The Biden Administration (No Lago)

[Mord]

I am now wondering if dead is actually a conservative.

It took you this long? Dead is very, very obviously and openly a conservative, though not a Republican. People like him were more common about 60 years ago.

[Kaelik]

Most of the world cant vaccinate because the us has first claim to enough vaccine to vaccinate our entire population more than twice over.

The distribution of the vaccine is going terribly because states are wasting time and resources trying to pick the most deserving vaccine recipients in extremely granular and mostly pointless ways. At the current rate we would vaccinate the entire country in 7 years. Many doses are likely to expire.

"Democratic" governor very good experienced technocrat Andrew Cuomo refuses to allow distribution by the NY county system which has had a plan for mass vaccination I'm the works for decades and tested the system last year with the flu vaccine because he wants to personally have more control. So the overburdened state distribution system has been failing. Providers have responded by ignoring the priorities and just giving people vaccinations. Cuomo has responded by making it a 1 million dollar fine and losing you license crime to give vaccinations to someone you know doesn't qualify and to make mandatory for every recipient to sign a certification of their qualification.

It is almost like "technocratic experts with experience" are really just ideological neoliberals who's shitty ideology causes them to be bad at managing things like for example a fascination with only vaccinating the most deserving while the under vaccinations the real problem. (Just like welfare reforms)

[Grek]

So let's be clear - bitching that the last election didn't deliver what you, personally, hoped for is exactly like going to a steak house, finding out that there are no vegan options on the menu, ordering the porterhouse rare, and then complaining that what you wanted all along was a vegan option. Why did you go to a steakhouse in the first place? Because you're not driving, and nobody else in the car felt like catering to your preferred tastes.

The problem isn't that Biden has failed to implement fully automated luxury gay space communism. The problem is that instead of clearing the incredibly low bars being set for him, he rents a backhoe to tunnel under them. Even really basic shit like "When you tap someone for a cabinet seat, make sure that you actually offer them the cabinet seat that they are both qualified for and specifically asked you about." or "Recognize that the Senate is hostile to you and focus on the powers of your office that don't require Senate approval to use." or hell, how about "Refrain from signalling that you do not actually intend to follow through on your pinky promise to shut down the concentration camps." are not happening, when they obviously could be if they mattered to him even a little.

For all that I usually say that Kaelik is full of shit, he's been mostly right in this thread: Biden is focused almost entirely on signalling a return to the pre-Trump era in which the President has to pander to the rich and the powerful instead of using his office to enrich himself directly. He doesn't give a shit about helping people, he just wants to do whatever will keep the corporate money flowing into the centrist Democrat warchest.

[MGuy]

I am now wondering if dead is actually a conservative.

It took you this long? Dead is very, very obviously and openly a conservative, though not a Republican. People like him were more common about 60 years ago.

Yea my bad. I missed that bit of lore and knowing it explains a lot about why he posts the things he does.

[Thaluikhain]

For all that I usually say that Kaelik is full of shit, he's been mostly right in this thread: Biden is focused almost entirely on signalling a return to the pre-Trump era in which the President has to pander to the rich and the powerful instead of using his office to enrich himself directly. He doesn't give a shit about helping people, he just wants to do whatever will keep the corporate money flowing into the centrist Democrat warchest.

Is that not more or less what was expected, though? Personally, I'd say that would be the best case scenario, Trump has gotten people more accustomed to shenanigans and he's likely to make use to that.

At least, that how it seems to me, someone living half the world away.

[Kaelik]

Is that not more or less what was expected, though? Personally, I'd say that would be the best case scenario, Trump has gotten people more accustomed to shenanigans and he's likely to make use to that.

At least, that how it seems to me, someone living half the world away.

During the primary when it became clear that it would be either Bernie Sanders of Joe Biden, the democratic establishment kicked into overdrive basically gaslighting people about how Joe Biden was very progressive. And that gaslighting has basically been left on ever since. You would get news headlines like:

How Joe Biden Is Positioning Himself as a Modern FDR from TIME

The Biden-FDR Connection Runs Deeper Than You Think FP

Biden Is Planning an FDR-Size Presidency NYMag.

In fact, at least one prominent poster here when this was being talked about was citing to 100% NARAL figures and saying that Joe Biden is equally as progressive as Bernie Sanders.

Joe Biden was, to the vast majority of americans, a person who spontaneously came into existence as Barack Obama's VP, and they (falsely) associate Obama with extreme progressivism, instead of "very middling centrist, but black and therefore vehemently hated by the right wing." So Biden was a left figure to a lot of people because they don't know anything about literally anything he's ever done and the media set about gaslighting them that he was the second coming of Obama, instead of what he was: a white segregations right winger democrat who was picked as VP to get the support of explicitly the kind of carry over Democrats who would under other circumstances rather use a rope than a polling machine when they think of black people.

It is therefore not that surprising given all this that people were mislead about the exact degree of perfidy that Biden would engage in. I am sympathetic to PL's "what did you expect I told you so" reaction, because in fact the left was shouting from the rooftops that this is what Biden would be, but 1) There are still some fights to win during the Biden admin that the left can win, even though we don't know what those are (see Debbie Haaland for interior) and 2) The left is so completely institutionally marginalized that most people never hear what it has to say and even those who do mostly hear it from people who they have been told are absolutely crack pots to be ignored while a bunch of not/corrupted/gaslit leftists tell people they are the real left.

The real left said that invading Iraq was just bad in 2003, but the TV presented only "leftist" voices saying that actually invading Iraq is good, but Bush would do it bad. This pattern repeats infinitely and unfortunately (because we are in some real time crunch from climate change) in the US the left has to first build the infrastructure to communicate the left position to people before it can truly take anything over, as was demonstrated when a bunch of people who want M4A voted for Joe Biden because Harris, Buttigieg, Klobucher, and probably someone else all effectively endorsed Biden on the same day with Obama standing behind the scenes making it happen and MSNBC explaining that Sanders was going to do mass executions in Times Square.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

This pattern repeats infinitely and unfortunately (because we are in some real time crunch from climate change) in the US the left has to first build the infrastructure to communicate the left position to people before it can truly take anything over, as was demonstrated when a bunch of people who want M4A voted for Joe Biden because Harris, Buttigieg, Klobucher, and probably someone else all effectively endorsed Biden on the same day with Obama standing behind the scenes making it happen and MSNBC explaining that Sanders was going to do mass executions in Times Square.

I remember what you're talking about. The worst part is that you aren't being hyperbolic here in the slightest.

[Grek]

Is that not more or less what was expected, though? Personally, I'd say that would be the best case scenario, Trump has gotten people more accustomed to shenanigans and he's likely to make use to that.

At least, that how it seems to me, someone living half the world away.

I'll be honest, I was kinda hoping that Biden was planning to basically copy Obama's homework for his entire presidency. He was obviously going to be a centrist and a corporate shill, but I was hoping that he'd pick at least one ACA-esque 'mixed bag' bit of legislation where it's obviously still a massive handout to a particular interest group, but still manages to be better than the status quo simply because the status quo was so very shitty. And maybe, if we were lucky, throwing a bone to the LBGT community for signalling purposes. Biden was never going to have his heart grow three sizes and turn into Sanders or anything, but I was hoping to be only modestly disappointed with him instead of maximally disappointed.

[deaddmwalking]

I am now wondering if dead is actually a conservative.

It took you this long? Dead is very, very obviously and openly a conservative, though not a Republican. People like him were more common about 60 years ago.

Yea my bad. I missed that bit of lore and knowing it explains a lot about why he posts the things he does.

I find that interesting. I vote for Democratic candidates, I donated a significant amount of money to Act Blue. I support eliminating private prisons and the prison-industrial complex, I support the equal rights amendment and full protection of rights for sexual orientation, sex, and gender. I believe that taxes on the rich are far too low and that for-profit health care is an evil scourge that is destroying lives in this country. Clearly, 'conservative' means something else to Mguy than it does to the rest of the world.

But that's my point in a nutshell. It's fine that you want to have a safe-space for extremism, but I just want to point out that you're far ahead of what the rest of the country is comfortable with. Demanding that the rest of the world recognize that you're right won't happen with this kind of circle jerk. Which ultimately means that you're only right if you can convince a significant majority of Americans to agree with you (oh, and they must be geographically concentrated to ensure at least 51% of the population in those states where they exist, but also must be geographically spread out to ensure they represent a majority it both urban and rural states). Which isn't to say that it's impossible but it is impossible for the moment.

Biden hasn't even been sworn in yet. Until we get through the Inauguration, I wouldn't expect Biden to say anything that would encourage an armed revolt. Those types of things are a lot easier to handle if you're the Commander in Chief. Further, making real policy changes is easier if you have control of the Senate.

If you think that providing extra ammunition for attack ads NOW is the smart decision, well, maybe that explains why you don't have a career as a political consultant.

[Kaelik]

I find that interesting. I vote for Democratic candidates, I donated a significant amount of money to Act Blue. I support eliminating private prisons and the prison-industrial complex, I support the equal rights amendment and full protection of rights for sexual orientation, sex, and gender. I believe that taxes on the rich are far too low and that for-profit health care is an evil scourge that is destroying lives in this country. Clearly, 'conservative' means something else to Mguy than it does to the rest of the world.

Those positions makes you conservative in the rest of the world. Also in the US.

"Woah now hold on, I think a tax rate of 22% on the rich is just too low, it should be 27% like it was when Obama was president." isn't the mark of true leftism you think it is.

Telling me you donate to Henry Cuellar isn't a mark of you not being a conservative.

Joe Biden currently thinks the tax rate should be higher than it is now but LOWER than during the Obama admin and he was you one true primary candidate because of his supreme COATTAILS that would lead to sweeping democratic legislatures (how did that turn out by the way? Has being wrong ever caused you to rethink anything?)

It's fine that you want to have a safe-space for extremism, but I just want to point out that you're far ahead of what the rest of the country is comfortable with. Demanding that the rest of the world recognize that you're right won't happen with this kind of circle jerk.

DeadDM ignoring that Grek is literally telling him that it's not extremism, but I guess when you feel the need to make posts criticizing the existence of a thread you refuse to read it's not actually that weird to keep ignoring everything in the thread.

No one is criticizing Joe Biden for not implementing or fighting for the policy that 70% of the country and 90% of democrats supports, Medicare For All. He's being criticized for things like saying that the tax rate should be lower than it was in 2016! It's not extremism to think that the the 2016 tax rate was the minimum for a democratic president to aspire to!

Which ultimately means that you're only right if you can convince a significant majority of Americans to agree with you (oh, and they must be geographically concentrated to ensure at least 51% of the population in those states where they exist, but also must be geographically spread out to ensure they represent a majority it both urban and rural states). Which isn't to say that it's impossible but it is impossible for the moment.

This is so fucking stupid. 70% of the population wants M4A. Like 90% thought the tax rate should be higher on the rich than it was in 2016. This is why my signature is about how the US isn't a democracy. If your commitment to believing the US is a democracy then you have to make up increasingly convoluted reasons for ignoring what people actually want to justify the outcomes of a political process that throws their opinions in the trash in favor of what oligarchs and consultants want.

General elections and primary elections are both fake bullshit where the candidates are picked in advance by the extremely rich and established political figures, and then the board is tilted as hard as possible against anyone who might pose even the slightest threat to the people who currently hold power. Chuck Schumer picked Amy McGrath who had already lost an election for a district to the left of the state of Kentucky for the Kentucky Senate election because he thought "I'm a woman fighter pilot who bombs brown people" would let him rake in money from donations and that could be spent elsewhere (after McGrath blows a huge chunk of it losing in Kentucky). She spent 40 million dollars to barely squeak out a primary win against Charles Booker who spent 700k. Then she spent her general election funds running TV ad campaigns in Ohio about how people should vote for her over McConnell because unlike Mitch McConnell she would work WITH Trump. Unsurprisingly, she lost in a landslide. But all the money that was earned by joint donations still showed up and all the money she has left over can be donated to other democrats in future elections so who cares right?

But the thing is, this is every primary election! The DCCC steps on the scale all over the country to maximize the number of shitty candidates they can keep in charge because shitty right wing democrats will never pressure Nancy Pelosi to do anything she doesn't want to do. Obama steps in to crown his VP as the primary winner with backroom deals because he's rich and he loves rich people and there can never be a threat to that allowed to prosper.

It's just flatly not true that we need to "convince a majority of americans." They are already convinced of all our policy goals. They just don't get a say in who gets to be president or Speaker. That's decided by the rich and powerful just full on smashing the scale beneath their boot.

Biden hasn't even been sworn in yet. Until we get through the Inauguration, I wouldn't expect Biden to say anything that would encourage an armed revolt. Those types of things are a lot easier to handle if you're the Commander in Chief. Further, making real policy changes is easier if you have control of the Senate.

If you think that providing extra ammunition for attack ads NOW is the smart decision, well, maybe that explains why you don't have a career as a political consultant.

This is such a funny and stupid thing to say. 1) Biden is appointing cabinet officials! If on January 20th he announces "haha just kidding" and rolls out an entirely different cabinet than the one he announced then sure, I'll be eating crow. But I'm somewhat skeptical that will happen. 2) "Wow time out you can't expect the things Biden and his team say to predict what they will do!" No fucking wonder you just blindly vote for whatever obscene shithead you know the name of in the primary! if you believe it is impossible to predict future outcomes and that all candidates are identical I guess nothing but name recognition matters! But that seems like a really bad method for evaluating politicians.

3) "ammunition for attack ads" has got to be the funniest fucking dog shit democrat brain thing ever.

Bernie Sanders was filibustering the NDAA (military funding) bill to get 2k checks to people and then basically the entire democratic senate voted with McConnell to quash the filibuster so they could pay Raytheon. The reason people defend this is that if they don't then "Republicans will attack Warnock as anti military! This stops that!" Meanwhile, as soon that filibuster ended Kelly Loeffler, a current senator campaigning for the senate, left her job at the senate to go to a campaign event where she said that Warnock is part of a child sexual assault gang. Now a few things here: a) Damn, seems like maybe keeping her in the Senate away from campaign events would help don't you think? b) If Kelly Loeffler thought that calling Warnock anti Military would help her do you think she whether or not the democrats vote to end a filibuster is going to change whether she does? Because spoiler alert, there wasn't any evidence he was part of a fucking child sexual assault ring and she said that! and finally,

c) MAYBE just MAYBE instead of deciding you can't do any good or popular thing because someone will run attack ads (that they will run anyway) you can actually build support by talking about the good popular things you are going to do!

Now, the reason this is hard for Biden is of course because he doesn't want to do any good or popular things, but if democrats wanted to actually do good things, good ELECTORAL politics would not be to hide that from the public.

If the outcome of the Georgia primaries decided whether Biden did the Green New Deal, or M4A, or an aggressive covid relief bill, or even a Public Option, the operative thing to do would be to TELL PEOPLE THAT! Not hide it because you are worried about attack ads! ALL THOSE THINGS ARE INSANELY POPULAR!

And spoiler alert, CLOSING THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS IS ALSO FUCKING POPULAR. Biden's staff telling people "we aren't going to make any changes on Trump's border policy for an indeterminate time period for no explicit reason except that borders are complicated and complicated things scare us" didn't actually defuse a single fucking republican campaign ad because no republican ad team is making decisions based on an advisor saying a qualified statement in "support" of their policies. But also, even if it did, who cares! I want 100% of the republican attack ads to be them showing Biden's staff listing promises to day 1 close concentration camps because that will HELP DEMOCRATS and for fucks sake why not run some of your own ads about how you are going to do it!

You can tell that Joe Biden even AGREES with me about the electoral consequences of saying he will close the concentration camps because HE SAID THAT WHILE CAMPAIGNING FOR PRESIDENT. It was only AFTER he won that his staff started explaining that he actually won't.

And the reason is simple. Joe Biden is not signaling to the American public after the election. He's signaling to his donors that he will make very few changes and only after consulting them.

[MGuy]

It took you this long? Dead is very, very obviously and openly a conservative, though not a Republican. People like him were more common about 60 years ago.

Yea my bad. I missed that bit of lore and knowing it explains a lot about why he posts the things he does.

Clearly, 'conservative' means something else to Mguy than it does to the rest of the world.

You put up a lot of words to not deny that you're actually conservative. Biden is a conservative, has advertised as much throughout his entire career, and is now leading the Dem party. I'm really not impressed that you give to a Dem money raising operation or that you're willing to say you support X or Y when every one of your posts has been attacking people for actually wanting things to happen. It is not hard to get not only conservatives but people who actually vote Red to tell me that they support equal rights, think that rich elites are bad, or that they aren't support of privately owned prisons. Congrats on being marginally less conservative than people who vote red. The next step would be to quit reducing politics to an argument over who is 'correct' and realize that you actually have to leverage power in politics instead of just letting what's popular and easy determine everything you do.

Here's a short list of other pitfalls you might want to avoid:

1) Thinking that just voting in blue candidates is all you need to do without making any distinction between which ones are effectively working toward progressive issues or those who aren't. (Notice the amount of page count spent defending the worst people we have).

2) Recognize that elected representatives can actually do things (Notice how there are no listed expectations for what dead believes candidates could do)

3)Recognize when your elected representatives aren't doing things (Notice that the thing dead decided to address wasn't anything substantive about what Biden is doing now but still decided to make a backhanded defense of his current shitty choices because oh yea he's going to totally change his cabinet picks as soon as he gets inaugurated)

4) Thinking that just saying you support X or Y is enough and then not making sure you're electing people who will actually do those things/hounding the people who aren't is actually good. (you don't have to wait until your next election to be politically active and advocating for your issues)

If you think that providing extra ammunition for attack ads NOW is the smart decision, well, maybe that explains why you don't have a career as a political consultant.

I can think of quite a few reasons about why I am not a political consultant but those likely have more to do with my background than whether I think attack ads are good right now but good job punching downward. Very progressive.

Let's back up though because this statement is really dumb. Firstly a career in being a political consultant doesn't mean anything. It isn't a title you get a degree for or something you have to even succeed in to get paid for. There are consulting firms in places in America that never produce results that get paid just because they are the only ones democrats work with in a given area.

Second, you probably meant "providing ammunition for attack ads against my own candidate" which A) Biden isn't my candidate so I'm actually for attack ads against him and B) is something you want so that the candidate they are aimed at can be pressured to address the nature of the attacks.

Yea I can't instantly get most of the people in this nation to stop voting ghouls into office right now but just as some idiot in this very thread said "You can't let perfect be the enemy of good" you can't let current conditions discourage progress. The point is to push people in that direction. The point is to normalize 'my' point of view. How the fuck do you think civil rights occurred? You think things got this way because people sat down and fucking waited for public opinion to change?

If you think that progressive ideas and system changes just happen by telling others to stop advocating for it, well, maybe that explains why you're not an activist.

[...You Lost Me]

I find that interesting. I vote for Democratic candidates, I donated [...]

You're mistaking the purpose of this thread. A thread where we make up things like "Emmanuel hates old people" or "deaddm is a secret republican" is not a place where you are supposed to find meaningful political discussions. There is a reason that the most common posters in this thread receive consistent complaints about acting in bad faith (and not just here, the unofficial TGD discord has/had problems with the same people).

From seeing you consistently engage shadzar, I know you have a penchant for engaging unreasonable people as though they were reasonable, but just leave this one be. There are no rules against doomer squad alpha camping in some single thread, writing weird half-accurate rageposts, and claiming that Democratic denners are secret Republicans. If anything, we are better for it, because it means that all the doomerism can be contained in one thread that you can ignore.

Speaking of which, you have Kaelik on ignore specifically because you're frustrated with how frequently he acts in bad faith. Don't drive yourself crazy like this. Make a new thread to talk about the Biden admin instead! I'll join you, and maybe fbmf won't ban politics from MPSIMS permanently.

[MGuy]

No one called dead a Republican. Not all conservatives are Republicans. I would love to see more posts from YLM posts defending Biden now that other people can't provide cover by posting barely defendable concerns about the next election.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

"I'm not a conservative, I vote Democrat!" is legitimately the funniest joke I've heard this year. 2021 is off to a roaring start.

[...You Lost Me]

So I opened an MGuy post because there was an 80% chance of him making something up about me, and whaddaya know.

DeadDM, this is what you're getting into by engaging in this thread. I have complained about denners making (and this is literally a quote from the post MGuy ostensibly read) "weird half-accurate rageposts", apparently I am now defending Biden. Also now MGuy would like to OWN this LIBERL with FACTS AND LOGIC because the 2020 election is over? What? Have I been using the 2020 election as a cover for Biden? Have I been defending Biden? Where did any of these ideas come from?

But that's the thing: You can get about 3 sentences into the post of the average TGDoomer before they just start making shit up about people. And those first two sentences are gonna be like TAA's post where they ignore 95% of what you write and invent a sentence to make you sound bad. Their brand of discourse weird, unproductive, and sad, but it's been like this for years and you're not going to change anything by engaging them.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Yes, let's come to the tabletop forum to engage in productive real-life political discourse that actually affect people in real ways. This is not weird in any way and there are definitely not better places to do so and they are definitely not in the physical world.
This is, in fact, the thread where people talk about Biden. Barging in and calling most of the posters bad faith idiots is going to make you look like you're either defending Biden or you have a stick up your ass. This really isn't that hard to understand. Are you here to talk about the Biden administration or yell at people you don't like? You can do both, dude.

Unfortunately, I agree with most of what Kaelik's saying so I shut up most of the time lest this turn into even more of an echo chamber.

[...You Lost Me]

TAA, I appreciate you being honest and agreeing that this discussion isn't productive discourse. I am 100% with you on that. If some stick-up-your-ass denner wants to talk about US politics without anyone making jokes about how they're going to advocate for murdering homeless people, I guess they need a different thread.

Hint hint

[Kaelik]

So I opened an MGuy post because there was an 80% chance of him making something up about me, and whaddaya know.

DeadDM, this is what you're getting into by engaging in this thread. I have complained about denners making (and this is literally a quote from the post MGuy ostensibly read) "weird half-accurate rageposts", apparently I am now defending Biden. Also now MGuy would like to OWN this LIBERL with FACTS AND LOGIC because the 2020 election is over? What? Have I been using the 2020 election as a cover for Biden? Have I been defending Biden? Where did any of these ideas come from?

But that's the thing: You can get about 3 sentences into the post of the average TGDoomer before they just start making shit up about people. And those first two sentences are gonna be like TAA's post where they ignore 95% of what you write and invent a sentence to make you sound bad. Their brand of discourse weird, unproductive, and sad, but it's been like this for years and you're not going to change anything by engaging them.

This post is really funny because your entire contribution to the thread has been you making stuff up and inventing sentences to insult people.

Apparently the ENTIRE contents of this thread weren't important enough for you to say anything about them because your issues are that people are calling DeadDm a republican (a thing no one said) and that in a DIFFERENT thread someone said something that you decided to get mad about by engaging in at best, extremely stupid pendantry, and at worst outright lying.

I was perfectly happy to leave this incredibly stupid point alone because it doesn't actually matter and isn't important to the nepotism point that I was making, but I guess if your sole purpose in posting in this thread is to lie about shit from a different thread, I will point out that Rahm Emmanuel's brother did in fact write an entire article about how he thinks being alive and old is bad and that old people dying is good. You can say he was only talking about his personal preference, but in actual fact he was under 75, not talking about his personal medical practice, but instead talking about how much it sucks to be old for 22 paragraphs and then ended by saying:

"Seventy-five. That is all I want to live. But if I am not going to engage in euthanasia or suicide, and I won’t, is this all just idle chatter? Don’t I lack the courage of my convictions?

No. My view does have important practical implications. One is personal and two involve policy."

and then:

As for the two policy implications, one relates to using life expectancy as a measure of the quality of health care. Japan has the third-highest life expectancy, at 84.4 years (behind Monaco and Macau), while the United States is a disappointing No. 42, at 79.5 years. But we should not care about catching up with—or measure ourselves against—Japan. Once a country has a life expectancy past 75 for both men and women, this measure should be ignored. (The one exception is increasing the life expectancy of some subgroups, such as black males, who have a life expectancy of just 72.1 years. That is dreadful, and should be a major focus of attention.) Instead, we should look much more carefully at children’s health measures, where the U.S. lags, and shamefully: in preterm deliveries before 37 weeks (currently one in eight U.S. births), which are correlated with poor outcomes in vision, with cerebral palsy, and with various problems related to brain development; in infant mortality (the U.S. is at 6.17 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, while Japan is at 2.13 and Norway is at 2.48); and in adolescent mortality (where the U.S. has an appalling record—at the bottom among high-income countries).

A second policy implication relates to biomedical research. We need more research on Alzheimer’s, the growing disabilities of old age, and chronic conditions—not on prolonging the dying process.

Now, you could argue that actually, his views on how much it sucks to be old are correct and we SHOULD do those policy things. But it is in fact, incorrect to argue that his very long description oh how much it sucks to be alive after 75 followed by POLICY PRESCRIPTIONS BASED ON THAT INFORMATION is unrelated to his policy views. Seems like "as a matter of public policy we shouldn't consider a countries healthcare worse because old people die off from pneumonia" is an incredibly relevant thing to his position as a policy person on healthcare during a pandemic that kills old people with breathing problems. Whether he is in fact, wrong, you could certainly argue about, but you can't fucking dodge this by pretending he was talking about his personal feelings.

So yes, on this one, very unimportant side point that really doesn't have anything to do with my main point about nepotism and has NOTHING to do with this thread at all, you are also wrong and/or lying.

Now, please, please, please, after you are done making your new argument that actually he doesn't hate old people, but yes he was talking about his policy prescriptions for old people, please don't bring up this random thing from another thread to continue your bad faith argument that everything in this thread is bad faith.

[MGuy]

I have complained about denners making (and this is literally a quote from the post MGuy ostensibly read) "weird half-accurate rageposts", apparently I am now defending Biden.

No one called dead a Republican. Not all conservatives are Republicans. I would love to see more posts from YLM posts defending Biden now that other people can't provide cover by posting barely defendable concerns about the next election.

Is that what MGuy said or is that what you somehow took from it? Apologies. I was merely pointing out how no one said the thing you claimed others were saying and that you have in the past defended Biden. Considering that Biden is elected now and we're past the election I thought it was obvious that I wasn't referencing what you had just said. I'm sorry I did not make it clearer. I'll try harder next time.

With regards to the conversation I was referencing kaelik would be right on both counts. It was a pedantic argument and when I called it out as exactly that ylm decided to lie about the reasons for having it. I'd be happy to pick up from where it left off with ylm proving to me that Biden isn't categorically a republican because he runs with democrats and me saying "I'm not interested in a semantic debate". Now that the election is over and people can't get real mad about how I might be hurting Biden's chances for election by pointing to his overall record I'm really interested in YLM demonstrating how Biden is actually a middle of the road democrat who doesn't have opinions or leanings beyond what he is given by his democratic handlers. That's in the past by the way and not an indication of what YLM just posted now. I am referring to another incident and am expressing my eagerness to see more content of a similar nature from YLM in the future.

[...You Lost Me]

Again, a really good example of a TGDoomer post. Kaelik claims I'm a liar when I corrected his "fuck old people" comment, because when I said "it's not fuck old people" I secretly really meant "Emmanuel has some policy positions that are in some way related to old age". This giant fucking gulf in policy positions is "at best, extremely stupid pedantry". Kaelik sees that he lied about something and he just... pretends he didn't. But calling out his intellectual dishonesty doesn't work--we've already seen that in this very thread!

So me copying Kaelik's claim about "fuck old people"? That is "inventing sentences to insult people". But the word "secret republican" as a jab at the claim that DeadDM is a conservative? That's "making stuff up"! And then there's that weird bit about how I shouldn't bring up examples of him saying things from other threads? This is the same weird stuff that TGDoomers always do.

I can make fun of Kaelik for this over and over and over. Denners can point out his weird shifting standards. Denners can quote him lying about his own words. He can drive people out of threads and off the board. He can get booted from Discord servers. He can become the most-ignored member on the forum. But Kaelik is not going to change his shitty behavior, and neither are most of the doomers on here. I can't tell you why this is such a common behavior from doomers, but it is, and we have to live with that.

[Kaelik]

And then there's that weird bit about how I shouldn't bring up examples of him saying things from other threads? This is the same weird stuff that TGDoomers always do.

My contention is that if you want to argue that this thread is bad faith and people should ignore it to post in a different thread by saying that this is a thread were people lie, maybe referencing something in this thread would be a good starting point for that argument.

I can make fun of Kaelik for this over and over and over. Denners can point out his weird shifting standards. Denners can quote him lying about his own words. He can drive people out of threads and off the board. He can get booted from Discord servers. He can become the most-ignored member on the forum. But Kaelik is not going to change his shitty behavior, and neither are most of the doomers on here. I can't tell you why this is such a common behavior from doomers, but it is, and we have to live with that.

I don't know man, seems like you can't.

You just cited to an example of me "shifting my standards" by calloously lying by insisting the sentence "used her new found power and prominence as the number 2 Democrat in the country and still being in the Senate to" Had to do with her position as Senator and VP elect, when clearly it was about her blog posting.

Then you followed it up proving that I was lying when I said I blame the media and establishment for things not voters because I said:

I repeatedly outlined that 85% of people's votes literally don't matter, that media and powerful figures manipulate and direct public sentiment, that the allocation of dollars decides how votes will turn out, and that the information needed to make decisions is deliberately withheld from voters.

The correct way for Deaddm to phrase that would be "every single person I know who decided to support Biden, including me, did so because they thought it would be a good idea to give up any chance of saving the planet from total destruction or ever improving anything at all because the media told us that a thing no one could possibly know was true."

Which was such a bad "own" by fbmf proving I blame voters and not the media that I didn't think I even need to respond to point out the parts of the sentence which are RIGHT THERE!

[...You Lost Me]

RE:Kaelik, you're 100% right, I should have made it clear that I was pointing out a pattern of your behavior. The "Fuck old people" was meant to be an example of your posting style. My goal wasn't to show that this thread in particular was bad, but that our resident doomers usually make bad posts, and thus this thread (which has lots of posts by doomers) is going to be bad.

RE:Mguy That's my fault. I should have pointed out that you made up my pattern of defending Biden, instead of saying that you now think I am defending Biden. Based on the weirdly uncharacteristic description of me, I think you're picturing erik.

For other people's info, the conversation that MGuy and I had on Discord was yet another wonderful example of why it's such a pain in the ass to talk politics with doomers. I literally, and I mean literally could not get MGuy to agree that Democrats as a whole don't take the Norquist Pledge. He required me to spell out every possible difference between Democrats and Republicans before he agreed to acknowledge that Democrats don't take the Norquist pledge. Why? Who fuckin knows. I didn't take the bait.

Our conversation went on, and on, and on, and on and on and on. About 5 people tried to reason with him. 3 people told him that his positions were incomprehensible. Erik and I both gave up trying to talk to him at all. The end of that conversation was erik writing this:

MGuy gonna MGuy

I kid you not. Literally the badge of honor Kaelik wears in his signature with a different doomer's name in it. Year to year, person to person, doomers are really similar to one another. There's not much you can do about it.

Anyways, this whole thing was just to prove a point, and I've already done that a couple times. I appreciate the doomers who helped me by acting the same way they always do. I should also say I do appreciate that your dooming is directed at making the world a better place. If I have to choose between rageposting about the lack of progressive policy in the US, or "productive discourse" about how the t-word isn't really a slur, I will take the first one any day of the week.

[MGuy]

Well shit that's hilarious. I'll admit I did not come prepared to dredge up an entire conversation that ultimately culminated in nothing. So YLM is preaching about productive discourse while staunchly refusing to engage with anything productive. Here's the big liberal pwn in a nutshell "Work toward making the thing you want to happen actually happen.", The choice to ragepost vs productive discourse can be made sure. Just make it happen. This holier than thou attempt at virtue signaling the sanctity of the discourse falls flat on its face when you consistently spend time not doing the thing you're preaching about.

I'll take the dismissive confirmation of ylm's dishonesty as progress though... So progress! Yay! Further I am not going to dredge up the entire convo but I can prove that I was not being dishonest about what YLM decided to do with their time nor my recollection of it. I'll spoiler it because this isn't so much discourse (which I was looking forward to) but YLM weirdly trying to rewrite what he'd admitted to in the convo.

Guy09/19/2020
Not the entire Hispanic population. Hispanic is a wide enough identity that there are many subsections at odds with each other. There are a lot of Hispanic people willing to side with the oppressors against the oppressed because for some, the "illegals" coming in from the southern countries are an other.

I do not believe that Biden, or as the Dems are basically saying, "Biden's handlers" are positioning themselves to do anything that might rock the boat. Biden himself is a Republican that just hasn't bought into open racism (anymore).

At this point I could make an argument that it could be strategically convenient to let Trump lose long term for the Republicans. They don't need him and he's... Particularly hard to work with or trust. His mouth is too big and they don't have much to lose if he goes down while they could set themselves up for future victories.

So this is the thing YLM started the convo over.

erik09/19/2020
Biden is a Republican? Then so is Obama I guess. Considering Biden dragged Obama to the left at least on gay rights.

Yellow Lemon Man09/19/2020
Yeah Biden is (from the US perspective) plenty left. I'm not a fan of DINO posturing like that.

So this wasn't about any kind of pledge ylm wanted me to talk about. This was specifically about a categorical error both ylm and erik decided to start an argument with.

Further erik identified his actual goal.

erik09/20/2020
It's mostly, I dunno about other people, but I'm on edge about anything that benefits Trump and depresses the chances of Biden unseating him. I knoooooow, Biden isn't great, but he's not the devil. Biden wants America to have open and fair elections and that's the super low bar that I'd rather not fail to achieve because people got depressed in voter turnout due to "both parties are bad" bullshit. I think Biden moves with the party and as it moves left he goes left. That was a bad thing back when the party was on board with mass incarceration/drug war/vietnam war/anti-lgbtq and so on, but it is becoming an asset rather than a liability. That's my silver lining on Biden. That and that the military likes him probably more than any other candidate the Dems had in primaries. It's super sad and scary that whether the military likes a candidate should even be a factor, but that relationship may be one important thing that stops Trump from ending democracy.

and I can revisit this later because this all culminates into being a nothing burger by the end. But I did address this.

Guy09/20/2020
Biden is better than Trump. I've never said any different. It is completely possible, and mature to acknowledge that both parties are bad but one of the parties is worse than the other. It is not going to help Trump to realize that there's a good chance that the people on the right will find it harder to not like Biden himself since he is essentially just like them because not all Republicans are behind Trump and are offended that he held the bible upside down that one time or disrespected the troops one too many times and there's no reason to believe Biden is going to do that and there's nothing at all in his record that would make him seem dangerous to Republican leadership who might went to nix Trump and play the long game since Biden has made it very clear he does not intend to combat the Republicans

But if you still don't think this was basically about categories I was very explicit here:

Guy09/20/2020
What I think is that Biden is a Center Right corporate shill who has spent a lifetime working against progressive causes.
[2:17 PM]
I think him having a D next to his name means when he's making his bid for an office he's wanted for a long fucking time that he'll be willing to add into his pitch whatever he thinks Dems will here because believe it or not when power hungry people are trying to win at a popularity contest (and they are not dumb) they will do things that are liable to win that popularity contest.

Hard to disagree with this right? Well a little later:

Yellow Lemon Man09/20/2020
Makes it clear they aren't Republicans, but it's accurate
Guy09/20/2020
Well it's good to understand that no, you're not specifically offended because you think that Biden is a better man than he is, just that Republican isn't a descriptor for right leaning people to you but a descriptor representative of the actual party.
I'm not going to stop calling him a Republican but when I see you make a fuss about it I'll know that's the difference.
Yellow Lemon Man09/20/2020
Hm I don't think I'm offended. Just pointing out the factual inaccuracy.Guy09/20/2020
Alright.
Yellow Lemon Man09/20/2020
Though it's true that I don't have a lot of patience with incessant doomerposting, I'm mostly into the facts bit
Guy09/20/2020
I feel ya. When people start trying to talk up Biden in order to see him in a positive light it turns my stomach.
So I get that energy.
Yellow Lemon Man09/20/2020
Republican is a descriptor for people and legislation from the Republican party. Center-rifhr is a much better term for what you're worried about

So I think we can nix with the issue of whether or not YLM had any other goals for pushing the argument. (See? Told ya he lied about it) It was all an argument he wanted to make about category because it was real important.

Now sure later I was hounded by others jumping in either confused about what was being discussed, wanting to make the case that you can't impugn Biden for his past because everything he did was right in line with what all Dems have always done, and shit but ultimately that culminated into nothing because:

Guy09/22/2020
Who here would be turned off on Biden by the statement, "There's good reason to believe that the republican elite has nothing to fear of Biden. So they have reason not to go over board with Trump because the guy they are going to get is basically a republican anyway."

Guy09/22/2020
Do you really think anyone here is going to read THAT and decide suddenly Trump is the better option?

erik09/22/2020
I know people who say there was no diff between Clinton and Trump. I don’t want to hear it again about Biden and Trump. That’s my concern. Those people didn’t vote last election.
...
krusk09/22/2020
well, no, you're crazy unpersuasive. I don't think you can convince anyone here of much, based on this thread
...
Orion09/22/2020
For the record I don't feel it's dangerous for you to gripe about Biden however you feel moved to. This is a pretty highly-political high-information crowd, for one thing. And in your personal life I actully do accept your argument that being authentic and human makes you more ifnluential than delivering a calculated message would/

So everyone who wasn't YLM didn't really give a shit about what was said. Now to be particular I only bring up the other names to show that other people did not really care and this is not representative of anyone else's arguments during the exchange. If you care to look it all up it's on the discord. I have no interest in dredging up the entirety of the conversation here and I am willing to defend most of what I said therein. This ain't the thread though. I'd change some of my statements for better clarity and to avoid getting dragged into traps I clearly fell for.

I submit to you that the conversation was entirely pointless because the only real contention to be had was ultimately one of what label to use for Biden and not anything substantive about voting practices or politics. Of course YLM defended Biden against the label (I don't know what he thinks he was doing) but for what reason? Why is YLM trying to push an argument about 'this' instead of doing a productive discourse or even talking about what the thread is about (That being actions Biden is currently taking)? I guess there's no productive discourse to be had there. In fact outside of pursuing these personal vendettas I'd say YLM has not said anything about what he believes is going on and whether or not it is good or bad. I wonder why.

[deaddmwalking]

Maybe it's things like 'Biden is a center right corporate shill' being easily disputed by voting records.

VoteView.Com.

Here's another source that scores Biden on his level of conservativism.

A score of 0.00 would be 'center'. A score of +1 would be as conservative as possible. A score of -1 would be as liberal as possible. They score Biden -.326. That would be 'left of center'. It's also left of the Democratic Center mean. And it's from 2008. Sanders has a -.529.

The only way comments like that can be squared is you're using a definition of 'center' to mean 'whatever Bernie Sanders believes'.

[Kaelik]

Wow can't imagine what a criticism of using VoteView to determine how left wing someone is would look like.

I definitely didn't make a point by point rebuttal of all of that in the past three times.

So anyway, do you remember when all the democrats proved how left they were by voting with Mitch McConnell to overrule Bernie Sander's filibuster, the "liberal" vote according to vote view. As opposed to the slightly more conservative vote of voting to keep going with the filibuster of the military spending bill in order to get 2k checks, which Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, and Elizabeth Warren did.

For god sakes the endpoint of the spectrum is literally labelled "LIBERAL" which is the right wing party in every other country!