Unofficial Apolyton Predicts

[giblets]

I saw this and immediately agreed and decided I was voting for finally. Go with Jill despite all her shortcomings. If it helps in the future good enough for me.

But then this morning I read another editorial letter in the trib.



So much for that strat. So I glanced down and looked to see who I could thank for the clarification and it was
— Geoffrey Cubbage, Green Party of Chicago

And I'm thinking, that's pretty dumb for someone who supports the Green party to say.
I wonder how many votes that will cost the party. DOH.

Too honest for politics

[Elok]

Not about placating to some who have deep rooted hatred of anything different. Most Trump supporters are more concerned about who uses the bathroom than actual issues.

Leaving aside the rest of the non-self-aware stuff GC posted here, we're talking about things that enrage conservatives. This is one of them: the obnoxious progressive tendency to play dumb and innocent on the culture wars they ****ing started. It's essentially impossible for the conservative, status-quo side of such conflicts to be the aggressors, because most of the time all they want is for stuff to not change. Sometimes they actually try to push stuff backwards, but that's typically only logically possible when they're trying to recover ground they previously lost.

The TG bathroom thing followed immediately after the gay-marriage loss in Obergefell, which itself followed a years-long media blitz to shift public opinion against them. Immediately after Obergefell, major news outlets started floating talk about transgender rights. The resulting scramble to reinforce the gate against attempts to stick a toe in was therefore an understandable tactic, if not very well thought out. They had observed this same enemy maneuver multiple times before, could see it working now, and were attempting to forestall it. This did not prevent people on the Left saying "OMG, why are they freaking out about this now?" And then proceed with precisely the same media blitzkrieg their opponents had seen coming.

I don't get the NYT or anything, but I generally peruse the Atlantic. Something funny I noticed a while back: they were constantly running transgender stories. Constantly. Not Caitlyn Jenner stuff, just a relentless flow of "human interest" rubbish of the "what it's like to be a frownyface trans golf caddy in Iowa" type. Like, you could not visit the Atlantic's site at any time and not see a sympathetic transgender story on the front page. This went on for months, covering every inane theme possible for this demographic that comprises--generous estimate--one American in two hundred. It culminated in a story noting that transgenders were gaining acceptance in America at remarkable speed. That article's tone was one of pleasant surprise, like this came totally out of the blue and was not something they had gone to great lengths to deliberately engineer.

As a non-enlightened used-to-be-called-moderate troglodyte who considers such people deranged, but generally harmless, I was forced to wonder how the people at the Atlantic did not simply choke to death on their own bull****.

[Giancarlo]

2010!

Take a graph from 1970 to today and see the trend being steeply down for decades. We aren't talking short term little blips here but big changes and that is what is pissing people off in small and medium sized towns. They have lost their economic base and their way of life is literally dying and that is why they are upset and willing to try anything. Yet idiots like you still regurgitate garbage about racism because you are to lazy to make an honest evaluation.

Read the ****ing article. Please. It's not even funny anymore. Chicken dinner nothing. You eating chickens loaded with GMOs? Starting to affect your brain pattern.

YOu're the true idiot. Free trade is gonna solve everything? You're just as lazy as Kentonio with your fix-everything prescriptions. Snake oil bull****.

Edit: By the way, it's funny you're even posting here when you just slam the keyboard like an idiot. You take laziness to the next level!

And your **** criticism of the graph I posted shows everything.

Too lazy? Look at the damn mirror for once!

[Giancarlo]

Leaving aside the rest of the non-self-aware stuff GC posted here, we're talking about things that enrage conservatives. This is one of them: the obnoxious progressive tendency to play dumb and innocent on the culture wars they ****ing started. It's essentially impossible for the conservative, status-quo side of such conflicts to be the aggressors, because most of the time all they want is for stuff to not change. Sometimes they actually try to push stuff backwards, but that's typically only logically possible when they're trying to recover ground they previously lost.

They are mostly concerned about social issues. They don't know anything about economics. They also care about guns, to the extent they are standing outside of campaign offices with guns. They are a violent crowd that lacks any real reason, besides from eating into Trump's total bull****. Their primary focus isn't about some economic issue. It's because they are pissed off at seeing queers and brown people getting ahead in this country. They hate to see their prior dominance diminished and challenged. They want to make America "white" again and spark race wars of the past. MAybe if you opened your eyes you would see that.

The TG bathroom thing followed immediately after the gay-marriage loss in Obergefell, which itself followed a years-long media blitz to shift public opinion against them. Immediately after Obergefell, major news outlets started floating talk about transgender rights. The resulting scramble to reinforce the gate against attempts to stick a toe in was therefore an understandable tactic, if not very well thought out. They had observed this same enemy maneuver multiple times before, could see it working now, and were attempting to forestall it. This did not prevent people on the Left saying "OMG, why are they freaking out about this now?" And then proceed with precisely the same media blitzkrieg their opponents had seen coming.

WRong on all counts! DO you even know what happened? Or do you look at LGBT people through your right wing extremist sunglasses? This sounds like the type of crap Fox News would espouse. I'm genderfluid and I've truly seen what they have done. You're the one that lacks awareness entirely.

There was no cultural war. We didn't start any so called "cultural war". A "war" implies they have enough to come at us with, and they don't have ****. They were most definitely aggressors. We were not the aggressors. The fact that you are going to that point to misconstrue and slander our community like that, shows how mind numbingly ignorant you are.

You are so ignorant of the movement and my community. So incredibly ignorant.

[Giancarlo]

Nono. Giancarlo believes that only poor white people are going to be left behind.

Full of crap! These people are not concerned about economics. They are concerned about guns, brown people and queers. And my fear is they'll start shooting.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/armed-donald-trump-supporters_us_580120b7e4b0e8c198a7f139

You think this had **** all to do about jobs?

There are plenty of new jobs being created and many well paying ones. They are upset because their previous dominance is coming under threat. They are upset because they even see a prior republican stronghold like Texas changing rapidly. In eight years, Texas will be a lean democrat state. Don't believe me? Well open your eyes... people said the same about the once reliably republican Virginia. Before 2008, how many times did Virginia go democrat?

They are upset because they can't exercise control over others. This hasn't a damn thing to do with factory jobs.

This. You don't want to give people an incentive not to work, and whatever you set as the 'basic income' will fuel inflation and have the effect of never being quite enough. Many places to rent will deliberately price themselves out of this market, which will raise rents for everyone, including those who are working. The major loser here would be savers.

Oh this incentive to "work" nonsense again. Are you ****ing kidding me?

[Giancarlo]

The leaked speech she did to Goldman Sacks executives really clarifies just how toxic and two faced she is (but we already knew that). Saying she will need to have a "public position and a private position"; meaning she is going to tell the suckers, I mean voters, one thing but make sure she double crosses them and still does what the special interests pay her to do. Yes, most politicians do that and Trump is a turd sandwich but that is not a reason to vote for a liar like Hillary.

Since Bernie got cheated by the DNC (Which is another thing the wikileaks made clear) I will be voting third party and hope there is a plague on both their houses.

Oh here we go... nobody got cheated. Votes are counted by state officials. She just got more votes.

By the way, Bernie himself voted for deregulation. But that's beyond the point. You still don't know what you're talking about.

You still voting for the "What's Aleppo" man? He's about as dumb as you.

[Aeson]

There's some truth to the economic stuff, but I don't think a person becomes a Trump supporter because of economic struggles. They might hold their nose and vote for Trump because they think he's better for the economy than Hillary. But they aren't cheering for him at rallies and spamming comments sections unless there's something else at work. Another big factor is SCOTUS. A lot of the religious right is going to hold their nose and vote Trump simply to get conservative justice(s) on the court. Most of them detest Trump personally.

There does seem to be a significant portion of Trump supporters who are glorying in his misogyny and xenophobia, and that more than anything is what gets them excited. They love that he's not PC, that he says the ugly things they used to be able to say with impunity.

They're even going after women at Fox News (who are conservative on most issues) who dare to not defend Trump's misogyny in the absurd, misogynistic way that the Trump surrogates have been doing. Stuff like that isn't an economic issue. The line between economics and xenophobia might be (ignorantly) blurred because of immigration and globalization. But with women there's no such gray area. It's clearly misogynists, supporting a misogynist, and attacking women for daring to take women's issues seriously rather than behave like misogynists.

[C0ckney]

Yep ... basic income is also a hot discussed topic in both, germany and switzerland.
Actually switzerland even had a plebiscite about it, where it was rejected with a large majority, but only a small voter turnout.

But ultimately, I guess, it will be the best thing for the whole of society, if it can be financed (which is where the disputants are divided, although many think that it can be very well financed, considering that, with basic income, welfare and its whole bureaucratic waterhead (for determining who is eligible for welfare) could be dropped.
A much bigger problem may be, to afterwards fight the flood of economic immigrants, who surely will try to get into the country in order to also get money for doing nothing

i saw the result in switzerland, which rejected it by some margin. i think that's natural at present, because the realities of the coming automation haven't hit most people yet, and there is still this idea that it will just lead to everyone sitting around and smoking pot. but as technology progresses and more people start to seriously look at the question of what is to be done for those whose jobs have been replaced by automation, i think that the idea will gain a lot of traction.

as you say, getting rid of the whole inefficient and often punitive welfare bureaucracies will save a lot of money, and free up people to actually create wealth. many of the arguments against a UBI, especially those centred on 'affordability' (an income redistribution scheme cannot, by definition, be unaffordable; what they mean is politically unacceptable), are very weak, and it won't take a great deal to counter them. i agree that countries will need to set tough rules for eligibility, though, and this may be quite complicated in the EU, for example.

[Aeson]

As we do not yet have a ~infinite source of green energy, and are fast degrading land and water sources around the world ... if we have any hope of being able to continue our modern way of life we need to be sinking carbon into new soil and new forests, setting up water cachment/erosion control, and offsetting as much energy as we can with available labor. Luckily we have tons of labor available.

The obvious solution is we should employ some billions of people in two areas: in soil and biomass regeneration through agroforestry, and making our food supply more energy efficient with intensive (organic and not) high labor input agriculture.

We need to plant about 4 billion hectares of forests rather soon, and stop the cutting of the 3-4 billion hectares of forests we have left. We need to repair watersheds. Otherwise we're ****ed.

[kentonio]

YOu're the true idiot. Free trade is gonna solve everything? You're just as lazy as Kentonio with your fix-everything prescriptions. Snake oil bull****.

Quite a strange accusation, given that I haven't proposed any solution beyond 'maybe you should actually listen to these people and find out what their issues are rather than just say you don't give a **** about them'.

[kentonio]

By the way, Bernie himself voted for deregulation. But that's beyond the point. You still don't know what you're talking about.

Please read what actually happened.

https://thinkprogress.org/the-story-...ba6#.25fudtfgk

[Elok]

To be fair, poor whites are not little suffering martyrs. There's a newish memoir out right now that's been making waves, and I want to read it but it's on a huge waiting list at the library. It's called Hillbilly Elegy, and it describes how its author escaped a crummy white-trash upbringing to build a successful life. Supposedly he blames the decline of working-class White America about fifty-fifty on a loss of economic opportunity and a self-destructive culture. Poor whites are often, yes, kind of gross. They have a multitude of bad habits. I think I've posted before about the questionnaire I took when I signed on with a job agency that mostly hires for an air-conditioning plant. The forty-odd questions were all variants on "how do you characterize your [psychoactive substance] use?" and "under what circumstances is [horribly violent or fraudulent behavior] justified?"

With that said, there are plenty of noxious habits built into lower-class Black culture, and we do not accept it when people say, "Hey, if they can't stop smacking their babymamas and watching the hip-hop vids long enough to get off the food stamps and get a job, we can't help it. It's the culture!" We rightly call that out as bull****. There is no reason why a lower melanin level or lack of ancestry in a traditionally oppressed group should make the unacceptable acceptable.

[Lorizael]

The difficulty with those explanations is that the obnoxious cultural traits of middle class white people somehow don't prevent us from succeeding.

[Elok]

It depends how you define obnoxious. I don't think of having kids by multiple out-of-wedlock partners as middle class. Nor starting fistfights with coworkers. Nor workman's comp fraud. Nor prescription opioid abuse. Atrophied social skills from staring at a smartphone all the time, or taking worthless lib arts degrees, are relatively manageable.

[Aeson]

It's fair to call out self-destructive behavior as a problem. What is problematic is to phrase it in regard to a race.