I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

Fox News host Tucker Carlson asserted on Sunday that "science" was on the side of a doctor claiming male Hillary Clinton supporters suffered from low testosterone.

"A doctor [is] under fire for claiming men who support Hillary Clinton likely suffer from low testosterone," Carlson teased before a commercial break. "It's science. You can't deny it."

"Are you a Low T denier?" he quipped.

making wall st swallow a 300 billion dollar tax is probably close to being as difficult as convincing mexico to build a wall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAjDmw6IrFg

exactly, thanks for bringing up the filibuster

lol okay so sanders was conning america because he proposed taxing the rich to pay for something. glad we got that sorted.

but let's play along. okay so let's say once it hits congress, $30 billion a year tax coming from financial transactions (300 was a ten-year estimate) hits a wall. the lobbying is intense, wall street is too powerful! suppose in the end it's $20 billion. or 15, or 10 or even 5. tied (as sanders's plan was) to states matching a portion of the funds, that would still be... a very helpful piece of legislation that addresses a real problem in america. particularly if it came with any of the carrot/stick stuff sanders indicated would be involved to control costs. or, as i put it in a tragically overlooked paragraph:

but it's more than that: free college would actually solve a real problem that matters in people's lives, and even a watered-down crappy compromise version of it would also be real fucking helpful, so shifting the window of possibility on this is totally worth doing on its own merits. i said something like this at the time - - - okay, suppose imaginary president sanders can't get free college through the legislature. what if he only got college discounted fifty percent? what if that was enough carrot-and-stick to rein in half (or pick another number) of the insane surges in tuition around the country? what if free college stalled in congress but the other three or four things he was pushing for on student loan interest (etc.) made it through? hell, even the tax on wall street financial transactions he proposed to pay for it would be a good in itself, as part of the project of containing out-of-control income inequality.

whereas - again - the watered-down compromise version of "build the wall" would be just as much of a racist non-solution con job as "build the wall." it would just cost less. oh okay they're clearly the same got it.

i'm amazed more of you are not named Robby Mook

A US politician could hope to make rules taxing wall street, but has no power in Mexico. It's, like, two fundamentally different things. No need to explain how hard it is, you're the President of the USA, you can say you want to tax Americans. You can't say you want to tax Mexicans. Iatee, I agree with you to a degree, but this is kinda ridiculous.

xp I'm amazed you haven't wandered into traffic accidentally

there's no 'once it hits congress'. this is something far more ambitious than anything that got passed in congress during obama's first 2 years, which is likely going to remain the most favorable congress we'll have in decades and was only possible because we were lucky enough to get a second great depression.

in any case the bill doesn't address the root problem, which is that we already have a system where the costs of educating a student are higher than they should be. the solution to 'as a country, we spend too much on this / we have a really bloated monster of a higher education system' isn't 'we'll put it on someone else's tab.' his solution isn't actually ambitious, it's lazy and easy to communicate.

I don't think bernie sanders and donald trump are the same human being. they are different human beings. I don't even dislike bernie sanders. but I think that clinton doesn't get enough credit for the fact that she doesn't want to make promises she can't keep. that's a form of dishonesty that's easy to get away with.

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TswwON_Hs1M

but (as i keep alluding to re: carrot/stick) sanders recognized bringing costs down as a key part of the plan. i freely concede that this part wasn't fleshed out at all, perhaps in recogniton of the political realities you would have him and his supporters blithely ignoring. nor would we expect any candidate to get into that level of detail tbh. so it would surely end up being a very long and complex piece of legislation to get at these issues. it would need to be complemented by other efforts at the state level, and with reforms in student loan practices, etc. (which sanders also specified explicitly).

btw though the ambitious aspect has to do with giving access to people who currently can't go to college at all. it's not just that the same people would be going, but someone else would pay for it. see also: single-payer health care. this doesn't have a huge bearing on the current discussion but it's probably worth keeping in mind.

bringing down future costs is given a line, there's no mechanism to lower existing costs.

anyway, you're fleshing out a bill that - again - wouldn't exist to begin with. all of these discussions essentially start with 'let us presume a political climate where this could actually happen'. we don't have that, we're not close to having that, and even were bernie sanders to sneak into the oval office due to the historical accident of donald trump - totally possible - we still wouldn't have that. I'm willing to consider sanders' theoretical presidency in the context of actual american politics not the politics of an imaginary bernieworld.

and in that context the difference between what kinda major legislation could pass under him vs under clinton is marginal. otoh no doubt he'd drop fewer bombs on people.

what has Clinton promised, other than we'll be Stronger Together?

very little! and she will accomplish very little!

and you think she deserves more credit for this

she deserves credit for not pretending otherwise

the principle of being more honest about getting nothing done apparently more important than killing fewer people

off the top of my head: federal minimum wage increase, equal pay for women

She'll be in jail anyway as well as all of her voters

Elimination of in-state tuition fees at public colleges for families making less than $125,000

xp

i assume if sanders were the nominee his longstanding pitch for a federal minimum wage increase and equal pay for women would be filed under "build the wall"

comprehensive immigration reform (whatever that means - and tbf everybody promises this)

if sanders started claiming the fed min wage increase / equal pay for women across the country will also be funded by wall street, then yes

bringing down future costs is given a line, there's no mechanism to lower existing costs.

for the record, he says that to qualify for the federal funding, states must "reduce ballooning costs." i guess there's room for interpretation but i read that as him "giving a line" to reducing existing costs. i agree that the mechanism for doing this is not spelled out. how this becomes tantamount to trump's racist fire-kindling, problem-non-solving, pep rally wall scam is still escaping me.

anyway, you're fleshing out a bill that - again - wouldn't exist to begin with.

er... why not? which universe is this, where sanders wins the presidency but the house becomes 100% republican and there is no one there to introduce legislation? very confusing to me. so what, he should have only run on things that were already likely legislative winners the day before he started his campaign? or what?

https://frinkiac.com/meme/S05E18/432881.jpg?b64lines=VEhFIExFU1NPTiBJUywKTkVWRVIgVFJZLg==

I've worked in state universities systems in the Big Ten & now in Paris & while there's some kind of sense that American state unis will end up looking like the Univ of Paris system eventually, I don't know you get between those. we have free university here but not only are taxes quite a lot higher, the resources available to students are quite a lot lower. of course there are climbing walls etc at our municipal public sports complexes but those aren't exclusive to students. there aren't much in the way of dorms, and comparably little in the way of organised student life. and we fail about 40% of first year students, keeping class sizes down in years 2 and 3. our facilities are pretty basic.

But how do you get from the current USA experience to the future experience? You can't just make Wall Street pay for that, because money won't suffice: you have to change these slow-moving, battleship-like institutions, and strip them down, and then find a way to pay for what results. Both the Sanders and Clinton ideas say nothing about this, and so they're both just empty ideas to me.

im so mad I got beat to the 'whats a mook' video

I beat you to changing your display name, too

er... why not? which universe is this, where sanders wins the presidency but the house becomes 100% republican and there is no one there to introduce legislation? very confusing to me. so what, he should have only run on things that were already likely legislative winners the day before he started his campaign? or what?

I think running a campaign on dream-world legislation is deceitful and at least some people I knew genuinely believed that sanders was making promises he could keep, not just saying 'these are some dream goals I have, this is what I'd like the world to look like - but, you know...congress...' it's almost certain if were bernie to win the election congress would look better, but not so much better that any sort of ambitious legislation could pass. the numbers just aren't there.

But how do you get from the current USA experience to the future experience? You can't just make Wall Street pay for that, because money won't suffice: you have to change these slow-moving, battleship-like institutions, and strip them down, and then find a way to pay for what results. Both the Sanders and Clinton ideas say nothing about this, and so they're both just empty ideas to me.

yeah similar to our health care system, making our higher education system cheaper also means dismantling a lot of entrenched institutions and every 'wasted dollar' is someone's paycheck. it's totally possible to come up with sweeping reforms that are cost neutral and make college cheaper, it's another thing getting those reforms passed because every institution currently benefiting from the status quo is going to fight it like hell. coming up w/ a plan that only has one bad guy there to fight it - and it's wall st, obviously - is so much easier.

iatee otm

let's move jobs toward anachronism ASAP plz

that logic is convincing as well on why HRC has no desire to do shit about campaign finance even if she could

https://twitter.com/KatyTurNBC/status/782988522588213248

HRC has no desire to do shit about campaign finance even if she could

Motives are notoriously opaque and testimony from the person whose motives you are examining is unverifiable. When there are equally explanatory theories there is no way to choose between them. The theory that HRC sees campaign finance reform as a guaranteed losing battle not worth expending her time or political capital on, regardless of her "desire" for it seems adequate to explain her lack of interest.

It is worth noting that conventional wisdom believes Democrats would benefit more from campaign finance reform than Republicans. HRC's playing the game by its current rules is not good evidence that she likes the current rules better than another set which she might find even more favorable. Probability would predict that HRC's favored position would align with the presumed interest of her party, for the same reason a president would prefer a congress filled with their own party members.

Citizens United has been p disastrous for the GOP, funnily enough

Yeah that was a big whoopsie daisy

Remember when Democrats were the undisciplined party?

caek's twitter link is not to be overlooked: #BREAKING NY AG sends Cease and Desist to Trump Foundation for operating without proper certification.

countdown to trump proclaiming how it's all political and he's being treated very unfairly. big league unfairly. the worst cease and desist order in the history of western civilization, folks.

https://twitter.com/KatyTurNBC/status/782988522588213248

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, October 3, 2016 1:02 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lovely!

xps.. so disastrous that the GOP controls both chambers of Congress, plus most governorships and state legislatures

fully expect post-election Loser Trump to end up spending most of his time in court

so disastrous that the GOP controls both chambers of Congress, plus most governorships and state legislatures

did you think I did not know this? lol

we're talking about presidential elections iirc

yeah i feel like that new york AG story wouldn't be such a huge deal if it weren't for the inevitable trump response

"And I have to deal with this against-charity attorney general -- and, I mean, do you think he got orders to do this from Crooked Hillary? Probably, I don't know. I don't know. Someone should look into it."

more here http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/us/politics/trump-foundation-money.html

“While we remain very concerned about the political motives behind A.G. Schneiderman’s investigation, the Trump Foundation nevertheless intends to cooperate fully with the investigation,” Hope Hicks, Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, said on Monday. “Because this is an ongoing legal matter, the Trump Foundation will not comment further at this time.”

has anyone watched the PBS frontline thing about them both? https://twitter.com/Bro_Pair/status/782991753930481665

feel like hillary's opposition to citizen's united is probably pretty sincere considering the context of the case

First off, watch it. @frontlinepbs is such a great TV series, this is fantastically well done and informative.
I honestly do not know who has had a more psychologically hellish life, Trump or Hillary. But these are two incredibly pained personalities.
Hillary, in particular, is a shockingly sympathetic character. She was not born a monstrous political personality. She's a tragic figure.
Also, I absolutely cannot vote for Hillary. That documentary is a testament to the fact that neither candidate should ever gain power.
Hillary's personal pain cannot excuse the fact that her administration will feel like one of those sclerotic early 80s Russian governments.
Trump, of course, is mentally ill & who knows, maybe he'll nuke the world, so, no real judgment from me if you're with her in a swing state

i don't necessarily follow everything his office does but almost any time i see eric schniedermann's name in the news i want to pump my fist, that dude seems like a great guy

Hmmm. Interesting side light to think of HRC as the nascent Yuri Andropov of US politics.