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[Karnewarrior]

...Guy was moving his thumb and fidgeting while someone else was talking.

Guess that makes you a sociopath now?

[Arx]

...Guy was moving his thumb and fidgeting while someone else was talking.

Guess that makes you a sociopath now?

Mask your stress: you're a sociopath, or not taking things seriously.
Incompletely mask your stress: OH NO HE HAS A TIC HE MUST BE A MURDERER
Fail to mask your stress: You're a nervous wreck, not cut out for politics.

If people decide they want to label someone as something, they'll do it. Even if it makes them hateful jerks.

(bonus round: what personality type do you think would best appear relaxed and natural under a high-pressure situation?)

[delphonso]

It's been fun, as an outsider, to watch the focus shift from candidate to candidate and watch the hatred boil up for each one as people look for reasons to get rid of them.

Honestly, I think this is what we all expected when it was announced there were over 20 candidates to begin with.

[Loud Whispers]

...Guy was moving his thumb and fidgeting while someone else was talking.

Guess that makes you a sociopath now?

This post was brought to you by the thumb gang

Thumb gang for 2024

If you don't get the finger you don't get the point

[sluissa]

...Guy was moving his thumb and fidgeting while someone else was talking.

Guess that makes you a sociopath now?

Mask your stress: you're a sociopath, or not taking things seriously.
Incompletely mask your stress: OH NO HE HAS A TIC HE MUST BE A MURDERER
Fail to mask your stress: You're a nervous wreck, not cut out for politics.

If people decide they want to label someone as something, they'll do it. Even if it makes them hateful jerks.

(bonus round: what personality type do you think would best appear relaxed and natural under a high-pressure situation?)

This, so much.

It's been fun, as an outsider, to watch the focus shift from candidate to candidate and watch the hatred boil up for each one as people look for reasons to get rid of them.

Honestly, I think this is what we all expected when it was announced there were over 20 candidates to begin with.

It's been interesting to watch the polls as well. The candidate of the week gets a surge that puts them on par with Biden, and two weeks later they're forgotten about as someone else surges ahead.

The most frustrating part is watching a bunch of people who really only have minor differences in what they want to do as President turn on each other so fiercely. Not to mention the people who are almost identical in policy (I'm thinking Warren and Sanders as the standouts on this one) refusing to let either side take the torch of that particular message and perhaps work together. A Warren/Sanders ticket of some sort could be a massive upset to the current standings. Buttigieg could be a good moderate VP pick for someone like Biden. Likewise Yang as a VP pick for someone could be interesting. Yang pushes hard on the freedom dividend stuff. And while that's all good, it kind of leaves him lacking in his talking points about other areas of the Presidency. I've barely heard him talk about foreign policy except to state the obvious about how Trump is screwing it up, for example. But a VP can usually run a pet project semi-behind the scenes and a UBI project could be a good one for that.

Take a look at the space initiatives with Pence, for one. Pence takes care of a lot of the messy negotiation and groundwork and Trump really only steps in to take credit when there's something big to announce. And except when Trump decides to toot his own horn about things, Pence more or less is able to just keep on working. It's not big in the news, so politicians are less apt to fight him on it over partisan reasons. Same thing happened with Clinton and Gore. While Clinton took the public shots, and dealt with the lead up and conclusion of his impeachment, Gore was able to work somewhat quietly on environmental and technology initiatives.

Klobuchar as a VP could work, but I don't know much about what she wants to do, she tends to just stand firmly on the "I'm a midwest moderate" platform and there's more likable candidates if someone just wants a woman on their ticket. That said, she's also pretty inoffensive as well without coming off as being a puppet.

In any case, I like that things are narrowing down, but someone needs to break this shifting stalemate among the top 3-4. I imagine it'll probably happen sometime after the primaries start, but it's a bad look to have the continuous front runner look so weak and comparable to the flavor of the week candidates that end up matching him off of temporary media presence alone.

[Reelya]

If the democrats truly believed that - why did they raise his military budget? Seems like gross negligence.

It's a rock and a hard place. If they withhold military spending then they get accused of treason / disloyalty / "in league with our enemies" etc.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's a mistake to believe the Democrats are actually against raising the military budget constantly - they're not. Corporate Dems either sit the budget or want to raise it as well, depending on defense contractor desires at the time. Only the left-wing of the party wants to consistently freeze or reduce military spending.

[Frumple]

If the democrats truly believed that - why did they raise his military budget? Seems like gross negligence.

It's a rock and a hard place. If they withhold military spending then they get accused of treason / disloyalty / "in league with our enemies" etc.

There's also stuff like this, for what it's worth. How that got in a defense spending bill I'm not quite sure, but I guess you take what you can get. Also makes me kinda' curious as to what the hell else is in those things. Not enough to actually dig through them to find out, but it makes you idly wonder.

[wierd]

To me, if injecting riders to this degree is "Normal activity" in government, it goes a long way to explaining how we got where we are today.

"Oh, that bill that gives orphans shoes?  Yeah-- We put a bunch of riders in it, because nobody would deny orphans shoes.  That's where we got our legal framework for mandatory colonoscopes for every citizen enacted."

[Frumple]

*shrugs* I mean, the "degree" isn't that large? It's 200 acres of land in friggin' montana (which is basically nothing, it's like one third of a single square mile) plus some welfare et al opportunities for a few thousand people, near as I could tell from skimming over it. As US gov degrees go, that's probably less impact than incorporating (or dissolving) a sorta' small town or somethin'.

[wierd]

I was meaning more "Rider as sole means of getting accomplished" in general.


It took how long for this simple thing to happen?  And the way it happened was to sneak it through a military spending bill as a rider?


This SHOULD have been a no-brainer single issue legislation by itself, and should not have needed to ride on anything, but no-- because riders on "very high profile things that nobody would DARE try to stop!" are the vehicle of choice for ANYTHING that you or your party want to get passed that the other does not want to have pass (which these days is FUCKING EVERYTHING), you end up with shoes for orphans being the vehicle for mandatory colonoscopes.

[wierd]

The long-term solution is actually quite easy--

Pass legislation that increases median income to a level that is appropriate to the real valuation of the market and its products.  (there are a number of ways this could be done, ranging from simple wage restriction laws that force companies to stop "incentivizing" C*Os, and put that money into worker wages instead-- to simply dumping printed money into the economy by instituting a universal income policy, and numerous various options in between.  The end is the same in all circumstances though, increased deflation (which has been demonstrated to be necessary), and improved market liquidity, at the expense of immediate profitability.)

Getting the congress critters to actually *DO* something like that though, means getting them to stop being drug addled junkies addicted to the "donations" of their likewise "Short term profits" addicted donors.  (Since that legislation is essentially putting their donors into rehab.)

[wierd]

If the amount of universal supplimental income is derived from the difference between actual market value, and the individual recipient's household income, then the amount of spending power will be bandaged at the cost of increased govt debt. (to the financial reserve).

This is exactly the scenario they paint.  The issue is that this will result in explosive alteration of the status quo in the market, resulting in mass asset value changes. 


The prognosis is a bit like looking at drug rehab;  On the one hand, you REALLY DO need to get off the heroin.  On the other, going off the heroin is very painful, results in a raft of debilitating conditions in the short term, and can be life threatening.


basically, the banking system, and the economy in general, is addicted to the equivalent of heroin, and needs an intervention.  Failure to provide the intervention will result in the patient's death from overdose.  Providing the intervention will put the patient in a great deal of distress.   

To make matters worse, the people providing the "health care" (ahem), are the patient's drug dealers.  (And the PATIENT wants the DRUGS, and thinks they are "Just fine!" and "FEEL GREAT!")

[scriver]

To note, the interest rates in Europe are generally running negative. I'll let you imagine what that means come next recession.

Please extrapolate, it's too early for economics and my knowledge about interest rates is limited to "Germany caused the Greece crash"

[Max™]

Negative interest rates means it is better to put money under your mattress rather than pay a bank to hold it.