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ZooeyModeratorSo what we have here is a sexually-conflicted man who suffered self-hatred because of all the “gays will go to hell” stuff he believed.
ZooeyModeratorYet he is a registered DEMOCRAT. Oops.
I really appreciate everyone who posts here and all the contributions.
That said, don’t fucking do that. Just fucking don’t. Don’t play puerile politics days after the mass murder of 50 people.
There is no political party affiliation that makes any difference here.
The man had serious mental illness. The man may or may not have engaged in terrorism in addition to the hate crime it clearly was.
You know what doesn’t matter? What corporate fucking club he belonged to.
So can we please NOT?
If for no other reason than out of respect for the dead.
Respect for the dead demands we can’t say he is a registered democrat? I disagree. The democrats are using this to try to deny our 2nd Amendment right. You know it too. It was an act of terrorism. You know that too.
Sure. But it is just as logical to point out that he worked as a security guard.
But you don’t do that because it doesn’t serve your political itch.
Mackeyser is right. You are politicizing mass murder to serve your own interest.
ZooeyModeratorI am with Mackeyser.
I think Hillary Clinton is the END.
Right now the waters of the Rubicon are licking our toes.
That’s it.
And I understand that she will be less damaging to civil rights, but it won’t matter that a lot of people avoided nastiness that Trump would have inflicted because we will be dead in 100 years anyway.
ZooeyModeratorI get all of the arguments to to just vote Jill Stein or not vote or whatever–and in fact, I even agree with that sentiment on some level. But if bernie can get some of the progressive stuff he has been pushing into the Democratic platform. If Hillary chooses an Elizabeth Warren, there can be that subtle opening within the Democratic party.
Is Hillary still a neocon? Of course. But do I see her as reckless as Trump?
No. I don’t. Yes–she screwed up Libya. I get it.
My fear of Trump is how bad he can be?
If Gore had beaten Bush would we have invaded Iraq and set all this stuff of nightmares loose? I don’t think so. 8 years of Bush really was a disaster.
Well–Hillary is more war hawkish than Obama. It concerns me for sure.
But what about Trump? I can see us stumbling into wars and conflicts we didn’t think were possible–and not because of some neocon vision–but because he’s inept at all of that. He understands none of it.
Will he rip up the Iran deal and send nukes their way?
Who knows?
He strikes me as having no temperament for the job and his outright racism is a big warning light to me.
Am I being ruled by the same ol’ fear that always compels me to vote the “lesser” of two evils? Yes. And is she even the lesser of two evils? I can’t say I even know that for sure.
But I do live in one of those big swing states. And Pennsylvania is key to Trump’s strategy of winning the electoral votes. It’s a big key. I have to vote Clinton in my mind. Trump will give the right wing whoever they want on the court as long as it doesn’t hurt his own interests. He’ll give them most anything that doesn’t conflict with his interests.
I get the “Bernie or Bust” movement. I respect it and I think everyone must vote their conscience. But I have to follow my own conscience on this one. And that means a vote for Clinton. Or should I say a vote against Trump? Someday I suspect I will also hit that “Bernie or Bust” movement and I thought this was the year–to be honest. I really did.
But I’m not there yet.
It is a truly awful situation.
And…not to make your decision more complicated, or painful…but here is an interesting bit on Hillary
Hillary Clinton’s war crimes are unforgivable. No real progressive could ever support her.
I do not blame anyone for whatever choice he or she makes this November.
I am leaning towards Jill Stein, and my reasoning is basically that we are running out of time on the environment. There is a time to fold your hand, and wait for another opportunity. But I just don’t see any time for that anymore. It feels like the 4th quarter to me, behind by two scores, and realistically only one more possession after this one. We have to score on this drive. It’s 4th down. To me, a vote for Hillary is a punt. At best.
The time has come, imo. We need to terminate fossil fuels right now. And neither Trump nor Clinton are interested in the least.
What we have here, as far as I can tell, are two candidates who are strikingly similar to George Bush both in international policy, and domestic policy. Clinton is a smarter version of Bush, and Trump is a dumber version of Bush.
I honestly wonder if a dumber Bush isn’t preferable to a smarter Bush. Because at least with Trump, we know that the entire congress is going to be en garde against him from Day One. And Trump also completely lacks the network that Clinton owns, both domestically and internationally. Trump’s great weakness is that he is an outsider. Nobody is going to cooperate with him, and both parties – and probably even his own cabinet – will be holding counter-Trump strategy sessions. Trump is likely to be the most useless president ever. He is like that moron guy from Ohio, or wherever it was, that Joe Sixpack guy who had his 15 minutes of fame. He will have a little bit of use to some factions momentarily, but nobody will take him seriously. Nobody inside the beltway is going to respect Donald Trump. They are going to see him as this accidental blowhard freak of reality TV. If he is elected, the Republicans are going to instantly huddle up and figure out how to use him. They already ARE doing that. The guy is a bigger empty shirt than Ronald Reagan was, or George Bush. He has NO idea what’s actually going on. The person you will have to worry about is Rasputin. The Karl Rove, the Dick Cheney. Right now, we have no idea who that is going to be. But Trump will be the most ineffectual president since Warren Harding. Doesn’t mean he won’t do damage; he WILL. But so will Clinton, and it’s possible her damage will be unchecked.
ZooeyModeratorNina Turner is a former state senator from Ohio who actively supported Sanders. She got on some news shows and made some very articulate arguments.
June 9, 2016 at 8:47 pm in reply to: leave Hillary out of it in THIS thread…in his own terms, what is Trump #45787ZooeyModerator. He gets things done. Unlike the Establishment candidates who are always bought long before they ever reach the presidency, Trump is not.
You keep saying that. As do a lot of Trump supporters.
But the fact that Trump isn’t bought by some other interests does not mean that he isn’t devoted to interests. You act like he is altruistic because he isn’t “bought.”
He has his OWN interests.
And those are the interests of a narcissistic billionaire developer.
Doesn’t make any difference that they are his OWN interests rather than somebody else’s.
They still aren’t MY interests.
Or yours either, for that matter.
ZooeyModeratorYeah, I had a conversation last night during which I discovered that some Sanders supporters are thinking, “Duh, yeah, I will vote for Hillary. Are you kidding?”
I think a number of Sanders supporters think Sanders is preferable, but Hillary is okay if they can’t have Sanders. So I don’t know where we are.
I know I’ve been thinking on it, and thinking on it, and I just do not think I could punch the card for Clinton if I knew the entire election came down to my vote.
I am staggered by how awful both candidates are. I am floored that either one of these assholes could get more than 1,000 votes nationwide. These have to be the two worst candidates I have seen in my life.
ZooeyModeratorThis is wild.
Hillary Clinton has the highest Unfavorable Ratings of any candidate in history.
With the exception of Donald Trump.
So…here we are. The two most widely disliked candidates, ever, in the same year. And we are supposed to choose between them.
Jesus god have mercy.
No matter who wins, we all lose.
ZooeyModeratorI dunno what the hell happened in California. Sanders had closed to within 2% of Clinton in the polls. And the polls are of “likely voters” which does not include a lot of young voters (who have no landlines) and not any of the newly registered voters (and there were 1.5 million new voters). I thought Sanders would win California.
This morning, as I cruise around Facebook and so on, I see an awful lot of celebration of Hillary’s uterus. All I ever see in praise of Hillary is that she is Experienced, and she has a Uterus. Those two things seem to be what interests Democrats most.
Oh, and there is a lot of shaming of Sanders supporters going around. People telling them that they “need” to stop whining and unify the party, and that Trump is far worse.
If I could make a meme for Facebook, it would be
“Hillary 2016 – Because the Alternative is Even Worse!”
That seems to be about the state of things in this Great Country.
ZooeyModeratorBut in trying to make this point, what I often experience is the person I am talking to tries to tell me I am incorrect about what I think.
Man, I get that sometimes too.
According to mainstream thinking the dem party is “the left.”
But to me, as someone genuinely on the actual left, that’s like saying that baseball IS football.
Then I get told what being left means. Which, of course, as a leftist, I know ISNT what it means.
It;s like people who are born with only green and red color cones in their eyes and you have all three, and they keep telling you what blue looks like.
And let me guess…Clinton is in the upper right quadrant, and I am in the lower left quadrant, but righties are gonna tell me that we are the same. As do Clinton supporters, btw, and Clinton herself. “We need to unify….”
Yeah…we’re not the same.
ZooeyModeratorWhat Billy and zn say here matches my experience, too. The concept of anti-authoritarian leftist territory is completely unthinkable to people. It doesn’t exist. It CANNOT exist. There is no such thing. And, invariably, the rightie sees no distinction between Dems and the left. That is how it is possible for them to think that Obama is a socialist, or “leans” towards socialism. A socialist knows that Obama is closer to Bush than he is to socialism.
But in trying to make this point, what I often experience is the person I am talking to tries to tell me I am incorrect about what I think. Liberals are even harder to talk to than conservatives.
Last night I heard a Hillary supporter expressing her frustration at Sanders and his supporters, saying “WE ARE ON THE SAME SIDE!”
No. No they’re not.
I may retake the test. To the best of my recollection, I was somewhere around -8.5, -8.5 last time I took it.
ZooeyModeratorI think so, too. I think if the Rams win zero games, they will be lucky. There is no talent on that team whatsoever. My grandma is better than Aaron Donald Duck. Believe me, I am
Happy4Stl.
I’m changing my handle.
ZooeyModeratorWell, I’d be tempted to vote for Clinton if she made Warren the VP.
I dunno if i would do it, but I’d be tempted.
Coz, ya know, she could be assassinated.
…did i say that out loud?
O dear.
w
vI don’t want Warren relegated to the basement of the White House. I prefer her to be out front.
And it is hard to imagine Hillary picking a VP who wouldn’t be preferable as P.
ZooeyModeratorI saw something yesterday – I took as a trial balloon – that Warren is close to being named.
I’d hate to lose her out of the senate.
ZooeyModeratorWell, I see that if I want to be better informed on subjects I care nothing about, I should read PAST the headlines:
“Jets QB Ryan Fitzpatrick ready to take 1-year deal for $12 million guaranteed: source”
I just figured…you know…that that is what was offered. Apparently not.
I would take Fitz over Foles.
ZooeyModeratorI thought the Jets resigned Fitzpatrick a few days ago.
ZooeyModeratorWell, i could only stomach it to about the 12:15 mark. Thats where she said we should “start looking at Iraq as a business opportunity”.
Honestly, that statement says more than all the other words
she could possibly say. It sez it all.w
vOh, go back.
The 12:00 minute mark is where the shit hits the fan. {I am not guaranteeing you won’t throw up}.
June 2, 2016 at 7:42 pm in reply to: Cornell west, Bill mckibbon, K.ellison, D.parker, J Zogby #45239ZooeyModeratorI don’t have much of a prediction on California, except I think Sanders wins here. I said that back in Feb, I think, on the basis that this is a reliably blue state. And in the past couple of months, California has increased registration by 10% – 1.5 million new voters. That ain’t for Hillary.
I find the appointment of Cornel West interesting, and haven’t read any reaction to it. I guess he isn’t well known enough, yet. He once called Obama a Rockefeller Republican in blackface.
June 2, 2016 at 7:05 pm in reply to: US Doctors Call for Universal Healthcare: "Abolish the Insurance Companies" #45238ZooeyModeratorWow, I missed most of this thread.
I’m sorry for your loss, ozone. Thanks for sharing the story.
ZooeyModeratorDo you guys realize that Obama knew she was using the private email server? No way he couldn’t know.
I haven’t read that anywhere. It wouldn’t surprise me, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t know, either.
June 2, 2016 at 5:37 pm in reply to: Cornell west, Bill mckibbon, K.ellison, D.parker, J Zogby #45232ZooeyModeratorWell, i agree with that. And part of that process/approach means (to me)
NOT falling in line and voting for the corporate-neoliberal-Dem. I just think its time for the left to stop doing that. The corporate-Dem-machine will NEVER listen to the Left if they can always count on the Left to fall in line. As per usual.I’d rather see Trump elected and crack open the Dem Party,
than see Hillary elected and the corporotacracy go on as usual.I know zn doesn’t think a Trump win would crack open the Dem party,
but a Hillary win will seal the Dem Party up for maybe decades. If she wins, they will continue to follow that ‘winning formula’ for decades.Personally, i aint ever voting for another neoliberal. Aint doin it.
w
vI am finding myself lining up behind that way of thinking, too. (I last voted for a democrat in ’92. Since then, California hasn’t been close enough to make me consider voting the “lesser of two evils”).
Check this op-ed out (in response to Robert Reich’s advice to back Clinton if she wins the nomination). I find myself agreeing with this.
Sanders, btw, has been invited to run atop the Green Party ticket, and he has not ruled it out. Sanders/Stein 2016?
I could live with that.
ZooeyModeratorYou know, I know zip on this ’email scandal’ thing. Zero. Nada.
I havent read a single solitary word about it.
And i don’t intend to.I couldn’t care less whether she “committed a crime” or not
by sending or receiving “classified” emails.I mean to me, the CIA in and of itself is a Crime. The whole entire organization has a long history of assassination, torture, butchery spying on pacifists, derailing democracies, dealing in narcotics…etc, etc, etc. And the FBI aint no better. Or the NSA. All those secret shadow organizations are anti-democratic and rife with corruption.
I dont care what Clinton did with some emails. What Clinton has done that is perfectly LEGAL is what appalls me. Her support of the mega-corpse, neoliberalsim, the big-banks, goldman-sachs…etc. All THAT stuff is enough for me to loathe her. And Obama. And Bush. And all the mainstream Dems and Reps.
I could go on. But i have to plant some milkweed seeds.
wv curmudgeon
I haven’t read much about it until I found this. I knew she had used a private server, and that she deleted 30,000 personal emails, but that’s it.
And I don’t really care about the email issue either because whatever she did is nothing compared to what she plans to do if she is president both domestically and internationally. You know…invading Libya and Iraq is a smidge worse than mishandling classified documents (though she could potentially be blackmailed by nasty people).
The reason I care about the above is that it shows a lot of high up establishment intelligence people are telling Obama that this is really, really bad news, and postponing it, or trying to sweep it under the carpet, could be devastating to her, the party, and the country. To me that means that this scandal is a real scandal – as opposed to so many Clinton scandals over the decades – and I would like to see her destroyed politically. Prison time would be a bonus. And the sooner, the better. That’s why I had interest in it.
ZooeyModeratorDouble Tavon’s catches this year.
Hunh.
ZooeyModeratorWe travel a lot. More than most. We don’t run into Danes. While it isn’t scientific, its interesting. Germans, Brits, French, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese always but can’t remember a single Dane.
Welllll….anecdotal evidence doesn’t mean much, but I have encountered Danes in my travels enough that I don’t consider them a rarity. I met Danes in England, India, Thailand, and Hong Kong. In fact…though I hesitate to express this on the internet…my second favorite sexual encounter of all-time was with a Danish woman in Jakarta.
Oh, boy. I’m going to log off before I write a Penthouse letter that shames the entire board.
ZooeyModeratorI have no idea whom Hillary will name. I hope it’s not Sanders, or Warren. That just takes one of the few good senators out of the game.
ZooeyModeratorHappy Birthday.
I bought you some vowels.
ZooeyModeratorhttp://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism
———————–
I passed that “smug liberal” article on to a young grad-student friend of mine.
Just thot I’d pass along here spontaneous reply to it (for those that read the article) (…i also mentioned to her that i hate the word ‘neoliberal’ coz i think it confuzes the peepulz)===============
Yeah… I wasn’t sure what to think of it at first either. But I think I figured out why something about it seems off to me.I think he’s absolutely right when he says it’s misguided to blame poor rednecks. I think where he goes wrong is in saying we should instead blame the smug liberals. The problem isn’t “smug liberals,” just as it isn’t “poor rednecks.” Blaming the individual is the problem. Blaming the individual is…. neoliberalism.*
See, this is why I think we need that word. I don’t think this guy understands the big picture — the system, the ideology. This dude would have written a much better article if he had that framework to work with. Maybe he wouldn’t have had to use that word you don’t like, but certainly if he could write this piece, he could use the concept of neoliberalism to frame his criticisms and communicate essential parts of the concept. But he doesn’t see it, he’s too stuck in it to see it and misses the point entirely. That’s why he blames those smug liberals for their misguided blaming of dumb rednecks, when he should really be blaming the system.
If I could rewrite this whole article, I would say, “Rich educated people who vote Democrat like to smugly blame poor people for voting against their own interests. But the reason they blame poor people is because that’s what neoliberal ideology trained them to do so that they won’t question the fucked up neoliberal economic system that produces poor people.” But maybe that article wouldn’t have gotten on Vox. (I don’t know who owns Vox.)
I don’t think we can get out of the mess we’ve created for ourselves unless more people can “see” the ideology for what it is, and have some way of discussing/communicating it. I don’t know if your preferred term “corporate-capitalism” quite covers it or not. It’s just a part of the puzzle. Another part of the puzzle is that there is a very problematic over-emphasis on individual effort and “freedom.” Pointing the finger at corporations breaks it down into something more concrete and real, but I think maybe it does that at the expense of understanding how ideology shapes the way we think about the world and about things like individual freedm. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s late and I’m tired.
*If you would like to stop receiving emails containing variants of the word “neoliberal,” please send youtube videos of baby animals doing cute things. No neoliberal baby animals, please.
====================I agree with her. The article seemed off to me, too, but I tell you what part of it is on: rednecks don’t like the fact that liberals insult them and belittle their beliefs.
That part is just true. Blaming liberals may not get anybody anywhere, but what it does is identify the biggest obstacle to winning that voting bloc back.
Here is a somewhat related piece…it is on the stone-age brain and its influence on voting decisions. There is a lot in this interview (Moyers interviewing a historian) that I found interesting, but one of my main takeaways is the idea that politicians have a meta-narrative that they campaign on, and this is how I see those meta-narratives now.
Trump: You are getting screwed by brown people who are undermining your lifestyle, and your entire way of life is being attacked by the muslim variety of brown people. Furthermore, the government is completely corrupt and screwing you over, and I will fix all that.
Sanders: We are getting screwed by corporations and the finance industry, and we need to level the playing field and make the rich contribute their resources to fixing the country.
Clinton: Things are slowly getting better, and I am the most experienced and competent leader to continue down this path. I have all the connections. I am the answer, and by golly, my time has come.
Clinton’s story has the least emotional appeal partly because her story is about herself rather than us, and partly because she isn’t playing to fear or anger. The only Anxiety card she can play is anxiety about crazy Trump. Clinton supporters, naturally, are drawn to this narrative because they are basically doing okay, even in this economy, and they are the sane, rational actors in this storyline as opposed to the naive, immature, and impatient Sanders supporters, and the contemptibly low-information, bigoted Trump supports. Her ability to win in November depends entirely on how many people she can convince that Trump will make things even worse. She already has all the voters who think everything is basically fine. She has to appeal to voters who think something is drastically wrong. So far, she’s been completely tone deaf to that perception, so I dunno know how she is going to craft a message to appeal to those people other than “Trump is psychologically unstable, and unfit to govern.”
So we are going to have Corrupt Hillary vs. Crazy Donald.
Anyway, here is the article. Interesting stuff about the brain, interesting bits about political lying – Grover Cleveland, JFK, and LBJ anecdotes – and the appeal of myth to voters as shorthand for facts.
http://billmoyers.com/story/voting-with-their-stone-age-brains/
ZooeyModeratorI suspect that Trump’s team told him he had something to lose, and nothing to win in that debate. If Sanders outperforms him, he takes a blow. If he hits Bernie hard, he is potentially angering Sanders supporters, many of whom are potentially willing to cast a ballot for him in November.
ZooeyModeratorWhat–the–hey, well…this is quite unexpected! Thank you everyone. You really shouldn’t have by which I mean–YES–you ABSOLUTELY should have. Man–we sure are gettin’ old. Where does the time go?
Technically I guess it doesn’t really go anywhere and it’s all relative anyway. But my goal over the next several years is to train myself to live outside of TIME. Sure–it’s a bit lofty but it’s that or learn how to juggle chainsaws. My wife will NOT let me bring chainsaws into the house so…
Anyway–thanks all and of course–as always…GO RAMS!!!!!
You know, I was gonna say that I’d prefer to spend the evening with birthday girl Helena Bonham Carter over you, but your humility is just so awe-inspiring, that…
Never mind.
ZooeyModeratorWell, we can’t afford any of those programs because we are richer than Denmark. So forget it.
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