***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[Belgium]

Dutch newspapers are reporting that their far-right politician Thierry Baudet appears to have been on the Kremlin payroll.
For years, Baudet repeatedly spread anti-Ukraine disinformation that he knew to be false and lobbied against the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. In 2016 he initiated a Dutch referendum seeking to pressure the government to oppose the Ukraine agreement.

During this time, as newly leaked communications show, Baudet was in contact with Vladimir Kornilov. He described Kornilov as a "very influential figure" and as a "Russian working for Vladimir Putin."
A member from Baudet's party warned him to not to engage but Baudet ignored the advice.

Around the time Baudet resigned from his former job as a political commentator, he described the income loss and said "maybe Kornilov might want to pay me extra (wink emoji)"

 

[IATT]

 

[RustyShackleford]

A major problem with Ball's comments is that it tacitly erased non-white working-class people from the analysis while claiming to advocate for working-class people. So how does it come off as she is advocating for?

Ball claims she is knee-deep in Virginia politics. Yet non-white, mostly black, working-class people have been holding the line in Virginia for decades. They were voting for ****** centrist Democrats over racist Republicans to prevent the state into becoming an Alabama level white supremacist hellhole. However, these people want to see advancement in worker's rights and wages; they want affordable housing; they want good healthcare. Without calling it out by name, or sounding like they read Marx, they advocate for a form of social democracy. Many had to sit through generations of not getting it. The activists she uses to defend her argument has a ton of members from these communities. However, these cultural/identity/diversity/"token" issues mean more to these communities for the obvious reason they get relegated as just something the faceless PMC does to fake the funk, by the Ball, Chapo, Current Affairs, of the world.

This is what is so frustrating to me about the American leftist punditry and commentary sometimes as someone black and progressive. You have one disproportionately white and often affluent group always complaining about another disproportionately white affluent group. **** like that is what made me walk out of DSA meetings and have arguments with people in real life. Why should I cheer on one side while they talk through me.

Like how does it come off when some white leftist, who claim to be all about racial solidarity, insist that the brand of class politics that must be practice be a variety that is most palpable to white people. Complaining about one variety incrementalism, while peddling their own.

I bring leftist affluence not to say they can't understand the common man. Someone's class or education doesn't mean they can't show real empathy toward others and understand the issues facing someone that looks nothing like them. I bring it up because said affluence, often mixed with white privilege, manifests itself in a very frustrating way. Many people who claim they understand the issues better, claim have better policy solutions, that claim to be better, allies always find a way to be condescending, and flippant.

How can I not feel that sentiment is not partly motivated by the fact that when the carnage comes from the other side, these people be just as protected from the **** show as the other members of the PMC they rant about. Socialism or barbarism is much easier to yell when you are not going to have to bear the brunt of the right wing barbarism.

So anyone on the left wants to get better, do better.

 

[Wargames]

This is how I see it.

Biden is going to get as close to that Obama Coalition possible come November and win. He’s signaled for weeks now that he is going to take a progressive stance as president. This virus has shown that the whole government system is basically the equivalent of the 3rd world. We’re debating a done deal, we all just need to come to terms with it and decide if we want to at least get the satisfaction of voting against Trump’s idoiocracy.

Biden is going to Whip Trumps bum *** come November. Nov - Jan is going to be scary cause the reality of him losing power is going to see Trump and his carny family basically do crazy stuff while also trying to steal everything not tied down. God I ******* hate Trump and I hope to be alive in January to see that bastard squirm once he and his cronies are not on power. Cause there is a reckoning coming.

 

[Deleted member 170883]

OUR PRESIDENT-ELECT HAS DONE IT AGAIN!!!! BRILLIANT IDEA BY TRUMP AND HIS ADMINISTRATION TO OPEN UP AMERICA IN 3 PHASES. WELL DONE!!!

 

[willycheesesteak]

.

 

[Deleted member 170883]

LOL NOPE. BYDEN HAS DONE NOTHING FOR AMERICA...THIS DUDE IS JUST USING OBAMA CLOUT AND IT IS NOT GOING TO WORK! OUR PRESIDENT-ELECT HAS DONE MORE FOR AMERICA THAN FRAUDBAMA/BYDEN COMBINED. KEEP THOSE STIMULUS CHECKS COMING AND WE GUCCI

This is how I see it.

Biden is going to get as close to that Obama Coalition possible come November and win. He’s signaled for weeks now that he is going to take a progressive stance as president. This virus has shown that the whole government system is basically the equivalent of the 3rd world.

Biden is going to Whip Trumps bum *** come November. Nov - Jan is going to be scary cause the reality of him losing power is going to see Trump and his carny family basically do crazy stuff while also trying to steal everything not tied down. God I ****ing hate Trump and I hope to be alive in January to see that bastard squirm once he and his cronies are not on power. Cause there is a reckoning coming.

 

[whywesteppin]

Cause there is a reckoning coming.

When Donald Trump is finally elected president this November, the people will have spoken: enough is enough.

President Pelosi has gone TOO FAR. The do-nothing dumbocrats have paralyzed our government for far too long. This Corona Virus HOAX is the latest attempt by $oro$ to take our guns and leave teachers and students defenseless against each other in open combat.

Look, I bet you this virus DISAPPEARS before we even get to 10,000 cases. Crisis actors like Chris "Fredo" Cuomo don't have us fooled. AT ALL.

 

[willycheesesteak]

When your map tells you San Francisco's Chinatown is in China


On a more positive note

 

[IATT]

 

[rexanglorum]

A major problem with Ball's comments is that it tacitly erased non-white working-class people from the analysis while claiming to advocate for working-class people. So how does it come off as she is advocating for?

Ball claims she is knee-deep in Virginia politics. Yet non-white, mostly black, working-class people have been holding the line in Virginia for decades. They were voting for ****ty centrist Democrats over racist Republicans to prevent the state into becoming an Alabama level white supremacist hellhole. However, these people want to see advancement in worker's rights and wages; they want affordable housing; they want good healthcare. Without calling it out by name, or sounding like they read Marx, they advocate for a form of social democracy. Many had to sit through generations of not getting it. The activists she uses to defend her argument has a ton of members from these communities. However, these cultural/identity/diversity/"token" issues mean more to these communities for the obvious reason they get relegated as just something the faceless PMC does to fake the funk, by the Ball, Chapo, Current Affairs, of the world.

This is what is so frustrating to me about the American leftist punditry and commentary sometimes as someone black and progressive. You have one disproportionately white and often affluent group always complaining about another disproportionately white affluent group. **** like that is what made me walk out of DSA meetings and have arguments with people in real life. Why should I cheer on one side while they talk through me.

Like how does it come off when some white leftist, who claim to be all about racial solidarity, insist that the brand of class politics that must be practice be a variety that is most palpable to white people. Complaining about one variety incrementalism, while peddling their own.

I bring leftist affluence not to say they can't understand the common man. Someone's class or education doesn't mean they can't show real empathy toward others and understand the issues facing someone that looks nothing like them. I bring it up because said affluence, often mixed with white privilege, manifests itself in a very frustrating way. Many people who claim they understand the issues better, claim have better policy solutions, that claim to be better, allies always find a way to be condescending, and flippant.

How can I not feel that sentiment is not partly motivated by the fact that when the carnage comes from the other side, these people be just as protected from the **** show as the other members of the PMC they rant about. Socialism or barbarism is much easier to yell when you are not going to have to bear the brunt of the right wing barbarism.

So anyone on the left wants to get better, do better.

I agree with you and would add that in America, a driver of the formation of the new left and the sometimes very public left-liberal strife is based on the fact that there are just fewer spots in the elite or even the upper-middle class available than there are people with advanced degrees and/or bachelors degrees from blue chip schools. A lot of people have become leftists because they were born upper-middle class and see only downward mobility first into the lower rungs of the working class and then an end game where they are either food or fodder for the remaining tech and financial elites as late capitalism accelerates under rapidly deteriorating conditions of climate change.

We see people like Cuomo, Newsom and Biden ordering mass liquidations not just of millions and millions of PoC in the global South and workers in the US but also purges of "redundant" and "seditious" nominal members of the professional class like myself. We see mass liquidations carried out by technocrats like Pete Buttigieg and those mass liquidations being ritually hand rung over but ultimately excused by consensus manufacturers like Chris Hayes. When we say "eat the rich" the unspoken part of that is "before they eat us." In every conflict, those seen as collaborators are always hated more than the outright enemy.

When we see people on MSNBC talking about the long game and building consensus over the generations and how people can gradually transition into the jobs of the future, we look at them like "there is no long game without revolution, absent revolution we are surplus population destined for liquidation and much sooner than you might think." Included in that surplus population, destined for liquidation, includes our black and brown brothers and sisters who have, through extraordinary thrift and industry and educational attainment, become part of the middle class despite being, in many cases, one or two generations removed from peasantry and poverty be it the type that exists in Oaxaca, the Greater or Lesser Antilles, the Volta River Basin or Mississippi. That upward mobility, we feel, cannot be sustained under capitalism and if late capitalism proceeds, as we imagine it will, damn near everyone will be on the menu. Like black Marxists say, if capitalism leaves white folks in poverty, what will it do for us? If late capitalism accelerates under climate change, as I imagine it will, most people are doomed.

I hope against hope that I am completely and totally wrong and your theory of change and progress wins out and we beat the worst of climate change and we edge out conservationism and the liberalism that grows is able to be pushed and reformed into a state where it can steadily reduce poverty and expand the scope of human prosperity and guarantee everyone a decent dignified worthwhile existence.

While some throw out the phrase "socialism or barbarism" carelessly, it is the material reality and I hope that we get socialism and better yet, we get socialism in a manner that is closer to your vision than mine. I hope we avoid barbarism and we attain socialism through the ballot box, the soap box and jury box rather than through the bullet box.

 

[IATT]

 

[Wargames]

I don’t give a **** about who is soft on China. I don’t think most people give a **** who is soft on China. What a out of touch issue this is..... This is all Trump can come up with as a platform against Biden? Pathetic!

Americans are dying, all signs point to him throwing us back into a recession, If you risk your life to go outside it feels like a dystopia movie....... and Trump wants to talk about who is soft of China?!? What a ******* joke politician he is.

 

[willycheesesteak]

Doctor Collects 650 Tablets So COVID-19 Patients Can Say Final Goodbyes

For her birthday, New Yorker Ee Tay asked for donations of the devices that dying coronavirus patients could use to speak with loved ones one last time.

www.huffpost.com

Trump says he knew coronavirus was a pandemic ‘long before’ it was declared

President Trump on Tuesday said that he realized that the coronavirus outbreak was a pandemic before the World Health Organization (WHO) labeled it as such last week.

thehill.com

 

[rexanglorum]

Laura may be many things, a pig, a monster, a fascist but she is definitely not a pornstar.

 

[IATT]

I don’t give a **** about who is soft on China. I don’t think most people give a **** who is soft on China. What a out of touch issue this is..... This is all Trump can come up with as a platform against Biden? Pathetic!

Americans are dying, all signs point to him throwing us back into a recession, If you risk your life to go outside it feels like a dystopia movie....... and Trump wants to talk about who is soft of China?!? What a ****ing joke politician he is.

they gotta deflect from trump not doing anything for at least 2 months that could have saved lives

so like the GOP and trump, it’s grade school and obvious

They’ve already blamed: China, the Democrats and WHO

 

[IATT]

Laura may be many things, a pig, a monster, a fascist but she is definitely not a pornstar.

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

dwalk31 this not lying?

10 times Trump and his administration were warned about the coronavirus threat

Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that more lives could have been saved if earlier action was taken.

www.axios.com

 

[RustyShackleford]

Doctor Collects 650 Tablets So COVID-19 Patients Can Say Final Goodbyes

For her birthday, New Yorker Ee Tay asked for donations of the devices that dying coronavirus patients could use to speak with loved ones one last time.

www.huffpost.com

We need to open back up the economy so more people can have the privilege of video calling their loved ones on their deathbed.

Ain't that right dwalk31 .

 

[aepps20]

We need to open back up the economy so more people can have the privilege of video calling their loved ones on their deathbed.

Ain't that right dwalk31 .

Absolutely true and the only way to put those libs out for good. Besides, our economy is kicking from rear and front tail right now.

 

[IATT]

 

[lightweight champion]

dwalk31 this not lying?

10 times Trump and his administration were warned about the coronavirus threat

Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted that more lives could have been saved if earlier action was taken.

www.axios.com

“I was calling it a pandemic before anyone else.”

 

[whywesteppin]

Which begs the question: why didn't anyone tell the president what was happening? I am angry too.

Were people too distracted by the impeachment hoax?

Personally, and this is may be just me, I blame the Democratic primaries. At a time when this nation needed to focus on libvirus-44 and figure out basic questions like, "Is it HIV?" and "can it be transmitted from human Chinese to human non-Chinese?", we were instead trying to figure out if Mayor Pete was going to make Amy Klobuchar cry or if RustyShackleford , deuce king , -Red- , and rexanglorum were going to trade fisticuffs over Neon Deion.

Shameful. The echo chamber is undefeated when it comes to ruining the economy.

 

[rexanglorum]

Which begs the question: why didn't anyone tell the president what was happening? I am angry too.

Were people too distracted by the impeachment hoax?

Personally, and this is may be just me, I blame the Democratic primaries. At a time when this nation needed to focus on libvirus-44 and figure out basic questions like, "Is it HIV?" and "can it be transmitted from human Chinese to human non-Chinese?", we were instead trying to figure out if Mayor Pete was going to make Amy Klobuchar cry or if RustyShackleford , deuce king , -Red- , and rexanglorum were going to trade fisticuffs over Neon Deion.

Shameful. The echo chamber is undefeated when it comes to ruining the economy.

We must put the primary behind us, come together and focus on the greatest political challenge of our time, being able to buy pool noddles, in person, at Lowe’s.

The nanny state libs say “it’s to save lives” and “you can buy the stuff online and pick it up at the store,” but I say no. You cannot properly shop for pool noodles unless you can hold them in your hand, really get a feel for the weight and balance.

We’re all on the same team and are resolved to save the in-person pool noodle buying. Will we disagree on methods? Sure we will be we’ll keep it civil. Some will want to scale the walls of the Lowe’s and repel down through a skylight, others will want to drive a truck through the front wall. We’ll have our disagreements but we must remember that we’re on the same side.