***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[frink85]

 

[RustyShackleford]

 

[whywesteppin]

^ thanks for posting. definitely worth the watch.

don't know why they had to show that Bernie clip. leave the man alone lol. but more than anything, that 30 second clip captured exactly why Bernie didn't make it further.

we can bs all day about dws or the superdelegates or whatever, but that moment alone explains it all.

i also like the perspective given on obama and Trump. that Obama was simply a great politician. his victory was a step forward but not an end to racism.

and this idea that Trump needed Obama to come before him -- that was very powerful as well. history will definitely one day converge on that hypothesis.

 

[moe fab]

The people lost to the government

 

[RustyShackleford]

I literally unplugged my headphones and yelled **** you at the screen when Bernie made that "Politically Correct" comment.

He still doesn't get it, or he was trying to double talk and played himself. Then no one backed his play

I still got love for the dude. But someone need to sit his *** down and talk to him.

------I think Coates made an interesting point about by the black community supporting Obama, they now sort of partly own some of America's other nonsense too. Like the foreign policy, and domestic surveillance. No more sitting on the sidelines observing the buffoonery of some white Americans. And I think it extends beyond just those things. To things like jobs programs, getting to full employment, universal health insurance, climate change, financial industry regulations, and other policies.

Not matter how much I harp on it about many white people not realizing that their fates (especially economically) are tied to the fates of the entire country, including minorities, that now minorities must realize that the fates of our communities are tied to that of America as a whole, especially white working class people.

We may be beyond a point where it is just about helping your community, it maybe be about saving America as a whole. It gets even weirder now after the election of Trump, because that means sorta having to save White America from itself.

I know it not all of white America, but the faction is still to unreasonably big. Some of those people in the Bernie town hall are drunk off of member berry wine.

Remember the Chris Rock joke about America and black people. About America being like the uncle that pays for your college tuition but molested you. Welp, that Uncle might be ODing on heroin and you're the one thatcan to call 9-1-1 and get him into rehab. Because you still live in his house, and need a place to stay.

Imagine ******* that, minorities having to be the ones to bring a good portion of America kicking and scream into a better future.

What a time to be alive I tell ya

 

[IATT]

http://www.newsweek.com/2016/12/23/donald-trump-foreign-business-deals-jeopardize-us-531140.html

 

[handullz]

Rex Tillerson might not be a complete wash.

 

[EddieDoyers]

https://www.google.com/amp/www.foxn...ter-as-secretary-state.amp.html?client=safari

Surprised to see this from Fox News

 

[RustyShackleford]

Rex Tillerson might not be a complete wash.

Why?

 

[whywesteppin]

So are Donald Trump's but that hasn't stopped him. Although it's different getting elected by average Americans versus having to go through an actual Senate confirmation.

 

[handullz]

Why?

1. He hasn't given much credence to his political views so that could be good (or bad)
2. I don't care what people say... Running Exxon is no small feat... It's different from being Sec or State, but he has to have SOME type of talent to rub one of the most valuable companies in the world
3. He's been negotiating for profits for his company. If he can negotiate for the betterment of the country, he might be doing some good.
4. What if Russia isn't the bad guy anymore? What if there's a way to finesse this into a positive relationship between US and Russia?

I'm just trying to not **** on every move that Trump makes B/c I see that all through WaPo and NYT.

There HAS to be some positivity to this.

That attorney general pick got me shook as hell, doe.

 

[00david00]

That Sanders clip was hard to watch.
--

I really enjoyed Coate's piece today. I found everything he wrote about Obama's background and time as President (thankfully the bulk of the piece) infinitely more engaging than his take on the election results. The elephant in the room remains the failure of Hillary Clinton + campaign team in all things Election 2016. The dynamic of Obama/Trump has points worth talking about, but ultimately overlooks the biggest part of the equation.

 

[RustyShackleford]

I think the failings of the Clinton campaign have been discussed a decent amount. I mean people on the left seem to be tripping over themselves to criticize her.

Seems to me want people don't really want to talk about is the fact Clinton, besides her flaws, besides her shortcomings, still got ****** over really bad. And I mean ****** over on a level we haven't seen in recent history.

By Comey, by Russia, by the media in the final week.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Lizzy Warren outchea showing her *** too

Elizabeth Warren Condemns the Wrong Man
Andrew Ross Sorkin

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, at a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in October. The senator recently condemned a hedge fund manager who had supported her and Mrs. Clinton. Credit Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
Senator Elizabeth Warren, furious about President-elect Donald J. Trump’s appointments of finance industry insiders, took to Facebook a little over a week ago to fire off a message to her nearly 2.5 million followers.

She took aim at an individual she described as a “hedge fund billionaire” who is “thrilled by Donald Trump’s economic team of Wall Street insiders.”

The hedge fund manager she condemned was Whitney Tilson, who runs Kase Capital. Ms. Warren — the fiery Massachusetts Democrat who is known for her stern mistrust of Wall Street — called him out by saying, “Tilson knows that, despite all the stunts and rhetoric, Donald Trump isn’t going to change the economic system.” Then she added, “The next four years are going to be a bonanza for the Whitney Tilsons of the world.”

There’s one rather glaring problem with Ms. Warren’s attack: Mr. Tilson happens to be one of the few financial executives who publicly fought Mr. Trump’s election and supported Hillary Clinton. A lifelong Democrat who was involved in helping to start Teach for America, Mr. Tilson also happened to be one of the rare Wall Street executives who had donated to Ms. Warren and actively sought new regulations for the industry. Recently, he gave Mrs. Clinton $1,000 so he could see Ms. Warren speak at a campaign fund-raiser. (He’s also far, far from a billionaire.)

“I’ve donated money to her, attended her events, and did everything in my power to stop Donald Trump,” Mr. Tilson told me, talking about Ms. Warren and expressing dismay that he somehow became the target of her derision. “In addition, I agree with her 100 percent that large swaths of the financial industry have run amok and prey on vulnerable Americans, and thus strong regulation, including a muscular Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is sorely needed,” he said.

Ms. Warren appears to be suffering from the same affliction that Mr. Trump’s critics accuse of him: a knee-jerk, fact-free reaction to something she had read in the news.

In this case, Ms. Warren seems to have come across a Bloomberg News article that includes some quotations from Mr. Tilson. But she didn’t read to the bottom or dismissed it before firing off her zingers.

In the article, Mr. Tilson had said, “I think Donald Trump conned them,” in reference to voters. “I worried that he was going to do crazy things that would blow the system up. So the fact that he’s appointing people from within the system is a good thing.” (He even said he took “glee” in voters’ anger over that.)

The part Ms. Warren may have missed toward the bottom was this: “I’m a fan of Dodd-Frank, I think banking should be boring,” he was quoted as saying, where he was also identified as a Clinton supporter. “I worry about Wall Street returning to being a casino.”

In fairness, depending on how you look at the situation, it is possible some readers and supporters of Ms. Warren will give her kudos for criticizing one of her own well-heeled donors. “She can’t be bought,” might be a generous way to consider the situation. But even a quick Google search of Mr. Tilson’s involvement in the recent political discourse over financial reform would reveal what he clearly meant by his quotation: that he was nervous about Mr. Trump appointing reckless and uninformed people to guide financial policy and that he was heartened that he had not.

Whitney Tilson, who runs Kase Capital, was criticized in a recent Facebook post by Senator Warren. Credit Mike Segar/Reuters
As Ms. Warren has made clear, she abhors the idea of anyone who has worked in the financial industry working in government on policy that could affect the economy and Wall Street. This column has covered what I’ve described as her misguided view.

That’s not to say any administration wouldn’t benefit from bringing in some outsiders who could offer new and different perspectives, but that can’t be a qualifying measure. The next time you need heart surgery, do you want to go to a heart surgeon or a psychologist?

In fairness, Ms. Warren’s ambitious efforts to overhaul financial regulation are not without merit: There are large parts of the Dodd-Frank Act that have done a ton of good to protect the American public. She played a hugely important role recently in grilling the chief executive of Wells Fargo about his bank’s sham-accounts scandal, and her questioning appears to have helped bring about his resignation. And at a time when one party is in power — in this case, the Republicans — Ms. Warren’s position is even more important to help hold our leaders accountable.

However, her ad hominem attack on Mr. Tilson only serves to undermine her credibility and some of the good work she wants to achieve.

To make matters worse, Mr. Tilson’s wife, Susan Blackman Tilson, was one of the students in the first Harvard Law School bankruptcy class that Ms. Warren taught, in fall 1992. The student has remained loyal to her professor; Mrs. Tilson wrote in a letter to Ms. Warren last week that she had been “cheering from the sidelines as you rose to national attention for your excellent work on behalf of consumers.”

Both of the Tilsons sent letters to Ms. Warren last week, which they shared with me, seeking to set the record straight and asking her to remove her Facebook post.

The response? An aide emailed them: “She asked me to relay to you that she is removing the word ‘billionaire’ from the post, as you have indicated that is factually inaccurate. The senator has decided, however, not to remove the overall post.”

A spokesman for Ms. Warren declined to comment on the exchange.

When I spoke to Mr. Tilson on Monday, he said he felt that the senator had let him down in two ways: “Personally, I feel betrayed,” he said. “In recent years, I’ve really stuck my neck out by very publicly supporting her, the C.F.P.B., and a tough regulatory approach to banks — none of which wins me many friends — and this is how she repays me.”

Mr. Tilson added: “By engaging in factually incorrect, ad hominem attacks, she’s getting down into the gutter with Trump. This is misguided and counterproductive.”

Despite all of that, he said, “I still support her because I share her belief that banking should be boring.”

Naturally enough, he added, her Facebook post, coupled with her response, “certainly reduces my enthusiasm for her.”

Some progressives really need to stop being so trigger happy. Geez

 

[whywesteppin]

I have to say, I have been a bit underwhelmed by Elizabeth Warren.

4. What if Russia isn't the bad guy anymore? What if there's a way to finesse this into a positive relationship between US and Russia?

Because Russia has a clear history and we have no reason to think it will change unless Putin is overthrown. It was the same story in Syria and in other countries.

I feel like a broken record but we know exactly who they are. This isn't some first date, let me see how it turns out kind of thing.

I'm ok with a level-headed realistic diplomacy like we're doing with Iran. We know we're not going to be friends but we can find a mutually agreeable deal while keeping one eye open while we sleep.

 

[Master Zik]

Stop trying to weasel your way out of this bull **** claim, ninja, that more people are dying under Obamacare than before. Be a man, own up to this and either post proof or admit you're full of ****.

umm life expectancy is down...

.

thanks obama

except the main culprits are drug OD, alcohol poisoning, and suicide.

sounds like people are miserable under da current economy and are medicating themselves...pretty simple.

This is speculation.

its actually common sense

If you can not prove your claims (in this case with a lot of evodence) then it is nothing more than speculation or conjecture.

 

[shatterkneesinc]

 

[AZwildcats]

January 21th, just wait on it

why are you so illiterate? Are NYC public schools still garbage or do you have a deficiency? Honest question

Jesus Christ

 

[...So]

.

 

[nazdrowie]

by Jing Cao

December 13, 2016, 4:00 PM EST

IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty said she plans to hire about 25,000 people in the U.S. and invest $1 billion over the next four years, laying out her vision for filling technology jobs in America on the eve of a meeting of industry leaders with President-elect Donald Trump.

Rometty, who is on Trump’s advisory panel of business leaders, will join Facebook Inc.’s Sheryl Sandberg, Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos and Alphabet Inc.’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt at a summit with Trump Wednesday in New York that is said to focus on jobs.

During the run-up to the election, Trump made employment issues a mainstay of his campaign, promising to scrap trade deals he viewed as draining jobs from the country and impose tariffs on imports if necessary. He has since claimed credit for preventing thousands of manufacturing jobs from moving overseas and used state incentives to strike a deal with Carrier, a unit of United Technologies Corp., to pull back on its plans to move some operations to Mexico.

Rometty is continuing what is emerging as a formula among technology companies: in conjunction with meetings with Trump in his Manhattan tower, pledge to create jobs and invest billions of dollars  in the U.S., even if the plans had already been in the works since before he was elected. The advantage for companies is that it can deflect criticism from the new administration that the industry is shifting jobs offshore, while also giving Trump a way to take credit for job creation goals that may have little to do with his election.

IBM said in March it had more than 25,000 positions open globally and that it had started to cut some jobs in the U.S. as part of a “workforce rebalancing” in an effort to add staff with cloud and other specific skills.

Over the past few years, IBM -- like many large U.S.-based companies -- has been criticized  for eliminating thousands of jobs in the country and moving resources to places such as India. The company reported fewer employees at the end of 2013 than the beginning of the year for the first time  in a decade, and reduced its total workforce by 12 percent the next year. IBM said it hired more U.S. employees last year than it had in the five years prior.

In an op-ed piece in USA Today, Rometty said many technology jobs don’t require an advanced degree and she encouraged government investment in vocational education and training.

“We are hiring because the nature of work is evolving,” Rometty wrote. That’s also why many of the jobs are hard to fill, she said. “What matters most is that these employees – with jobs such as cloud computing technicians and services delivery specialists – have relevant skills, often obtained through vocational training.”

IBM has been honing its vision for training for months and it’s unrelated to the election or the meeting Wednesday, the company said. Armonk, New York-based International Business Machines Corp. has been working on hiring for and preparing its employees in skills required to adapt to the newer areas of its business, such as cloud computing, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. For example, about a third of its workforce will have learned by the end of this year design thinking, a problem-solving method favored by many tech startups. 

The dynamics of the global labor market have been changing, and there are large numbers of unfilled tech-related jobs in the U.S., Rometty said. The disconnect comes from the lack of people with the requisite skills, she said.

“As industries from manufacturing to agriculture are reshaped by data science and cloud computing, jobs are being created that demand new skills – which in turn requires new approaches to education, training and recruiting,” she wrote.

In the op-ed, Rometty called for an update in early 2017 to the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, which provides federal funding to vocation and technical programs. She also highlighted an education model -- that IBM helped design -- of a six-year public high school, which combines traditional coursework, community college classes and internships focused on preparing students for technical jobs. IBM will work with states to open at least 20 more of these schools in the next year, she wrote.

“We will need new kinds of collaboration – involving federal and state governments, public school systems, community colleges and private business, across multiple industries,” she said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-to-hire-25-000-in-u-s-ahead-of-trump-meeting

 

[rexanglorum]

I dismiss pretty much any "skills gap" story out of hand. When you hear about "unfilled jobs," you know that an industry leader wants something from the government. Whether we are talking about IT workers, pharmacists, teachers, nurses, welders, farm workers, whatever, labor shortages can usually be dealt with by raising wages and incentivizing people to get the requisite training needed to do the job.

Businesses nowadays see state subsidized worker training as an entitlement and it was not always that way. Businesses used to pay the cost for training new hires, especially if the skills were company specific. So while we should have great math and science (and history, literature, art and music) programs in high schools and community colleges, the state should not use educational resources to train future IBM employees.


Despite being very liberal, I am professionally obliged to explain the problems of rent control, minimum wage and other price controls to my students (through the lens of the simple models used in Econ 1). I do not want intro to micro to look like a total endorsement of conservative economics so I have an assignment where I present various newspaper headlines and ask my students to use the methods that I have taught them to critique the headlines. So while my students explain why minimum wage, rent control and price caps on prescription drugs might be a problem, I slip in at least one of these bogus labor supply "skills gap" stories.

So my students have to talk up laissez-faire, in some contexts, but they still have got to rebuke a CEO or two so my class ends up feeling hard to read politically and that is how I like it.

 

[osh kosh bosh]

I literally unplugged my headphones and yelled **** you at the screen when Bernie made that "Politically Correct" comment.

He still doesn't get it, or he was trying to double talk and played himself. Then no one backed his play

I still got love for the dude. But someone need to sit his *** down and talk to him.

Justified every black folks suspicions about him.

 

[the qbz]

more people are dying under Obamacare though.....

Thats false
People are dying under obamacare becuase they refuse to get covered becuase of the name
Aca or affordable care act been around for a while. I seen people who have great medical and dental coverage not have any knowledge of there coverage


For example some dental plans give member s 5000 dollars to use but they dont becuase they remain ignorant of what they have. Thats 5000 free money a year



Medicaid and medicare will pay for Anything medically necessary becauae obamacare took out pre existing conditions.

 

[gry60]

From 2014:

https://www.thenation.com/article/e...ing-stop-fracking-near-his-mansion/?page=full

Fancy a side of irony with your corporate hypocrisy? Last night on MSNBC, Nation Editor-at-Large Chris Hayes profiled ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, a vocal proponent of hydraulic fracking, who is suing to prevent the construction of a water tower near his eighty-three-acre, $5 million horse ranch in Bartonville, Texas. The purpose of the tower? Storing water for fracking. Tillerson and his super-wealthy neighbors are concerned, the lawsuit states, that the fracking tower might “devalue their properties and adversely impact the rural lifestyle they sought to enjoy.” As Hayes put it, “Rex Tillerson is leading the fracking revolution, just not in his backyard.”

 

[Belgium]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ory.html?postshare=9501481717806294&tid=ss_tw

Here's a dose of some more irony

 
A secret U.S. military investigation in 2010 determined that Michael T. Flynn, the retired Army general tapped to serve as national security adviser in the Trump White House, “inappropriately shared” classified information with foreign military officers in Afghanistan, newly released documents show.

Although Flynn lacked authorization to share the classified material, he was not disciplined or reprimanded after the investigation concluded that he did not act “knowingly” and that “there was no actual or potential damage to national security as a result,” according to Army records obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

Flynn has previously acknowledged that he was investigated while serving as the U.S. military intelligence chief in Afghanistan for sharing secrets with British and Australian allies there. But he has dismissed the case as insignificant and has given few details.

The Army documents provide the first official account of the case, but they are limited in scope because the investigation itself remains classified. Former U.S. officials familiar with the matter said that Flynn was accused of telling allies about the activities of other agencies in Afghanistan, including the CIA.

(see link for rest of article)