independent streak when it came to the use of American military power. Because of his experience in Vietnam, he said, he didn't favor the deployment of U.S. forces unless there was a clear and attainable military objective. In 1983, McCain broke with Reagan to vote against the deployment of Marine peacekeepers to Lebanon. The unorthodox stance caught the attention of the media — including this very magazine, which praised McCain's "enormous courage." It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. McCain recognized early on how the game was played: The Washington press corps "tend to notice acts of political independence from unexpected quarters," he later noted. "Now I was debating Lebanon on programs like MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. I was gratified by the attention and eager for more."

When McCain became a senator in 1986, filling the seat of retiring Republican icon Barry Goldwater, he was finally in a position that a true maverick could use to battle the entrenched interests in Washington. Instead, McCain did the bidding of his major donor, Charlie Keating, whose financial empire was on the brink of collapse. Federal regulators were closing in on Keating, who had taken federally insured deposits from his Lincoln Savings and Loan and leveraged them to make wildly risky real estate ventures. If regulators restricted his investments, Keating knew, it would all be over.

In the year before his Senate run, McCain had championed legislation that would have delayed new regulations of savings and loans. Grateful, Keating contributed $54,000 to McCain's Senate campaign. Now, when Keating tried to stack the federal regulatory bank board with cronies, McCain made a phone call seeking to push them through. In 1987, in an unprecedented display of political intimidation, McCain also attended two meetings convened by Keating to pressure federal regulators to back off. The senators who participated in the effort would come to be known as the Keating Five.

"Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution," says Bill Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, who attended the second meeting. "And it hasn't happened since."

Following the meetings with McCain and the other senators, the regulators backed off, stalling their investigation of Lincoln. By the time the S&L collapsed two years later, taxpayers were on the hook for $3.4 billion, which stood as a record for the most expensive bank failure — until the current mortgage crisis. In addition, 20,000 investors who had bought junk bonds from Keating, thinking they were federally insured, had their savings wiped out.

McCain is not to be trusted at all, ever. Nicodimas can point to whatever he said all he wants and I advise everyone to be an extreme skeptic because McCain is nearly utterly untrustworthy.

[Slow Ben]

When a president goes through the white house door, does what he says he'll do. We'll all be drinkin that free bubble-up, and eatin that rainbow stew.

[worry]

Well, to quote Special Assistant to President Donald J. Trump, Kelly Sadler: "It doesn't ma..."
On second thought, maybe I won't.

[Nicodimas]

amphibian, on 12 May 2018 - 02:25 AM, said:

Vengeance, on 11 May 2018 - 08:12 PM, said:

That was pretty deregulated during Bush I can't imagine McCain being able to deregulate those industries even more.

I mean people where able to buy houses with no money and no proof of income or job. There isn't a lower regulation threshold that you can go to.

The key part about McCain is his role on the Keating Five thing. I'll quote from Rolling Stone:

Quote

Charlie Keating, the banker and anti-pornography crusader, would ultimately be convicted on 73 counts of fraud and racketeering for his role in the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s. That crisis, much like today's subprime-mortgage meltdown, resulted from misbegotten banking deregulation, and ultimately left taxpayers to pick up a tab of more than $124 billion. Keating, who raised more than $100,000 for McCain's race, lavished the first-term congressman with the kind of political favors that would make Jack Abramoff blush. McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating's expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul's estate in the Bahamas. There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as "Charlie Keating's Shangri-La." Keating also invited Cindy McCain and her father to invest in a real estate venture for which he promised a 26 percent return on investment. They plunked down more than $350,000.

McCain still attributes the attention to nothing more than Keating's "great respect for military people" and the duo's "political and personal affinity." But Keating, for his part, made no bones about the purpose of his giving. When asked by reporters if the investments he made in politicians bought their loyalty and influence on his behalf, Keating replied, "I want to say in the most forceful way I can, I certainly hope so."

THE KEATING FIVE

In Congress, Rep. John McCain quickly positioned himself as a GOP hard-liner. He voted against honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a national holiday in 1983 — a stance he held through 1989. He backed Reagan on tax cuts for the wealthy, abortion and support for the Nicaraguan contras. He sought to slash federal spending on social programs, and he voted twice against campaign-finance reform. He cites as his "biggest" legislative victory of that era a 1989 bill that abolished catastrophic health insurance for seniors, a move he still cheers as the first-ever repeal of a federal entitlement program.

McCain voted to confirm Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. In 1993, he was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for a group that sponsored an anti-gay-rights ballot initiative in Oregon. His anti-government fervor was renewed in the Gingrich revolution of 1994, when he called for abolishing the departments of Education and Energy. The following year, he championed a sweeping measure that would have imposed a blanket moratorium on any increase of government oversight.

In this context, McCain's recent record — opposing the new GI Bill, voting to repeal the federal minimum wage, seeking to deprive 3.8 million kids of government health care — looks entirely consistent. "When jackasses like Rush Limbaugh say he's not conservative, that's just total nonsense," says former Sen. Gary Hart, who still counts McCain as a friend.

Although a hawkish Cold Warrior, McCain did show an independent streak when it came to the use of American military power. Because of his experience in Vietnam, he said, he didn't favor the deployment of U.S. forces unless there was a clear and attainable military objective. In 1983, McCain broke with Reagan to vote against the deployment of Marine peacekeepers to Lebanon. The unorthodox stance caught the attention of the media — including this very magazine, which praised McCain's "enormous courage." It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. McCain recognized early on how the game was played: The Washington press corps "tend to notice acts of political independence from unexpected quarters," he later noted. "Now I was debating Lebanon on programs like MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. I was gratified by the attention and eager for more."

When McCain became a senator in 1986, filling the seat of retiring Republican icon Barry Goldwater, he was finally in a position that a true maverick could use to battle the entrenched interests in Washington. Instead, McCain did the bidding of his major donor, Charlie Keating, whose financial empire was on the brink of collapse. Federal regulators were closing in on Keating, who had taken federally insured deposits from his Lincoln Savings and Loan and leveraged them to make wildly risky real estate ventures. If regulators restricted his investments, Keating knew, it would all be over.

In the year before his Senate run, McCain had championed legislation that would have delayed new regulations of savings and loans. Grateful, Keating contributed $54,000 to McCain's Senate campaign. Now, when Keating tried to stack the federal regulatory bank board with cronies, McCain made a phone call seeking to push them through. In 1987, in an unprecedented display of political intimidation, McCain also attended two meetings convened by Keating to pressure federal regulators to back off. The senators who participated in the effort would come to be known as the Keating Five.

"Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution," says Bill Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, who attended the second meeting. "And it hasn't happened since."

Following the meetings with McCain and the other senators, the regulators backed off, stalling their investigation of Lincoln. By the time the S&L collapsed two years later, taxpayers were on the hook for $3.4 billion, which stood as a record for the most expensive bank failure — until the current mortgage crisis. In addition, 20,000 investors who had bought junk bonds from Keating, thinking they were federally insured, had their savings wiped out.

McCain is not to be trusted at all, ever. Nicodimas can point to whatever he said all he wants and I advise everyone to be an extreme skeptic because McCain is nearly utterly untrustworthy.

Honestly, if it was really that big a deal it would have ended his political career, looks like what people got over that decades ago? It didn’t seem to derail him and it looks like he learned from his mistake. Like shoot we all make em !

[QuickTidal]

To be fair, I don’t think Amph trusts any politician ever. Just a hunch from the fact that he has something poor to say about all of them. So I’m not sure who should run your country according to him.

[Slow Ben]

QuickTidal, on 13 May 2018 - 12:32 PM, said:

To be fair, I don't think Amph trusts any politician ever.

To be fair, thats a pretty wise policy.

[amphibian]

QuickTidal, on 13 May 2018 - 12:32 PM, said:

To be fair, I don’t think Amph trusts any politician ever. Just a hunch from the fact that he has something poor to say about all of them. So I’m not sure who should run your country according to him.

There is a difference between "can't trust someone to make the best choice between a lot of options" and "know that there's a pattern of allowing really bad rich people to dictate policy and leave taxpayers on hook for many billions in fallout".

There's also people like Roy Moore who are actual pedophiles and they nearly get Senate seats. Don Blankenship's negligence killed 29 miners a while ago and he's somehow still going to get a large amount of votes.

So yes, I'm very, very pessimistic about the scene in politics now. McCain is a bad person and managed to get a lot of media people on his side despite doing things that go against what he said he would do or was doing.

[amphibian]

My point is that in the US, being a pedophile or someone who presided over murder isn't enough to kill a political career. Being condemned for racism isn't either and leaving taxpayers on the hook for 3.4 billion in risky real estate ventures isn't either.

We have a severely fucked up political scene and "forgiving mistakes like this" isn't helping.

[QuickTidal]

It is ideological to assume that every voting human in the country will line up enough with your POV politically to please you entirely. For every decent human running in an office, there will be someone awful. Take the picks of the ones that are best (flaws and all), and push them up as much as you can, while accepting the ones you need to hold your nose about (others clearly voted them in). Waiting for the stars to align for a government full of perfectly behaved, no skeleton politicians will mean you waiting a long time, possibly forever. Just my opinion. Justin Trudeau, for example in my country, is FAR from perfect, but he’s a damn sight better than Harper was, and certainly better than the other options at the time.

You are at (possibly) the nadir of bad options right now in the US, but that will hopefully change going forward if the current admin has wrought enough bad feelings. But you may have to accept flawed democrats to make it so. So be it.

[amphibian]

QuickTidal, on 13 May 2018 - 05:05 PM, said:

It is ideological to assume that every voting human in the country will line up enough with your POV politically to please you entirely. For every decent human running in an office, there will be someone awful. Take the picks of the ones that are best (flaws and all), and push them up as much as you can, while accepting the ones you need to hold your nose about (others clearly voted them in). Waiting for the stars to align for a government full of perfectly behaved, no skeleton politicians will mean you waiting a long time, possibly forever. Just my opinion. Justin Trudeau, for example in my country, is FAR from perfect, but he’s a damn sight better than Harper was, and certainly better than the other options at the time.

You are at (possibly) the nadir of bad options right now in the US, but that will hopefully change going forward if the current admin has wrought enough bad feelings. But you may have to accept flawed democrats to make it so. So be it.

How is the above even related to what I said?

I am primarily talking about John McCain, a shithead "maverick" Republican, and the others of his "independent" ilk. You are talking about overall voting strategy and accepting flawed Democrats.

You're talking past me and it is coming off to me as though you are condescending to me about my preferred voting strategy. That's not a good way to treat me.

[worry]

@amph, on that tip: https://twitter.com/...702385799548928

[EmperorMagus]

Luv2B_Sassy, on 13 May 2018 - 09:45 PM, said:

@amph, on that tip: https://twitter.com/...702385799548928

Yes, please.

The only way 'liberals' (and the word is in quotations because true liberals are people like Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair - as scummy as the conservatives) are going to win is if they become better at inflammatory, exaggerated rhetoric than the conservatives.

If the left wants to dominate the right (as they should), the only way to do it is with a smarter version of the rhetoric on r/fullcommunism. A barrage of traditional and social media content of full on meme-filled, extreme, dogmatic posts. Make it the case that everyone is talking about your ideology, and once your ideology becomes common talk, it becomes palatable. Once it becomes palatable you can make it preferable to the rest by dragging everything else down.

You can have logical discourse with rational people; but you can't have it with idiots. Idiots have to be answered in their own language.

[amphibian]

I would prefer to 1) lessen and prevent disenfranchisement via gerrymandering and voter repression and 2) have candidates that are saying that they will do things when elected that people, rather than corporations through human proxies, want from their government rather than convince myself that the vast majority of the population is composed of idiots who must be manipulated, spoken down to, and/or lied to.

I don't think everyone is amazing and a genius in waiting, but I do think things like a national holiday for voting (one doesn't exist in the US) and continually bolstering the ability of people to speak via voting is a better route to go in terms of dealing well with my fellow human beings.

I don't mean that leftist campaigns should always be run with squeaky clean honor or that we must be valiant knights always even if it means defeat. But treating other people like sub humans is pretty much how we got into most of our gigantic messes.

[EmperorMagus]

amphibian, on 13 May 2018 - 10:09 PM, said:

I would prefer to 1) lessen and prevent disenfranchisement via gerrymandering and voter repression and 2) have candidates that are saying that they will do things when elected that people, rather than corporations through human proxies, want from their government rather than convince myself that the vast majority of the population is composed of idiots who must be manipulated, spoken down to, and/or lied to.

I don't think everyone is amazing and a genius in waiting, but I do think things like a national holiday for voting (one doesn't exist in the US) and continually bolstering the ability of people to speak via voting is a better route to go in terms of dealing well with my fellow human beings.

I don't mean that leftist campaigns should always be run with squeaky clean honor or that we must be valiant knights always even if it means defeat. But treating other people like sub humans is pretty much how we got into most of our gigantic messes.

And exactly how are you going to implement all those very needed reforms if your candidates haven't been within 100 miles of a congressional/senate majority in the past 20 years? (and Obama's majority just after he got elected doesn't count; half the democratic party is as scummy as the better half of the republicans).

The fact of the matter is that even the best people getting elected under the current system are so far from what they should be that it makes one cry from frustration.

The great hope of the north Justine Trudeau promised in his election campaign that if he got elected, 2015 would be the last federal election in Canada with FPTP. He now has an utter majority; a dictatorship for all intents and purposes for the length of his term; and he conveniently chooses to ignore electoral reform. Why? because everyone knows so long as he's marginally better than the pieces of shit that comprise the tories, he has a very good chance of getting reelected. So why bother going through with a promise that will make the country a more representative democracy when doing so will break his own party's power?

The only way to get things done is that have so much public support of the howling kind behind you that those in power are afraid of going against you. That sort of support doesn't come from rational arguments.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 13 May 2018 - 07:55 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 13 May 2018 - 05:05 PM, said:

It is ideological to assume that every voting human in the country will line up enough with your POV politically to please you entirely. For every decent human running in an office, there will be someone awful. Take the picks of the ones that are best (flaws and all), and push them up as much as you can, while accepting the ones you need to hold your nose about (others clearly voted them in). Waiting for the stars to align for a government full of perfectly behaved, no skeleton politicians will mean you waiting a long time, possibly forever. Just my opinion. Justin Trudeau, for example in my country, is FAR from perfect, but he’s a damn sight better than Harper was, and certainly better than the other options at the time.

You are at (possibly) the nadir of bad options right now in the US, but that will hopefully change going forward if the current admin has wrought enough bad feelings. But you may have to accept flawed democrats to make it so. So be it.

How is the above even related to what I said?

I am primarily talking about John McCain, a shithead "maverick" Republican, and the others of his "independent" ilk. You are talking about overall voting strategy and accepting flawed Democrats.

You're talking past me and it is coming off to me as though you are condescending to me about my preferred voting strategy. That's not a good way to treat me.

I apolgize if I came across as condescending. That was not my intent. But I was speaking more on the fact that I can’t recall a time on this thread when you’ve expressed that any of the spoken government office holders, or potential office holders with anything but a light of “here’s what’s wrong with THAT person”

Perhaps that leaves me with the question...have you ever liked anyone in your government? That’s what my initial comment was about. That it just seems there is no right answer with you. That whoever anyone brings up...there is a problem of some kind to dislike them for.

I could be wrong.