The Biden Administration

[Z Buck McFate]

Any conservative reading this would probably just say you've been brainwashed by Democrat propaganda, ignoring the fact that you don't live in the U.S.

And the more someone says this as a complusive knee-jerk dismissal, without being able to delve further into detail or specifics, the more they inadvertently confirm they don't actually know how to separate propaganda from truth and just compulsively assume propaganda is whatever contradicts what's convenient to them personally.

Also: yeah.

 

[ceecee]

Cuba protests: Cubans take to streets in rare demonstrations over lack of freedoms and worsening economy - CNN

As if anyone is going to believe this is some organic uprising given US interference history with this country. The US media Cold War propaganda machine is going to be running full blast.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Cuba protests: Cubans take to streets in rare demonstrations over lack of freedoms and worsening economy - CNN

As if anyone is going to believe this is some organic uprising given US interference history with this country. The US media Cold War propaganda machine is going to be running full blast.

As I said I went through anti-communist revolution myself. Therefore there is almost certainly some "helping" from the outside, but most people in this are probably genuine. People in US are protesting over election shenanigans and poverty. While in Cuba they don't even have elections as far as I know, plus there is even less resources for many. Therefore this really shouldn't be seen strictly as some kind of conspiracy.


However this opens another front, if the regime indeed falls what are the odds that the large diaspora in Florida will remain right leaning. Since that would evidently change a few things in talking points.

 

[ceecee]

As I said I went through anti-communist revolution myself. Therefore there is almost certainly some "helping" from the outside, but most people in this are probably genuine. People in US are protesting over election shenanigans and poverty. While in Cuba they don't even have elections as far as I know, plus there is even less resources for many. Therefore this really shouldn't be seen strictly as some kind of conspiracy.


However this opens another front, if the regime indeed falls what are the odds that the large diaspora in Florida will remain right leaning. Since that would evidently change a few things in talking points.

Oh I don't think it's a conspiracy. I'm simply going by the historical aspect and the huge amount of fuckery committed by the US in the region.

And just to clarify: I could not be more supportive of the Cuban people protesting. At all. But the historically sinister involvement of the US can almost guarantee any regime change will not benefit the Cuban people and could be worse than the current one. All I'm saying is people should consider reading a history book before mindlessly running around screaming about free Cuba draped in an American flag.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Oh I don't think it's a conspiracy. I'm simply going by the historical aspect and the huge amount of fuckery committed by the US in the region.

And just to clarify: I could not be more supportive of the Cuban people protesting. At all. But the historically sinister involvement of the US can almost guarantee any regime change will not benefit the Cuban people and could be worse than the current one. All I'm saying is people should consider reading a history book before mindlessly running around screaming about free Cuba draped in an American flag.

Perhaps, but I think you should take it one problem at the time.
For me this is like blowing up the filibuster, this simply has to happen before anything can get done. Therefore I am not particularly bothered if this is genuine or "organized". Especially since I know that most of the protesters are probably for real. If anything diaspora in US should kinda make sure that the aftermath isn't too gross or dysfunctional. Down to this day I have neighboring countries that are more or less like Cuba and the end of the cold war didn't really change them. Plus good chunk of local people still wants to run away from those places. Therefore if the island regime crashes I fail to see the problem and if there are problems later we should deal with that in the aftermath of the crash. But if the circumstances are good for the crash it should crash. Since that probably only reduces the bloodshed of the crash (what is probably the only way how to remove the regime).

 

[Kephalos]

I hope that thirty years from now they will say: "Only Nixon could go to China, but only Biden could go to Havanna."

The economic embargo to Cuba is especially damaging because, thinking about it in terms of the relative size of the US and Cuban economies and the extremely low transportation costs the Cuban economy naturally is a part of the US economy: it's like suddenly they decided to have an economic embargo on Rhode Island or even Florida itself.

I remember a history professor of mine who had fled Chile after the 1973 coup and settled in Mexico, that in Cuba people have excellent healthcare, what they lack is breakfast, dinner, and supper. You see that sort of thing in other former countries, that under communism some economic activity, the priorities of the state, like defense and goods that can be sold for hard cash abroad, actually do well while everything else is neglected.

 

[Totenkindly]

The firing of Andrew Saul marks a new day for Social Security - Los Angeles Times

While the writer has an obvious opinion here, from my vantage point of more than a decade inside, it seems to be a pretty fair description of the issues. And we had been joking over the weekend about the ex-commish trying to continue working as an act of defiance Monday morning -- like, if your credentials are revoked, you can't even get online. I had mentioned he seemed to not know much about tech, and this is just playing into that, all indications say he did try to keep working but obviously had lost all system access and had an invalid PIV card by that point.

I've worked on some of these projects. (For example, last year we were trying to validate what happened if we ran a new flag through the back-end regarding the new intermediate diary change mentioned in the article... we spent some months on it, due to having to decipher the process in that software environment and whether it included all the standard production back-end jobs that would process the flag, since it wasn't working as expected. This was then suddenly dropped when Biden was inaugurated.) There are other "commissioner" priority projects that I am now wondering the status of.

THe article mentions Colvin, who basically was commissioner in the mid 2010's but could only officially be "acting commissioner" when the prior commissioner left, yet Congress refused to approve her. This was a damn shame. I am pretty jaded over execs and often find myself indifferent to leadership, but I spent a few hours around Colvin one afternoon late in her term and I was just blown away. She was warm, engaging, people-smart, inspirational. I couldn't maintain my indifference in the face of that and her passion for the agency mission. We had another acting comm after that, who was bumped for Saul, and she knew the business as well.

Saul really scanned as not knowing anything about SS and was just another typical exec, detached from the work, detached from the employee base, and indifferent to employee concerns. The article mentions telework -- yes, that's what happened. While telework was normally set at the division level in terms of how many days per week and specific policies, his push to eradicate it despite countless meetings and discussions about the benefits of even limited telework (note that at best I think overall the agency just had two days a week) was inflexible. Our area saved ours by compromising down to one day but it wasn't even sure how long that would last. Everyone had two weeks' notice when the announcement came out. Just two weeks. That means parents had to suddenly figure out new child care plans. Also, people had recently bought houses outside of the metro area (one horror story involved someone who bought a house an hour away), only to now be forced to drive to work 5 days a week. Union power in recent years has been pretty low-ebb at best and they didn't have much of a presence left -- they couldn't do anything about the contract, and it was just a "take it or leave it" scenario. There was no leverage to change anything.

Same thing about fraud. Certain types of fraud are more likely to occur than others. Disability is also pretty stringent, even my experience with my kid and my friends trying to get on is that it's difficult to be approved. I remember the hubbub too when he shifted disability appeal oversight.

It really seemed to be the hallmark of the last administration that 45 would bring in leaders either directly opposed to the business functioning of a particular agency and/or who held no knowledge of the business functioning, seemingly for the purpose of radically changing what it did or destroying it. It was a real burden on any knowledgeable employee base, stuck with trying to maintain professionalism and competence while being undermined. I would love to see the retirement numbers over those four years in government agencies. I know it seemed like a lot of people just left, but I'm wondering what the numbers would show.

Policies aside, it feels more stable under 46.

 

[Stigmata]

Big infrastructure bill in peril as GOP threatens filibuster

Democrats in Congress get played every single time. What part of Mitch McConnell's threat to block the entire Biden administration agenda, did you guys not understand?

This whole bipartisan infrastructure bill is a farce delay tactic to make Dems look weak and unable to get things accomplished, as per usual, before the midterms.

Any attempt to negotiate is really just progressive conceding more and more to corporate Democrats and Republicans, to which Republicans will filibuster anyway -- you've got the opening with the reconciliation process; the time to go big and pass meaningful legislation is now, or else you'll be all but clearing the path for Republicans to meaningful gains in Congress (I kind of resent the way the onus is always on Dems to get things done, or else they'll be handing control to the party who tells you they don't plan on passing legislation that would improve the lives of their voters, yet that just seems to be the way the gameboard is set. So many items such as legalization of marijuana, the For The People Act, the Pro Act, are all deeply popular pieces of legislation to voters on both sides of the aisle, yet somehow Republicans are never held accountable for their part in keeping these bills from passing -- it's completely surreal how this happens on such a wide scale)

 

[Z Buck McFate]

So much that^. It's just so exhausting.

 

[Stigmata]

Mitch McConnell tells Democrats not to 'play Russian roulette with the economy' as the GOP plays Russian roulette with the economy

Let it never be said Mitch is not a crafty, albeit morally bankrupt and corrupt, individual.

TINFOIL HAT TIME!

I think this is all a coordinated conspiracy by Corporate interests/Republicans/Centrist Dems to kill the 3.5T infrastructure bill by forcing progressives to cave to moderate Democrats on reconciliation provisions by way of forcing them to raise the debt ceiling through the reconciliation process. The media will put the onus on progressives to "be reasonable" and "not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good", while effectively gutting things in the bill like universal pre-K, permanent monthly child income tax credit payments, and lowered perscription drug prices for medicare/medicaid recipients (shout to Big Pharma!).

Corporations want the bipartisan infrastructure (corporate handout bill) bill passed, and progressives didn't take the bait for "well, let's pass this one now and we can pass the 3.5T infrastructure bill later!" con, and now this is their desperate attempt to kill it by threatening to let America default on its debts, therefore all but killing the American (and by proxy the Worlds) economy.

We're witnessing the beginning of the end (actually we're probably somewhere closer to the middle of the end), folks. Why should the World continue to invest in us by having the Dollar as effectively the world's economy when there is absolutely no political continuity between the two major political bodies of this country? We're proving more and more to be a toxic asset. If we're so divided as a nation that our politicians can't even agree on a bipartisan measure to prevent the country from falling into an economic tailspin, that can't be good optics to anyone paying attention abroad to the long-term health of our political system.

 

[Biggest nuggets]

I don't think they'll do it, but I would definitely do it. It's time the Dems got a taste of their own medicine. I want at least 1 Special Prosecutor hounding him on day 1 because that's what the Dems did to Trump.
The Biden Resistance Movement has begun and we will oppose any legislation he proposes because that's how you guys acted. I'd also indefinitely suspend all SCOTUS appointments until after the 2024 election, because it's fun.

Yeah well we dems apposed Trump cause he’s a narcissist d1ckweed, and also it’s not like we want actually want Biden I for one am tired of rich old white men being the head of state

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Yeah well we dems apposed Trump cause he’s a narcissist d1ckweed, and also it’s not like we want actually want Biden I for one am tired of rich old white men being the head of state

Well, lots of dems wanted to restore the norms and go back to brunch. They thought it could all be fixed by throwing the bad man out (a movie I'd seen before and wasn't that great then). I expect they are having difficulties upon finding brunch is still canceled, and that you can't put the genie back in the bottle. I hate to say I told you so, but I don't actually hate to say I told you so. Maybe it's better in this scenario to have some fight in you rather than a dewy eyed naive wish about how we all need to come together as a nation? Just a thought.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I could've told y'all the dems would lose this november if they kept up the trump talk. As far as the never trumpers and independents are concerned, trump is no longer a threat (even if he still is), and it was pretty predictable they'd run back to standard issue gop candidates if all the dems could campaign on was "but at least we're not trump". democratic messaging and branding has been lazy and scattershot of late. you get what you paid for.

on the plus, approximately 150 libertarian party candidates elected to various offices across the nation, though i guess that wasn't newsworthy. good to see the duopoly take a blow like that, and no surprise hardly any major news outlets covered this.

 

[ceecee]

I could've told y'all the dems would lose this november if they kept up the trump talk. As far as the never trumpers and independents are concerned, trump is no longer a threat (even if he still is), and it was pretty predictable they'd run back to standard issue gop candidates if all the dems could campaign on was "but at least we're not trump". democratic messaging and branding has been lazy and scattershot of late. you get what you paid for.

on the plus, approximately 150 libertarian party candidates elected to various offices across the nation, though i guess that wasn't newsworthy. good to see the duopoly take a blow like that, and no surprise hardly any major news outlets covered this.

They're not talking about the SoDems elected either. But none of this messaging is difficult.

Pass the stuff that has broad (70% and above) support
Then go talk about it and not about the GOP or Trump or any of their bullshit lies and psychopaths.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

They're not talking about the SoDems elected either. But none of this messaging is difficult.

Pass the stuff that has broad (70% and above) support
Then go talk about it and not about the GOP or Trump or any of their bullshit lies and psychopaths.

Where was that? All I'm seeing is about Buffalo. Disappointing, but I didn't have my hopes up too much. I remember when POS Lieberman swept to reelection in Connecticut as an independent.

 

[ceecee]

Where was that? All I'm seeing is about Buffalo. Disappointing, but I didn't have my hopes up too much. I remember when POS Lieberman swept to reelection in Connecticut as an independent.

Richie Floyd wins in St. Pete City Council District 8 race | Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

Floyd led a grassroots campaign, relying on small donations and volunteer power.

www.cltampa.com

But it's somewhere in the 70% range, I will find more later.

 

[ceecee]

DSA election results 2021

docs.google.com

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

DSA election results 2021

docs.google.com

Hey, that's more that won than lost. Thanks for the morale boost. I needed it.

The stories that I've been seeing have called it "defeat after defeat for progressives and socialists." It's almost like the media megacorporations exaggerate or spin things in favor of a certain ideology, but that would make me sound like a raving lunatic. If I were to engage in crazy and conspiratorial thinking, I would say that they don't want people knowing that candidates like that can actually win, so that people feel compelled to support "electable" moderates.

 

[ceecee]

Hey, that's more that won than lost. Thanks for the morale boost. I needed it.

The stories that I've been seeing have called it "defeat after defeat for progressives and socialists." It's almost like the media megacorporations exaggerate or spin things in favor of a certain ideology, but that would make me sound like a raving lunatic. If I were to engage in crazy and conspiratorial thinking, I would say that they don't want people knowing that candidates like that can actually win.

Yeah I don't let any cooperate media on my TL. I do follow the national DSA - they're good about keeping things updated on Twitter.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Hey, that's more that won than lost. Thanks for the morale boost. I needed it.

The stories that I've been seeing have called it "defeat after defeat for progressives and socialists." It's almost like the media megacorporations exaggerate or spin things in favor of a certain ideology, but that would make me sound like a raving lunatic. If I were to engage in crazy and conspiratorial thinking, I would say that they don't want people knowing that candidates like that can actually win, so that people feel compelled to support "electable" moderates.

news networks have been spinning narratives for decades. Acknowledging this is a thing that happens doesn't make you a member of the Q crowd. Having either party portrayed as the underdog returning from the dead to absolutely pummel the opposition (last time around it was the dems, now it happens to be the GOP) is a popular and recurring news narrative that keeps people hooked to their Foxes and MSNBCs, whether to revel in a sense of despair or to take delight in the gloating from the winning party.

Acknowledging the wins by DSA and third party candidates would undermine that narrative, so it's no surprise they'd downplay or ignore said wins entirely. The media's overall handling of elections suggests they're anything but the vast left wing propoganda agency that the right wing conspiracy theorists would have us believe. The real conspiracy is that they'll spin anything a certain way if it means more ad dollar revenue and happy shareholders.