Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by mentalgongfu2 » Sat Feb 08, 2020 10:17 am
by Grizzly » Sun Feb 09, 2020 10:33 am
by Grizzly » Mon Feb 10, 2020 4:30 am
by RocketMan » Mon Feb 10, 2020 5:27 am
Grizzly » Mon Feb 10, 2020 11:30 am wrote:Goddess Queen of Chaos Tulsi strikes again.
https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1226566726575415298
by JackRiddler » Mon Feb 10, 2020 3:55 pm
RocketMan » Mon Feb 10, 2020 4:27 am wrote:Man I'm in LOOOVE. Her workout videos are pretty butch for me, but I'll overlook them...
In other news, did you know that Buttigieg's father was a foremost scholar and translator of ANTONIO FUCKING GRAMSCI, and a famous Marxist? Jesus Fucking Christ. Or maybe I heard it here first?
by RocketMan » Tue Feb 11, 2020 6:31 am
JackRiddler » Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:55 pm wrote:RocketMan » Mon Feb 10, 2020 4:27 am wrote:Man I'm in LOOOVE. Her workout videos are pretty butch for me, but I'll overlook them...
Fuck no, couldn't keep up with those if I was a year younger than her. These will be huge advantages for her if she has any kind of breakthrough tomorrow.In other news, did you know that Buttigieg's father was a foremost scholar and translator of ANTONIO FUCKING GRAMSCI, and a famous Marxist? Jesus Fucking Christ. Or maybe I heard it here first?
Probably heard it here first. Like, back in March, when -- ooh, I forgot this, good call! -- I gave Booty Kick top odds to displace the other would-be ABBs:
viewtopic.php?p=671600#p671600
.
by liminalOyster » Tue Feb 11, 2020 9:39 pm
JackRiddler » Mon Feb 10, 2020 3:55 pm wrote: ooh, I forgot this, good call! -- I gave Booty Kick top odds to displace the other would-be ABBs:
viewtopic.php?p=671600#p671600
.
by 8bitagent » Wed Feb 12, 2020 6:01 am
by Elvis » Fri Feb 14, 2020 12:04 am
by RocketMan » Fri Feb 14, 2020 5:55 am
by Harvey » Sat Feb 15, 2020 1:57 pm
by Belligerent Savant » Sat Feb 22, 2020 3:59 pm
Michael Bloomberg: The Democrat’s Billionaire Strawman
Does the ex-NYC Mayor serve an important function for the other Democratic hopefuls?
The latest Democratic Primary debate was a cringe-worthy affair, even more than US political “debates” usually are, it left you with one burning question – Why is Michael Bloomberg in this race?
As all the Democratic candidates rush to outdo each other in terms of identity politics, wokeness and – for want of a better word – “leftist” credentials…why has a billionaire, highly unpopular former mayor thrown his hat into the ring? He must have know he was going to be a massive target last night.
And, indeed, he was.
They all took shots. Obviously Bernie Sanders was going to strike back after Bloomberg criticised him throughout the build-up to the debate. But Warren, Buttigieg and even Biden chimed in, too.
Bloomberg was attacked on racism and sexism and his tax returns. It became a feeding frenzy, with both the liberal mainstream media and the alternate media celebrating the ritual slaughter as if Bloomberg’s blood was going to bring the sun back and guarantee a good harvest.
The Guardian reported that Bloomberg was “roundly attacked by rivals in fiercest Democratic debate so far”. CNN compared him to Donald Trump (the worst rebuke in their lexicon). MSNBC declared him “unprepared and unequipped”.
...
So was this a real debate? Is putting Michael Bloomberg in the stocks for an evening a real political discussion? Was there any genuine progress of rational argument and philosophical debate last night?
I didn’t see any. I saw a live action puppet show.
Accepting the surface level narrative of this campaign is naive in the extreme. Remember how contrived politics is – most especially American politics. Remember that the DNC fixed the primaries last time around, and fed the debate questions to Clinton early.
There’s no reason to think that kind of manipulation isn’t still going on. We should assume it is as a baseline.
In fact, we’ve seen signs of it already. They went out of their way to exclude Tulsi Gabbard, and then changed the rules at the last minute to include Bloomberg. Why did they do that?
Because the DNC want a billionaire with accusations of sexual harassment and tax avoidance to run against Trump? Of course not.
No, what happened on that stage was, fittingly enough, a piece of theatre. Bloomberg is cast as the villain, and we all boo and hiss as he ties a pretty damsel to the railway lines, and then cheer when Uncle Joe and Aunt Liz turn up in the wokemobile, bonk him on the nose, and save the day.
Bloomberg boosts everyone else on the poll, he is “exactly the foil they need”. Like everything else in the media, it’s about narrative management.
Firstly, his presence counter-balances the Sanders storyline.
Bernie Sanders isn’t going to change anything, he’s demonstrated with his foreign policy speeches that he’s too timid to truly challenge establishment orthodoxy (that’s why people like Jonathan Freedland prefer him to Corbyn). But he’s at least slightly genuine. Slightly.
Sanders is winning this race, but more importantly he’s controlling the narrative – elevating dangerous ideas in the public mind, ideas that might live on in the minds and speeches of braver, more honest politicians. All this off the back of casting himself as a leftist outsider up against the right of the Democratic party. Bloomberg changes that conversation by putting another extreme on the right side.
Now Biden, Buttigieg and Warren are the sensible candidates in the middle, far more “leftist” than mean old Mike, but far more “electable” than crazy commie Bernie. The rational compromise.
(Sidenote – I haven’t totally ruled out that the DNC end up letting Sanders win the nomination – I think the endgame here might be to have Sanders run against Trump, get his ass kicked, and declare that “Americans don’t want socialism” and all leftists are “unelectable”. Here in the UK we call that “being Corbyned”).
Secondly, there’s the total undermining of the idea of “debate”, which is becoming more childish every cycle. Bloomberg’s presence on that stage guaranteed no real issues were ever discussed. Instead we had supposedly adult politicians exchanging cheap jibes and “sick burns” in the hopes of pleasing their cheerleaders on twitter. Reality was barely touched upon, and that’s just the way they like it.
Politics is becoming just Big Brother or Love Island only with better suits and bigger budgets. No thought, no rational argument, just pick a team, tweet a hashtag, cheer your side. Last night was as real as a WWE bout, and couldn’t have been more obviously stage-managed if Mike Bloomberg had entered to the sound of breaking glass and Lester Holt declaring “By gawd, that’s Bloomberg’s music!”
Bloomberg has already benefited the field simply by providing a distraction from the Iowa chaos. As an even richer member of the “elite” than the rest of the ballot he acts as an anger heat-sink, with many so happy to see the corrupt billionaire taken down a peg they don’t realise they’re cheering for Joe Biden, or Liz Warren or Pete Buttigieg or even that other brunette whose name no one remembers.
Further, with his frequent attacks on Sanders he can torpedo the favourite (and only even vaguely genuine threat) by using smear tactics, whilst the real DNC picks keep their hands clean (they may even halfheartedly defend Bernie, acting outraged whilst reaping the benefits).
Lastly, there’s the game of identity politics. A lot of political discourse these days is about billionaires, some constantly attack them, others defend them as heroes of aspiration, but both these sides individualize inequality. Turning it into the malign result of the exceptionally self-interested, rather than the natural by-product of system designed to draw all the profits to the top. Billionaires are just the heads of the hydra, cut one off and two more will take its place.
Discussing the personal wealth of Person A or the tax of Person B isn’t the real issue, and letting it become so leaves you open to soft appeasement. If the problem is just “billionaires”, rather than the system, then the establishment can cut a disposable member of the club off at the knees, feed him to the braying mob, and pretend we’ve made some strides toward progress.
Which is actually a pretty fair description of what happened last night.
Whatever the final result of the race, Bloomberg won’t win, and his entry to the race has already proved a shot in the arm to establishment candidates right across the DNC board. It’s hard not to see that as a contrivance.
And whilst kicking someone like Bloomberg while he’s down might feel good, in this case it’s singing harmonies with the mainstream chorus. And that’s never a good idea.
Charlotte Russe
The Nevada Debate is the most recent episode of the 2020 reality TV political version of “Survivor.” In Wednesday’s latest episode there were five original survivors remaining: CIA Pete, Opportunist Liz, Half-dead Biden, Insipid Klobo, and the Old FDR Democrat Bernie. The new contender to land on the tenuous DNC island is arrogant Mini Mike a women hating racist willing to dispose of a mere $2 billion to stop his real rival Sanders.
Five lackluster candidates employing their best Machiavellian skills to eliminate Bernie. The DNC’s smorgasbord of pitfalls failed miserably so far. They can’t seem to crush Bernie. The Young and minorities are smitten with Sanders, and he’s even attracting a number of struggling baby boomers. In Tacoma 17,000 stood for hours in a jammed-packed stadium cheering Bernie on. You would never know it happened, inasmuch, as the mainstream media news only shows enthusiastic Trump rallies–go figure.
The DNC and wealthy corporate donors are getting increasingly more desperate–billionaire Bloomberg and the four remaining corporate flunkies (Warren, Buttigieg, Biden and Klobuchar) will stay in the running no matter what to cause a contested convention where Clinton/Obama Superdelegates can be deployed.
Today on “Morning Joe” you can smell the desperation emitting from a panel of spooks. The prospect of a Bernie candidacy is terrifying. David Ignatius a longtime security state asset was even hinting of a contested convention where the DNC would choose their “own” nominee –perhaps, a general. Oh, how nice to know the 2020 election will turn into a full-blown military junta.
In any event, the intelligence agencies haven’t given up on Russiagate and are laying the groundwork to
say the election results are tainted by Putin and his squad of Russian bots. So here we go again…..No matter who comes out the victor in 2020 it’ll be another four years of insane Russophobic narratives proving that it’s always the military/security/surveillance corporate state who wins every presidential election…….Paul Davidson
The article seems right-on to me in terms of the effect of the Bloomberg candidacy, as seen in the particular instance of the ‘debate.’ But to go from effect to cause and say it was all contrived to produce this exact effect needs a few more pieces to be added.
The article suggests that Bloomberg is deliberately putting his half billion (and more to come, presumably) in the ring to take the focus off the lack of policy of the rest. He is their ‘foil,’ it says. The article suggests that the DNC changed the rules specifically to that end, to provide a foil for the others.
That is conjecture. There is no proof of that. Bloomberg came in as Biden sunk. He is the replacement for Biden. The logic of saying that Bloomberg is a chosen foil would therefore reach back to point to Biden also being a chosen foil, with one foil being replaced by the next as it got blunted in the fight. I don’t think this is true and I don’t think things work quite like that.
Biden was not a foil. The DNC wanted him to win. My take on the Bloomberg candidacy is that Bloomberg seriously wanted to win the candidacy and seriously thought he could do so. The DNC changed the rules to let him run for two reasons: Because they thought he had a chance and because his presence would in any case reinforce the conservative narrative, no matter who ended up winning. It was an opportunistic move on their part, taking advantage of events unfolding, but not a conspiracy of a type with the specific objective outlined in the article.
The ruling class is not as smart as we sometimes give it credit for, and that includes the DNC. Sometimes good fortune falls into their laps despite merit or forethought.
Seamus Padraig
That is conjecture.
I’m sure Kit would concede that point. He wasn’t writing a news article, after all; he was writing an op-ed piece, so he’s allowed to do a little speculating from time to time. But I think his main argument was that it was not outside the realm of possibility, given all the other weird things the Dems have been doing to rig their primaries the last few years now. I think he has a point, personally.Rhys Jaggar
Well, not having watched any of the debates, I will not comment on the minutiae, but really:
1. If ordinary people want change, they have to be implacable in saying ‘This simply will not do!’ when served up fifth rate stage managed puppetry yet again. The language for expressing ‘this simply will not do’ may have to be pretty in-your-face and profane if politeness yields more of the same.
2. People have to start switching off the MSM in their droves. CNN, MSNBC etc etc need to see their ad revenues drop by 75%: then they will HAVE to change. As long as people keep switching on, nothing will change.
3. People need to get their information and news from new sources and be brutal in dropping those sources too if they get bought by the Establishment.
If Americans want people to represent them, they have to have zero tolerance for those who do not.
NO donations, no subsidising MSM ad revenues, no buying newspapers. And no visiting Facebook, Twitter and Google to be brainwashed either.
by JackRiddler » Thu Feb 27, 2020 3:48 pm
No one less than William Ayers wrote:
Wake up, MAYOR PETE:
I just finished reading Professor Joseph A. Buttigieg’s monumental biography of Antonio Gramsci, author of the dazzling Prison Notebooks, one of the most original and extraordinarily humanistic Marxist thinkers of his time, and head of the Italian Communist Party in the early Twentieth Century. Gramsci died in a Mussolini prison in 1937. Buttigieg’s translations and scholarly work on Gramsci have been praised by Edward Said, Terry Eagleton, Frederic Jameson, Gayatri Spivak, and a host of other Left intellectuals. The more frantic Mayor Pete’s red-baiting of Bernie becomes, the more I think of the life’s work of his late father Joseph, the former William R. Kenan Jr. Professor English at the University of Notre Dame, and how disappointed he would be. Mayor Pete is driving the train way beyond the “Unelectable Myth” deep into the territory of McCarthyite smears. Wake up, Mayor Pete!
by Iamwhomiam » Tue Mar 03, 2020 9:54 pm
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