Well youve had 80 years to get something done, Vijay, instead of whining. India is not doing so badly so it should be able to take care of its children if it can get its act together. You cant even get rid of the caste system. Literally discrimination by color.

Most of the world is run by corrupt dictators, one can keep building schools and sending humanitarian help but ultimately local politics and local institutions are an insurmountable obstacle to progress.

You can use the money (that you scorn) wisely to skip technologies that are known to be a dead end. Pecunia non olet.

America without its institutions and laws is just dirt that people are standing on.

Joe Biden doesn't hate the institutions of the USA. He doesn't talk about them in broad strokes in every speech he gives in a negative way. He seems to recognize that 1/2 of the country doesn't like him, more or less, but doesn't talk about those fellow Americans like they are enemies of the USA.

By contrast, all the "can't trust the government" types, including the previous president, are saying in essence things that are fundamentally anti American. Which is not to say no oversight is needed, but oversight and regulation to stop power from running amuck are different and distinct compared to dissolving those institutions or hobbling them in favor of more centralized power in the executive branch.

Biden is delegating power across government bodies and institutions, rather than concentrating it on himself.

And he doesn't rage tweet at all hours of the day and night every fucking moment he has a plucky idea. Just look at the sheer volume of tweets that poured out of that monster https://www.thetrumparchive.com/

Almost like one guy is doing his actual job and one guy is literally sitting on his phone and watching TV all day.

And one guy seems to like America and working for the government and one guy cheers every time there's bad news. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-sean-spicer-newsmax-america-b1920400.html

I would say really.

As a man, president and his administration...
- ordered an attack on the Brookings Institution
- 13 of the 'president's men' jailed (2 were A.G.s)
- Agnew resigned after allegations of bribery* (as governor) led to a conviction on tax fraud.
- "Townhouse Operation" crime wave itself
- Associated Milk Producers Inc, IT&T...even the Checkers thing foreshadowed all the sketchy 'campaign donations'

...and the Vietnam peace talks affair was in the same league as Eric's dad's 1st impeachment charge ('tho not as president)...if pushed to support 'how bad was bad' remember Nixon put marijuana on the schedule one drug list, essentially to criminalize blacks, was a much much larger crime to humanity. emptied the penny jar and a twenty from the till, if you will.

But I get your point.

[Hardin administration was pretty awful too]


* something his former lawyer said he admitted went on "for a thousand years"

@13:42 and she then donated it to the Institute of Physics to provide research studentships for people from minorities.
https://www.iop.org/about/support-grants/bell-burnell-fund

OK I will take a risk on this one. Every scientific breakthrough is supported by scientific personnel who run experiments and collect data. The head of the laboratory or institution gets to interpret the data and get the Nobel Prize. That is how teams work in science.

Its even in the video, getting the discovery discovered is a lot of tedious work, someone has to find the anomalous signal, that is great, someone else then gets to state a hypothesis about what it means, which when it proves to be right gives them the prize. Seems fair. Even if its just one on one student and professor, unless the student comes up with a fundamental concept, just noticing an anomaly does not make a Nobel Prize laureate of the student. Even if his line of search is originally against the opinion of the professor.

Now arguably in this case Ms. Bell made a bigger contribution than just collecting data and if you juxtapose that with how women were treated back then, its a nice story. But if she were a man in the same position there would be no Nobel Prize either. And possibly no compensating prize years later.

And yes she deserves her prize, I believe.

A quick summary of the HR1 'duckery'...

This bill addresses voter access, election integrity and security, campaign finance, and ethics for the three branches of government.

Specifically, the bill expands voter registration (e.g., automatic and same-day registration) and voting access (e.g., vote-by-mail and early voting). It also limits removing voters from voter rolls.

The bill requires states to establish independent redistricting commissions to carry out congressional redistricting.

Additionally, the bill sets forth provisions related to election security, including sharing intelligence information with state election officials, supporting states in securing their election systems, developing a national strategy to protect U.S. democratic institutions, establishing in the legislative branch the National Commission to Protect United States Democratic Institutions, and other provisions to improve the cybersecurity of election systems.

Further, the bill addresses campaign finance, including by expanding the prohibition on campaign spending by foreign nationals, requiring additional disclosure of campaign-related fundraising and spending, requiring additional disclaimers regarding certain political advertising, and establishing an alternative campaign funding system for certain federal offices.

The bill addresses ethics in all three branches of government, including by requiring a code of conduct for Supreme Court Justices, prohibiting Members of the House from serving on the board of a for-profit entity, and establishing additional conflict-of-interest and ethics provisions for federal employees and the White House.

The bill requires the President, the Vice President, and certain candidates for those offices to disclose 10 years of tax returns.

...what is so offensive? where is the downside?

sounds more than fair, honest and these Americans are pushing for an honest voting system. where's your evidence there's any 'duckery' in the bill... 🦜 bob

Yes. It's entertaining, but it's no less concerning. As farcical as it is, the world is watching how democracy's erosion in the USA and use it as excuses to turn their own regime/government ever more authoritarian and regressive. See how governments all over brand criticism of the governments (India, China, Brazil, Turkey, etc. to name a few) as "fake news." Suppression of journalism and protests everywhere. A very large part of this phenomenon is exacerbated, if not originated from the GOP and Trump in particular through years and years of dismantling of the USA's democracy institution and legitimacy. There's real world consequences to their shenanigans.

Aaaahahaha.

Another Bobesque tantrum post? How lovely.

Trying to equate the slight disappointment the international community has with Biden as president to the abject horror of Trump as president as if the disdain were equal. LMFAHS!! Ridiculously asinine.

As usual, right wing apologists can't read. Some gaps were left when construction halted after Biden halted funding, funding the courts had deemed illegal btw, but others were not. Some were planned, some were due to failures of the fence Trump chose, some were due to contractors doing half assed jobs or being incapable of the work, some due to topography, there were many excuses but in the end, it wasn't a wall, it wasn't complete, it barely extended border barriers, and many places were left less secure...none of which is Biden's fault. They knew full well the next administration wasn't continuing this plan. You don't think they should have planned for that maybe? Finished the parts they dismantled at least before the only supporter left power? Nope. Guess not. Perfectly reasonable to leave it half done and expect the next guy who campaigned against it to finish it or take all the blame for all it's failures. Didn't Donny promise to have it done his first term anyway?

🤦‍♂️

I read a few articles from multiple sources on both sides before responding...not just the one particular cherry picked one you linked...i know better.

Not half ever wanted the wall, and likely under 1/3 want more poorly built fencing now that we've seen how horrible it is. Over half want the border secured, but that's not the same as support for the dumb wall/fence. Border security isn't just a fence, it comes in all flavors. Indeed, many agree that the best way to stem immigration is not building barriers both physical and institutional, but to increase anti narco terrorism funding in central America and end the war on drugs. Starve the drug gangs of money, they'll lose power and stop driving families out.

It was absolutely NOT paid for, Trump had to use an executive order to redirect funds that were earmarked by congress to pay for military family housing, because he couldn't get congress to pay for his boondoggle, much less Mexico as promised. If it had been fully funded, it would have been fully built.

Biden is not doing well at immigration. In his defense, he was left a clusterfuck, but he hasn't solved any major problems yet. As an adult, I'm capable of admitting that easily. The level of incompetence between him and Trump, however, are worlds apart, and the approaches are as well. One dehumanized and demonized immigrants, the other seems to be at least trying to get a working immigration and refugee system back in place, but is moving slowly. Your implications that they're both equally awful indicates either a strong bias for Trump, or strong break with reality.

I and others have clearly said many times on other threads, Biden is failing at immigration, and failing at being prepared to accept immigrant children. As a seeming right wing apologist at best, you seem blind and deaf to those complaints from the left and pretend we are childishly hypocritical instead....so no, you're far from getting it right, you're getting it totally backwards and twisted. Derp.

Another empty complaint/accusation. What fake news did I spread? Pretty easy but also completely meaningless to shout "your wrong" with no explanation, no correction, no specifics. Very Trumpian of you sir.

Anybody who writes what you did about Biden must be a hypocritical and douchey Trump supporter or just a plain brown wrapper nutjob. Even with his speech impediment, Biden is clear, thoughtful, and coherent...unlike Trump who never said a complete sentence or even complete thought in four years. Your hyper biased characterizations and factless, pointless, non sequitor, insult ridden tantrums masquerading as an argument are what paint you as a Trumpster, not your baseless accusations of hypocrisy.

Now I remember why I had you on ignore. Thanks for the reminder.

Some sweeping generalisations, not sure we can solve childhood trauma for everybody including ourselves.

But yes in general ghettoes, lack of education and social mobility, social exclusion of groups of people (say by color for example) are bad. These life circumstances can be improved or alleviated by state or public institutions easier than limiting drug supply.

So instead of assigning every addicted person a better trained shrink it might be easier and cheaper to get some prevention going. Reverse school segregation, make better schools financially viable for poor families, support meaningful social support programmes to allow families to leave problematic neighborhoods etc.

You can only save the fucked up ones if they want to be saved and they sure dont. Give them other options early in life. Save them quickly if they drop out of society the first time rather than punish them for life.

I think that's intentional. If we saw the full unedited video, i think it would be more clear he's describing Trump and the unpopular policies he instituted despite their unpopularity and lack of support.

Edit: Based on the background it looks like his interview with Stossel last year, but the shirt collar looks a bit different.

OMFG...can you even fucking read?
From your article I found on my own.....

...the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President. Though much of this activity took place on the left, it was separate from the Biden campaign and crossed ideological lines, with crucial contributions by nonpartisan and conservative actors. The scenario the shadow campaigners were desperate to stop was not a Trump victory. It was an election so calamitous that no result could be discerned at all, a failure of the central act of democratic self-governance that has been a hallmark of America since its founding.

Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.

For Trump and his allies were running their own campaign to spoil the election. The President spent months insisting that mail ballots were a Democratic plot and the election would be “rigged.” His henchmen at the state level sought to block their use, while his lawyers brought dozens of spurious suits to make it more difficult to vote–an intensification of the GOP’s legacy of suppressive tactics. Before the election, Trump plotted to block a legitimate vote count. And he spent the months following Nov. 3 trying to steal the election he’d lost–with lawsuits and conspiracy theories, pressure on state and local officials, and finally summoning his army of supporters to the Jan. 6 rally that ended in deadly violence at the Capitol.

You call that defrauding America? You are absolutely totally bat shit crazy, it describes a bipartisan effort defending democracy from Trump's baseless partisan attacks on it, on voting, and on truth....claiming if he doesn't win, it's rigged, if he wins, it's perfect. No where did anyone even imply voting machines defrauded anyone, it clearly states the obvious opposite, that they not only didn't have any serious issues, but also a physical paper backup that, in multiple recounts, still matched the results the machines gave.

You are such a non stop and just dumb liar. No doubt it effects your family life horribly.

Sorry to be the little grey raincloud on this Hate The Hedges party, but you might want to understand the implications of what just happened

Y'know that fund that's getting all attention, Melvin Capital? Yeah, fuck them, right? Fuckin' shorters all shortin' and shit -- they played, they paid!

There's a reason they were bailed out and with all due haste.

Here's the issue: they were VERY good at the shorting game. So good that they actually had to turn away business. They made money like horses makes shit. When clients couldn't get in at Melvin, they went elsewhere. That opened the door to a lot of other firms basically mirroring exactly what MC was doing, which included shorting the fuck outta GME.

Fuck those guys too, right? It's their money, so why should I care?

Let's go back a few year, shall we, to the glorious chapter in finance and economics that was the 2008 Crash. Remember when Paulson lost his shit because he realized that in about 36 hours, the basic system called Western Capitalism was going to shit the bed; the bedroom; the whole house and pretty much every surface above the ocean within a planetary radius? This is sorta like that. Only worse.

The thing about short squeezes is that the losses can be infinite, and that's exactly why WallStreetBets did what they did. They knew if they bought and held -- diamond hands -- the stock would have to rise as the shorters had to cover their bets. Melvin Capital and a shit-ton of other, smaller firms had to do that and ran out of liquidity long before GME was even at $50. For every share of stock they shorted, they need to cough up another share at a higher value -- and they HAD to actually have the higher-priced share.

And here's where things get VERY ugly.

Shorting GME was such a sure thing that a huge number of shorts were placed. In fact, more shares of GME were shorted than actually existed. Oops. But hey, SURE THING, BABY and what's the worst that can happen?

Yeeeah, y'see where this is going now?

So these firms, not only are they broke, they don't have the shares, either. They need to come up with shares, pronto, at any price, because contractual obligations are a motherfucker in the finance world. But again, more shorts than there are shares and the people who have the shares, WSB and 4chan's /biz/, aren't letting them go. The longer they hold, the higher the price will go as short after short faces having to cough up the shares they borrowed.

A lot of people are about to lose a LOT of money -- the kinda losses that have so many zeros attached that looking at the number bores the eyes.

Back to 2008: the reason the whole world almost started Mad Max LARPing back then is that a narrow number of highly-important financial institutions were a wee bit thin on liquidity because they were having to pay it out by the boatload. That's bad. What would be better is if risk were more distributed, and how could that little plan POSSIBLY go wrong? Maybe a Black Swan event involving a huge amount of money that needs to be paid out by all of them due to this annoying bird.

That's where we are now, but no one even remotely knows what that figure is going to be. Again, (potentially) infinite losses multiplied by 150% times the number of shares actually available, multiplied by the dogshit risk factor on the loans and the leveraged payouts -- your best case scenario might be a loss of about $500 billion. Someone has to come up with that money, be it the Fed or other banks/investors, but that latter group has to come up with the money themselves, which is generally accomplished by selling profitable holdings. We all know what happens when a lot of people have to sell, right?

I always wanted to live in interesting times, thus proving what an utter fuckwit I am.

yeah, thankfully Trump didn't seem to have a strong ideology on foreign policy or really care. He let a lot of dangerous institutions like the CIA do whatever they wanted with zero oversight though. Also Pompeo was trying hard to start a war with Iran hard the last few months. Thankfully Iran didn't take the bait and waited the administration out nicely.

Jeez man. All that work! Just grant him his lies, then ask him if he's willing to give up democracy for that. You'll note he didn't do a thing to refute the fascism claim. Paraphrasing Franklin and with an eye to Russia: Those that would give up Democracy for a little prosperity deserve neither and will lose both. Thank god our institutions and self image are stronger than that egoist.

I was thinking that watching this: this crap is now fueling all these rightwing fever dreams about the deep state and coloring their attacks on domestic institutions and democracy.

I'd say it's almost like karma if it weren't so insane.