At this moment, no. But I'll work on just that. Seriously, not being sarcastic. If that's what you think will work, I will give it a try.

But Jesus, intentionally dumbing myself down is not something I've ever considered practicing. Bit heartbreaking, really. But I'm willing to think big picture and try anything at this point.

i wasn't talking about you personally but the party as a whole. it needs a product and it needs to sell it right. most recently it failed at both.

but it wouldn't be a bad thing for you personally to learn to sell. it takes smart people to sell. it takes good listeners to sell.

sales people, actually, are the ones who make the most money in any business organization-- everybody else works on salary. someone who works on commission and sells a fleet of 777 airplanes or a supertanker or some real estate in dubai is going to get a fuuuuuuuuuuuckload of money.

what you call "dumbing down" is the ability to empathize with regular people and customize your message to your audience. any stupid person can tell you what they think they want, but it takes intelligence to listen and understand what someone else needs. it takes intelligence to simplify complex ideas and make them clear and memorable. it takes intelligence to persuade people and win them over to your side.

read this and have fun:

http://www.inc.com/steve-tobak/how-t...o-anybody.html

@ r. schunk - yes, but the new left had to develop because it could no longer win with the old formulas. reaganism/thatcherism were their death knell and the old-left institutions were picked apart and left to die.

part of it was dirty tricks, sure, but this was achievable because the public was fed up with labor unions that had gone too far and laissez-faire economics had the ideological upper hand. maybe things will swing back left again after this historical cycle burns out, but it's not done yet.

personally though i don't think we can bring socialism back and i wouldn't want to-- i lived for almost a year in an israeli kibbutz and have seen how things work there. also grew up under various socialistic regimes. maybe that can work with some people but i can't stand the reduction in individual freedom in exchange for safety. under capitalism you can at least choose how you die-- under collectivism you just die of boredom.

under socialism there is no equality either. since everything depends on the government, your degree of "equality" (in the orwellian, ironic, animal-farm sense) depends on your proximity to power. in other words-- those with connections get the juicy meat and those without them get stale bread. it's all about connections. humans are hierarchical animals and those behaviors can't be socially-engineered away. best we can do is use our intrinsic inequality for optimal ends.

plus, because the central planning is murder on the economy, there is always less juicy meat to go around--the elites get fat and the workers fight over scraps.

just look at what chavismo has done to venezuela. every day there is just more poverty to distribute. meanwhile, the chinese commies saw the light and now instead of famines they are fighting obesity.

i'm not a right winger, and yes a new left was needed to take over the old dead one, but overreliance on identity politics and the lack of a proper ideological update have made the new left a failure. clinton had 2 years of congress obama had 2 years of congress they had a knife at the throat for another 6. clinton undone by gingrich, and obama by the baggers.

weak.

but this country is a center-right country in spite of what me or you or someone else might individually believe. this isn't 1929 when socialism had a chance.

eta: then again, the millenials are so swamped in debt... the laissez-faire cycle might conceivably close once boomers start to fade

While one might argue we are in a counterrevolutionary period, what is the solution from the elites when the masses begin to get organized and struggle for power: WAR! WW!, for instance, when an international workers movement was well underway, WW! was used to force the working clases to fight against each other and literally DIE. And whart news story did I miss recently:
“LATE IN THE DAY, ON NOV. 15, ONE WEEK AFTER THE U.S. ELECTIONS, THE LAME-DUCK CONGRESS CONVENED IN SPECIAL SESSION WITH NORMAL RULES SUSPENDED SO THE HOUSE COULD PASS HOUSE RESOLUTION 5732, THE “CAESAR SYRIA CIVILIAN PROTECTION ACT” CALLING FOR INTENSIFYING THE ALREADY HARSH SANCTIONS ON SYRIA, ASSESSING THE IMPOSITION OF A “NO FLY ZONE” INSIDE SYRIA (TO PREVENT THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT FROM FLYING) AND ESCALATING EFFORTS TO PRESS CRIMINAL CHARGES AGAINST SYRIAN OFFICIALS…
MOST STRIKINGLY, THE RESOLUTION CALLS FOR EVALUATING AND DEVELOPING PLANS FOR THE UNITED STATES TO IMPOSE A “NO FLY ZONE” INSIDE SYRIA, A SOVEREIGN NATION, AN ACT OF WAR THAT ALSO WOULD VIOLATE INTERNATIONAL LAW AS AN ACT OF AGGRESSION. IT ALSO COULD PUT THE U.S. MILITARY IN THE POSITION OF SHOOTING DOWN RUSSIAN AIRCRAFT.”

They are trying to leave Trump with a huge steaming pile of shit.

Ok, well, I didn't mean to come at you with a challenging tone, and I apologize if I did, or if I've sounded argumentative at all.

You're basically talking about campaigning though, aren't you? I mean, when all is said and done, campaigning is selling. And you're right, the party needs to get better at this. Or restore a fire they previously had for this kind of '"market manipulation."

As for ME... what I can do in conversation with people who have already made up their mind that the country "needed" Trump... it's not an immediate plan of action. What we need *right now* is for our senators (most of them being Republican at this point) to do the unthinkable -- strike down Trump's magnificently dangerous cabinet proposals, and make an enemy of their own party's man.

I don't know what things are like day to day for you guys, but for me, I'm just surrounded by people who think this is all the best thing to happen to the U.S. in decades... since Bush ended the "moral bankruptcy" or the Clinton administration. I don't think it's possible for me to sell an idea to these old ass White folks and single issue voters. Am I being a doomist? Maybe. And maybe that's impairing my ability to think straight.

Anyway, I'm not trying to argue with people like Symbols with whom I agree almost almost all things social and political. But I seem to be coming across as stubborn and bull-headed, so maybe I need to reevaluate the way I'm talking to my *friends* here, as well as the folks who are functional enemies at this point.

ya know, it's taken so long for "identity politics" to actually have some legs, that I'd like to see how it can run before sending it to the glue factory. My party is doing a hell of a job including people who've been marginalized for so long that I think it's great. And, anyone who longs for the moral certitude of the Shrub administration, which was more concerned with bare tits on the statues of justice than they were with the use of torture in Guantanamo, well, just fuck them, I'll never find common ground with that shit


http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...olitics.h tml

oh, and don't forget, identity politics actually won the popular vote, and by a SUBSTANTIAL margin.

i haven't read that article yet, and i second you on your repudiation of good-vs-evil president gog-&-magog, which is part and parcel of neocon ideology-- not necessarily republican, as there are also neocon democrats (e.g. lizard person ex-vp candidate joe lieberman and many others who left the democrats in the 60s)

but about identity politics, let me say--

i'm a "hispanic" mongrel married to a "full-blooded"(whatever that means) "native american" (aka an injun). while the race politics stuff is all around us and about us, we don't see the great benefits of this racialization scheme except that we get to mark a lot of checkboxes in government forms and get typecast into some sort of racist caricatures, apparently for our own good.

i also notice that socially more and more ethnicity is *everywhere*. everywhere i go i'm interrogated about my origins and "nationality"-- don't know if this is a friendly gesture or a fucking gestapo interrogation. feels like gestapo to me and i'm sick of it.

nobody is american anymore. you're "french-irish-german" or "afroitalian" or "mexi-caribbean choctaw" or "polish greek" or something else, but any sense of national unity and common cause and greater community is lost. so everyone fucking bickers about their little ghetto of genetic material. it's a loser's game and there is no benefit to it.

so yeah, i'm sick and tired of identity politics which is bullshit pandering to a hollow cause. i'm all for diversity, yes, but as long as it's diversity within an all-encompassing american (and ultimately human) identity, not as some little pocket of alienation and auto-marginalization.

sure the american idea needs to be broader than the fucking pilgrims and the slave-owning founding fathers, and it needs to include people like muslims who are today's no-irish-need-apply, but it needs to coalesce about something big like, i don't know--the constitution, for fuck's sakes.

me, i see me having more in common with the redneck neighbor who sells me farm supplies than with some megamillionaire "hispanic" cuban from miami; but racial politics tells me that no, the hispanic is "my people" and the rural white is some sort of racial enemy and i must be wary of him. bullshit! bullshit! bullshit!

Joe Lieberman is AWFUL.

well, I agree about old Joe....about the parties progress though, I still think it's headed in the right direction. Here in Oregon, we elected a bisexual woman governor and 9 new State Representatives for the Dems, not one of which is a white male. Our new Rep from our area is just as sharp and committed to good things as you could ever hope for. So, again, I like the direction that we're headed, multi-cultural, working class, LGBT friendly, a lot of female participation, etc.

of course, but he exemplifies the existance of a neocon faction among democrats. hillary btw has been accused of being one throughout the campaign-- maybe this didn't register with us who supported her, but that sure resonated with many of her critics (berniebros included of course)

i think that's really great, but unless they enact policies that speak to a broad base rather than their atomized particular constituencies they'll get dumped next time around. then again, you're in portlandia, which is in another dimension.

when you secede please let me in.

oh i almost forgot


uh??

dude, i like arguing. that's why i'm here.

i mean arguing as a way of searching for some sort of truth, not as a stupid ego contest.

i see arguing as a form of collaboration-- as long as there's no punching in the huevos

tldr i have no problem whatsoever with what you said above

and my suggestion to learn about sales and persuasion is an earnest one.

Yes, I'm very proud of my neighbor home-state OR, as well as my actual home state of WA.

I mean, really, the American west and Pacific Northwest are pretty much golden. The entirety of the coast is a beautiful dark blue, and always has been. (And before you bring up Eastern Washington, it may as well not exist from a statistical standpoint. Some of those counties are blood red, and as scary as the Idaho panhandle in their old-boy beliefs, but they simply can't compete with King and Whatcom counties, where I was raised and where I'm proud to call my home.

But speaking as someone who's gone from the Pacific Northwest to (first) major cities in the Midwest and eventually to a rural town in the same area, I can tell you things don't look anywhere near as sunny, knowing that there are bizarro versions of Santa Cruz, Olympia and Portland all over this country, and having to live in one. This is probably a major source of my frustration. I went from one extreme to the other, and I can see the flaws in the thinking and delivery of the über-left social warriors I grew up with, and how the people in the rust belt respond to that kind of attitude and behavior.

God bless Seattle, but a lot of those hardcore liberals who have a voice come from Bellevue and Ravenna and Redmond and Mercer Island, and they're outright RICH to the common everyday working class American. Most of the "career" activists I know who always have time for rallies and community projects also have never spent a single second worrying about how they might take care of their parents in their old age. This is because they're median income was about $300,000 a year (per parent!) growing up, and they find themselves in very secure little lives where they can afford to do a lot of what they want. Ditto for California, and even Portland.

I've lost the thread of where I was going with this, but basically, Trump voters HATE these people, and would hate them even more if they knew them like I did. Of course, they kinda voted for one of these people, but that's beyond them.

Symbols has a good point about the Dems lack of mass appeal. Even true blue Dems here in the Midwest (the few I know) feel that the Dems no longer represent the working class, labor, the ubderdogs, or peaceful international conflict negotiation.

I still support Hillary fully, but the problem is bigger than her. The solution is ...fucked if I know. How to move forward and regain ground without going decidedly backward on multiple fronts -- it's beyond me.

super-tired at this early hour but quickly to say the clinton democrats almost had it right

the "new left" closer to the center did some things right. it was when they tried to move things too far left (e.g. health care reform in 1993 led by hillary) that the right came back with a vengeance and tormented the clintons for the next 6 years.

had they played it cautiously, and had calculated natfa to play out better (more worker protections, more money for retraining), they might have kept running the country for a long time.

dubya won... why the fuck did he win? mainly because al gore was a boring-ass candidate nobody wanted to have a beer with. whereas dubya, gosh darn, he's just like a regular guy with his texas drawl, not some yankee aristocracy from connecticut (lol). SALES. SALES. SALES. fucking SALES.

same thing with john fucking kerry. boring-ass and swiftboated. sooooooo fucking incompetent at SALES.

if it wasn't for obama's magic, mccain would have been president 8 years, even in spite of dubya's maaaaaaaaassive fuckups which lost him the house in 2006.

but then 2 years later, again, blam. no congress

why hasn't anyone figured out these cycles yet? repukes get 6 years of congress democrats get 4 but only 2 with their own president. repeatedly.

gotta work on those ratios. which suck.

It is very important to go into each election cycle knowing your odds, and the Dems have always had the odds against them in many ways. We pay far too much attention — as a culture — to the presidential stats and we fail to acknowledge the equally important battle in the legislative branch. Time to pay more attention to the odds in these cases, and to start early with prepping '18 candidates for what they will be up against and to strategize about how to beat the Republicans.

Descartes is on a plane.
Midway through the flight an air hostess asks him if he'd like a coffee.
"I think not," he says, and disappears.

haaa haaaa haaaa haaaa

very long day getting back to work just wanted to stop & share this really good read on the democratic party and rural voters, featuring secreatary of agriculture and former governor of iowa tom vilsack. a+++++++ will buy again.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...d25_story.html

looks like the non-sacred chao will be the next secretary of transportation

maybe she'll rip out the amtrak rails and outsource the FAA

- dont know who coined it but there is a theory explaining the political power changes in the USA over the last 100 years, which describes it as a battle between two specific groups of very rich powerful people.

These are labeled the "Yankees" and the "Cowboys".

The Yankees are old-school New England/Old South money/power, the Rockefellers, the Bushes, the Kennedys, the Rothschilds, etc.

The Cowboys are newer-money/power players from Texas/California, fir example Bill Gates, The Hughes family, all the rich and powerful from Cali and Texas who made their money in oil and land and industry.

The past 100 years are a constant cycle of battle between the yankees and the Cowboys for control of the white house and government in general.
Party lines have nothing to do with it. The rich and powerful own both political parties (obviously) and use them as avatars for their own agendas.

check it out.

William H. Taft - Yankee: Yale grad, member of skull & bones, father was US attorney general and Secretary of War. Republican

Woodrow Wilson - Yankee: Johns Hopkins grad, Princeton president, old South family, Democrat

Warren Harding - outlier, neither Yankee nor Cowboy. won presidential nomination and election after the party could not pick one of the standard Yankee power players from "good" families. died in offfice from Cerebral hemorrage/heart disease . Republican.

Calvin Coolidge - Yankee, voted in as vice president. became president when Harding died. Lawyer from Vermont. father was rich land owner, politician. ancestros emigrated from UK in 1630. Republican

Herbert Hoover - Cowboy, Quaker born in Iowa and raised in California. Stanford grad. self-made man through mining interests out west. Secretary of Commerce. Republican.

Franklin D. Roosevelt - Yankee. born to rich as fuck old money Dutch family. Harvard Grad. Columbia Law School grad. Probably did more than any President to change US government. Served multiple terms due to war. Democrat.

Harry Truman - Cowboy. Born to farming family in Missouri. elected to public office as county official and worked his way to Vice presidential nomination after election as Senator. Democrat

Dwight D. Eisenhower - Yankee. Pensylvania Dutch heritage. 5-star general in WWII. Republican.

John F. Kennedy - Yankee. old super rich power family. Harvard grad. Military vet. massive social change advocate. assassinated. Democrat.

Lyndon B. Johnson - Cowboy (OBVIOUSLY). SW Texas State grad (now Texas State U), Texas congressman, Texas Senator, Majority leader in Senate. decorated Navy veteran. did NOT get along with his President Kennedy. Democrat.

Richard Nixon - Cowboy, Born in California. Served as US Senator from California. Raised a Quaker. Related to Bill Gates, Jimmy Carter and Grover Cleveland. Grew up poor, made himself who he was. Resigned Presidency. Republican.

Gerald Ford - Outlier. Became VP without being nominated or elected. became President without being elected. Only Eagle Scout to be US President. From Michigan. Navy veteran. Republican.

Jimmy Carter - Yankee. Raised in rural Georgia, part of large family of British settlers in 1635, all land owners and cotton farmers. Georgia senator and Governor. Navy vet. won the Dem nomination for President even though he was a political outsider in many ways. Democrat

Ronald Reagan - Cowboy. Raised poor in Illionois, lifelong Democrat who switched to Republican after being elected President of Screen actors guild and spending his time outing commies. Governor of California. Republican.

George H.W. Bush - Yankee. super old rich money New England. Navy veteran. started oil company with daddy's yankee money and became a millionaire by age 40. entered politics soon after. Congressman, ambassador, and Director of the CIA. Republican.

Bill Clinton - Cowboy. Born in Arkansas. Georgetown grad. married to old-money Yankee Hillary Rodham. Rhodes scholar. Oxford grad. Yale Law School GRaduate. Governor of Arkansas. Democrat.

George W. Bush - Yankee (disguised as a cowboy). Born in New Haven Conneticut. Old money power family. Yale grad. Harvard Business grad. Texas Governor. son of a president. Republican.

Barack Obama - Cowboy. Hawaii born. Columbia grad. harvard law grad. civil rights attorney. Illinois senator. Elected president. Democrat.

Donald Trump - Yankee. Born in Queens NY. In early 30's took over family real estate and construction business. lifelong democrat. wealthiest and oldest person ever elected president. Republican.

i keep laughing at this-- keep thinking he was on a Cartesian plane

anyway more laughs here from a funny old man:

http://wpo.st/rHXI2

From The Village Voice:

man, whenever you put long texts in quoteboxes it makes it really difficult to read. not being a dick just reporting what my senses gather.

suggestion: copypaste a choice blurb, in italics if you must but no quoteboxes, and then put the link to the full article where the interested can go read

i'm sure the village voice offers a better layout than this ancient messageboard

The reasons I "put long texts in quoteboxes" —some short texts too, actually— are a) Making explicit that they aren't my words while preserving the quotation marks as they appear on the original text, and b) Giving the lazy ones here the chance to get interested in a text which they wouldn't go to if I just posted the link ("Uhhh... Pffft, Christgau... I killed him with my dick... ").


Well whaddayaknow — long texts fully in italics are annoying to me (heh). More importantly, JESUS FUCK I DID PUT THE LINK GODDAMMIT, IT'S RIGHT ON THE PIECE'S TITLE. ARE YOU NOW GOING TO TELL ME I GOTTA COPY AND PASTE THE LINK JUST AS IT IS AND NOT LINK UP SENTENCES? Also, are you gonna tell me you don't like words in capital letters either? fine...

ha ha blinking icons.

so i read the piece on the village voice.

eh! he needs to get out of new york some time.

i remain agnostic, btw.

Persuasion Versus Populism
Posted November 21st, 2016 @ 12:24pm in #Trump

I’m hearing lots of after-the-fact explanations for why Trump won the election.

[...]

Trump didn’t identify and match the preferences of the people so much as cause them to think the way they are thinking.


http://blog.dilbert.com/post/1534809...ersus-populism

Someone, trying to be nice I guess, gave me Bernie's book OUR REVOLUTION. I read about a page and my heart shattered. Just imagine, we could've had this guy instead of...never mind. Don't imagine. Not worth it.

It's not worth it because there is no way in hell it would have happened. If Sanders had received the Democratic nomination, Drump and his flunkies would have easily demolished him with shouts of "socialist!", "communist!", etc. and Drumpf would have won in a real landslide, not the fake one he brags about to his mindless followers. I know, anything older than last week is boring retro indulgence. But maybe, just maybe, some of the Sanders fans on this board could look up what happened in the 1972 election, when Nixon, who was certainly vulnerable, got the gift of George McGovern and went on to win 49 of the 50 states. And Sanders makes McGovern look slightly conservative by comparison.

Every credit to you, though, evollove, for doing what a lot more of us should have done: work to get out the vote for Clinton even though she wasn't your first choice. But most progressives aren't doing what needs to be done to stop the most incompetent and dangerous jerk ever to be elected president. Instead, they continue to act like whipped puppies, whining about Sanders, and doing other nonproductive stuff rather than work hard on the 2018 midterm elections to get Repukes out of the majority. In the meantime, Drump supporters continue to work hard on supporting their idol. If progressives don't get out of their stupor, not only are the Republikkkans going to increase their congressional majorities, Drumpf is going to win in 2020 if we all haven't died in World War III by then.

This thread has far outlived it's usefulness. It would be great to see it closed and another one started on ways to stop the Drumpf agenda.

^^ i agree that bernie would have been a victim of red scaremongering.

i mean, look how little left obama went and he was branded a socialist, and health care reform triggered the birth of the tea party and got moe tucker out on the streets

i don't think this thread has outlived its usefulness though--because it never had any. this is some obscure message board on the internet where some nobodies come to rant. good thing i say. but the unregulated ranting is the usefulness in itself--not the thread proper. once this thread dies, it will die on its own, just like the rest.

what i think has actually outlived its usefulness (and moe tucker points to it in that link above) is this neocon-style branding of the opponent as "evil" and "stupid" and "kkk" and "clowns" etc. the great moral struggles. puritanism vs. the heathens. cotton mather burns some witches. etc

really, it's not a manichaean struggle of good vs evil with each party aligning on each side. the repukes have some good things to offer along with some terrible shit, the democrats have some terrible and corrupt baggage right next to their good intentions. nobody has the monopoly on ariman or ahura mazda.

this is why politics is broken-- it's all extremes and nobody wants to work with each other. and yeah, one can point fingers at the repukes and mitch mcconnell and say "you started it" but that's a 3rd grade answer that does nobody any good. (that's also the kind of 3rd grade response that made trump looks ridiculous to so many-- "he started it" "she started it"). so how about let's just not go that way.

how about we start focusing our criticism on actions, not identities; and make the struggle about policies, not personalities. okay, the electorate at large follows "personalities", and it's a good shorthand for a lot of things-- but still, i'll welcome a good policy regardless of where it comes from. nixon gave us the EPA after all, and wanted universal health care--good for him on those counts.

speaking from just my personal point of view, i promised to back hillary for the election and provide the criticism afterwards. well, i'm ready to be open-minded. i've done enough partisanship for the year. do i want democrats to take the house? yes. but i also want them to do it on the basis of a good platform and good sales, not by crying "look at how terrible the goobers are." which has gotten us precisely nowhere.

This thread has outlived its usefulness especially as a ranting mechanism. And if you want to label yourself as a nobody, feel free to do so. But you're only speaking for yourself.

As for your strawman bullshit about rough equivalency, both sides calling names, blah blah blah, I'm interested in practical steps to stop the Rupukes. I don't know where you've been the last eight years but the Repukes and their supporters see this as a zero sum game: vilify the opposition and engage in scorhed earth tactics, with no compromise on anything. Nixon, as bad as he was was willing to work with Democrats at times, but the GOP has radically chanted since then. Remember the bogus impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton that they knew wouldn't result in his removal from office? Or their stated intention to never work with Obama, bringing the government to the brink of default on more than one occasion, relenting only when it looked like the voters were blaming them? You have to have a willing partner to compromise with, and the GOP isn't willing at all.

I'm not interested in trying to engage Drumpf-supporting zombies. That's a waste of time. I'm interested in motivating those who stayed home this past election day. If they had come out, Drumpf would be nothing but an unpleasant memory. The idea is to motivate them, not engage in some useless attempt to change the minds of Drumpf supporters. That's the only way forward. The election of 2016 is a done deal. Let's move on from both that and this thread.

and yet here we are, ranting. and i do value everybody's life, the "nobody" is in the context of politics and policy and the world at large. it's not like this thread has a following outside of here, and the world is interested in our deep thoughts and shrewd analysis. this is just us, talking to ourselves. and also to the extent that the self is a fiction, yes, we're just vectors that recycle other people's ideologies into the void.

and what strawman bullshit? i'm based on recent history--all that hillary did throughout her campaign was to brand trump all sorts of things. didn't offer any compelling proposal (bernie did, impractical as his proposals were), all she did was basically point a finger and say "bad man, bad man," ad nauseam. which you know, worked to an extent, but not well enough.

if anything, the partisans voted, everyone else was turned off. so that strategy must die.

i remember her husband's speech with a bible quote, "without a vision, the people will perish." i forget where and in what context he said that, but see, it was so good that i remember it decades later. and yet hillary forgot and offered no vision of her own.

plus it's not a false equivalency when you come in the thread, declare it dead (yet here we still are ranting), and then proceed to do exactly the same thing-- bad man, bad republicans, bad, bad, bad.

without a vision, the democrats are perishing.

but hey, there's the bad man, point fingers at him and foam at the mouth, keep losing house seats and complaing that the opponent does not support your presidency, and as opposed to that old blues song, it's always everyone's fault but mine.

the original
https://youtu.be/Y_o4omd8T5c

and here are the lyrics for the 2016 version

Oh, mother she taught me how to read,
Mother she taught me how to read
If I don't read it my soul be lost, everyone's fault but mine

The strawman bullshit was your response to my post which countered an argument I never made. And the false equivalency was your stating that the left is just as bad as the right with name calling and the like. That's crap, just like people saying "Clinton is as bad as Trump." As for specific proposals, HRC made them. One of her ads talked about infrastructure investment and how to pay for it. Disagree if you want, but she made it. Also, during the debates, she referred people to her website for detailed policy positons. But a lot of Americans seem to have problems with actually considering policy positions. She has long talked about retraining workers for modern jobs. But that's too boring for most people, including you, apparently. Your "vision" amounts to wanting better sloganeering than Drumpf's--not an intelligent way forward. A lot of progressives stayed home, allowing Drumpf to win by the skin of his teeth in a state like Michigan. Clinton took a lot of blue state support for granted, and she paid the price. It's not about lack of "vision", it's about lack of sound strategy to reach voters.

In any event, your posts amount to nothing more than your usual trolling. I have a life outside this forum, so I'm not going to respond to any more of your baiting bullshit. I will, however, see about getting a moderator to close the thread.

Hey... guys... I agree with both of you in several points, but I'm kind of wondering why we're not taking a bit more about the nail-biter of a legal battle taking place in Michigan, as I type this, to determine when recount proceedings for the state should begin.

Lookie: http://www.freep.com/story/news/loca...ring/94930506/

Wisconsin is already underway. Trump won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes. He reportedly won Michigan by about half that (10,200 I believe), and yet his legal team just filed an objection to the recount Friday, and a real-life "emergency" federal court session was held in Detroit today, Sunday, with Trump attorneys doing everything possible to delay the now inevitable recount for just a few days.

Why? If all is above board, why are so many people digging in their heels and opposing this recount in the state of Michigan, where Trump won by the smallest margin?

I mentioned this when I was obsessing a while back but voter statistics. In fact, the very states I was concerned about, withthe exception of Florida, have all been part of this recount effort. I'm sure I was just spazzing, but still... this is news, right? Huge news? Whether it amounts to anything or not, shouldn't we be talking about this?

Persuasive. I'm sold! Tell me where to sign. After the moderator closes this thread of course.

funny thing i saw a video about this in the fox news website of all places (yes, i like to torment myself by learning how "the other" thinks)

there was tucker carlson (lol) trying to make the green party spokesperson look like an antidemocratic malcontent for wanting a recount, and while the good green giant explained that this was about legal rights and the rule of law and confidence in the elections, carlson frowned with the frowniest frown. ah, propaganda!

in any case i wasn't aware of the michigan legal battle, and thanks for bringing it up, i'll go nose around the internets for it. wasn't on the front page of the WaPo when i checked this morning.

ETA: still it's not.

(meanwhile, ahve a morning chuckle with this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...=.5aa3ee87dbab )

Since we are living in the post-truth world, I choose to believe this never happened.

From Demand Progress: "Tell the Michigan Attorney General: Go Fuck Yourself!" OK, no, it's actually Tell the Michigan Attorney General: Don't Block the Recount!

i understand. notice the last 2 paragraphs of the article though:

Tucker also said she is "amazed" that her interview was so widely criticised: "I'm stunned that so many people who call themselves liberal yet are completely intolerant. I thought liberals loved everyone: the poor, the immigrant, the gays, the handicapped, the minorities, dogs, cats, all eye colours, all hair colours! Peace, love, bull!"

She continues: "You disagree and you're immediately called a fool, a Nazi, a racist. That's pretty f'd up! I would never judge someone based on their political views. Their honesty, integrity, kindness to others, generosity? Yes. Politics? No!"

anyway, as a newly-minted nazi fool racist troll i'll continue my usual baiting here while we await for the moderator with the magical internet key for closing useless threads closes the useless thread
i don't know that these internet petitions are worth a fuck, but in addition to the money we gave, don't the democrats have lawyers there? "interference" and what not.

ah, see, this is why we need to worry about "the small elections" instead of president-president-president-president-president obsession. the fucking michigan AG!--and governor rick flint of course lol. can i call him that?

eta: also katherine harris florida 2000

eta: also, gerrymandering: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...d_content_1_na

By the way, Laura Dern was pitch-freakin'-perfect as Harris in Recount.

In other news, and this goes here because we know where Mike Pence stands and we know batshit crazy laws like this will spread like a motherfucker during the next four years...

https://news.google.com/news/rtc?ncl=dsnLHV95xbtzFCMdFIPZUV1hR273M&authuser=0&t opic=m&siidp=afb12aca6d1eda0d7aec041733c31b42eac8

I feel satanic today!