Cont: The Biden Presidency (3)

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Bob001 said:
Why can't it be both? The Democratic elites have been clueless about legitimate working-class grievances. But that doesn't explain the impact of crazy internet lies. When people refuse to get covid vaccines because they think they're full of microchips, or when they swallow "Stop the Steal," or they embrace Q-Anon, or they think H. Clinton dines on infants in the basement of a pizza parlor, that's the result of false information that would never have gained a foothold in the pre-internet era and it's a real threat to our democracy. Traditional Democrats and Republicans have always had deep policy differences, but they worked from the same facts. No longer.

The worst thing about the "Disinformation Governance Board" was the stupid name, no doubt selected by a committee of bureaucrats. It sounds like a government propaganda agency. If it had been called something like the "Internet Integrity Project" or the "Information Security Conference" nobody would have noticed.
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Seems to me they're chasing symptoms and ignoring causes. People radicalizing and subscribing to conspiratorial or other fringe beliefs is not what's driving the current political moment, it's a symptom of a total collapse in faith in our institutions (broadly, not just political) that have neglected material conditions for decades.

Elites thinking they are going to find the right educational project to mollify the masses is simply wishful thinking. The public is attaching itself to fringe beliefs because the system as it exists is so obviously floundering. There is no technocratic way to polish this turd. The bottom is rotting out and the masses are in free-fall.
 
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Bob001 said:
Why can't it be both? The Democratic elites have been clueless about legitimate working-class grievances. But that doesn't explain the impact of crazy internet lies.
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It does, indirectly. When people get lied to too much and know it, particularly by authority figures and particularly by those who are supposed to be on their side, the natural response is to stop believing anything that ever comes from official authority figures and start looking for what the truth they're all hiding might be. And then the more they get told by the lying authority figures that X is absurd and can't be it, the more that tells them that X must be it or very close.

Bob001 said:
The worst thing about the "Disinformation Governance Board" was the stupid name
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Any idea's opponents will call it something that its proponents didn't make its official name, so that wouldn't matter. And this is the perfect example: its opponents practically never called it DGB; they called it "Ministry Of Truth".

The biggest factor in its getting sunk before it even started was just what an awful idea it was. The biggest problem contributing to the fact that it was ever even proposed is the fundamental thought process that it reveals was behind it: Democrats thinking that the problem was Republican disinformation in the first place. The problem was the disinformation and economic abandonment by both parties. The Democrats' weakness, their sinking public image, is not because people are uninformed about what Republicans have done; it's because people are too well informed about what Democrats have done. And that's what the fact that they even came up with this Ministry Of Truth in the first place demonstrates.
 
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Delvo said:
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it's because people are too well informed about what Democrats have done. And that's what the fact that they even came up with this Ministry Of Truth in the first place demonstrates.
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Okay, I'll bite. What do you think the Democrats have done that's in any way comparable to trying for 10 years to kill the ACA, giving giant tax breaks to the wealthiest, shrinking voting rights, appointing right-wing extremists to the Supreme Court, eliminating abortion rights, defending blatant racism, minimizing the threat of a deadly new virus and disparaging common-sense health measures, promoting the "stolen election" fraud, and ultimately trying to overthrow the lawfully elected government? For starters. Be specific.

Democrats fundamentally want government to work. Republicans want it to fail. That goes way beyond any passing policy differences.

And no one ever said the proposed board was a Ministry of Truth. It was an effort to respond to concerted, deliberate misinformation campaigns by numerous powerful entities, including even the Russian government.
 
Bob001 said:
Okay, I'll bite. What do you think the Democrats have done that's in any way comparable to trying for 10 years to kill the ACA, giving giant tax breaks to the wealthiest, shrinking voting rights, appointing right-wing extremists to the Supreme Court, eliminating abortion rights, defending blatant racism, minimizing the threat of a deadly new virus and disparaging common-sense health measures, promoting the "stolen election" fraud, and ultimately trying to overthrow the lawfully elected government? For starters. Be specific.

Democrats fundamentally want government to work. Republicans want it to fail. That goes way beyond any passing policy differences.

And no one ever said the proposed board was a Ministry of Truth. It was an effort to respond to concerted, deliberate misinformation campaigns by numerous powerful entities, including even the Russian government.
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You don't get it. The militant left wants the GOP to win on the idea that "The quicker we have an oppresive right wing government, the quicker we will have the glorious people's revolution".
This is an old, old tactic of the extreme left And it has never worked very well.
 
dudalb said:
You don't get it. The militant left wants the GOP to win on the idea that "The quicker we have an oppresive right wing government, the quicker we will have the glorious people's revolution".
This is an old, old tactic of the extreme left And it has never worked very well.
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Calm down.
 
Delvo said:
It does, indirectly. When people get lied to too much and know it, particularly by authority figures and particularly by those who are supposed to be on their side, the natural response is to stop believing anything that ever comes from official authority figures and start looking for what the truth they're all hiding might be. And then the more they get told by the lying authority figures that X is absurd and can't be it, the more that tells them that X must be it or very close.

Any idea's opponents will call it something that its proponents didn't make its official name, so that wouldn't matter. And this is the perfect example: its opponents practically never called it DGB; they called it "Ministry Of Truth".

The biggest factor in its getting sunk before it even started was just what an awful idea it was. The biggest problem contributing to the fact that it was ever even proposed is the fundamental thought process that it reveals was behind it: Democrats thinking that the problem was Republican disinformation in the first place. The problem was the disinformation and economic abandonment by both parties. The Democrats' weakness, their sinking public image, is not because people are uninformed about what Republicans have done; it's because people are too well informed about what Democrats have done. And that's what the fact that they even came up with this Ministry Of Truth in the first place demonstrates.
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Just to poke at the Ministry of Truth bit - it was flat out wrong as applied, based on the information available. The DGB was an advisory board for other bits of the DHS that actually were working on disinformation issues more directly to try to help make them more effective, without power to determine what would count as disinformation. On the other hand, if one wanted to call the DHS a Ministry of Truth, that could at least be defensible, even if the argument would be a bit weak and rather belated.
 
dudalb said:
You don't get it. The militant left wants the GOP to win on the idea that "The quicker we have an oppresive right wing government, the quicker we will have the glorious people's revolution".
This is an old, old tactic of the extreme left And it has never worked very well.
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And who do you think you mean by "the extreme left?" Marxist commune dwellers in Paris? Bernie Sanders certainly doesn't think like that. Neither does AOC. And they are about as left as you can get in the contemporary political spectrum. Seeing them as far left is a measure of how far right the country has moved in recent decades. Sanders' beliefs and policies would basically make him a Hubert Humphrey liberal in another era.
 
Political progressiveness is like atheism. Your opponents routinely use actual physical violence, but somehow you're "militant" for saying words.
 
Bob001 said:
And who do you think you mean by "the extreme left?" Marxist commune dwellers in Paris? Bernie Sanders certainly doesn't think like that. Neither does AOC. And they are about as left as you can get in the contemporary political spectrum. Seeing them as far left is a measure of how far right the country has moved in recent decades. Sanders' beliefs and policies would basically make him a Hubert Humphrey liberal in another era.
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This is what happens to your brain when you forget red-baiting is a political tactic and not actually a reflection of reality.
 
The Biden Administration is now increasing Medicare costs. This is the guy whom some people seriously claimed wanted to actually improve the medical situation in this country. :rolleyes:

Maybe he's convinced that the most crucial voter category upon which his re-election depends is the "medical insurance company CEO" voter.

And the "Chinese solar power panel manufacturer CEO" voter.

And the "let's keep poor college graduates as poor as we think we can technically get away with keeping them" voter.

But other than that, ya, he's totally the new FDR.
 
This is what that came from.

https://www.salon.com/2022/06/01/la...-gift-to-mcconnell-ahead-of-midterms_partner/

The Biden administration quietly announced last week that it will leave in place one of the largest-ever Medicare premium hikes for the remainder of 2022, despite federal health officials' decision to restrict coverage of the expensive and potentially ineffective Alzheimer's drug that drove the increase.
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That's a policy that might be criticized by itself, but I question the logic that "Not decreasing the cost" counts as "increasing it".
 
Delvo said:
https://www.levernews.com/biden-hikes-medicare-prices-and-funnels-profits-to-private-insurers/

They're two separate things. They're not just not-decreasing it. They're doing the biggest increase ever.

And shoveling more of that money at private insurance middlemen.

Right before an election.

And it involves a new drug getting FDA approval without meeting FDA standards.
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Can you quote the part that's different from what I said? The very article you cited supports my point. As a matter of fact it contains the same text as what I quoted.

The summary line at the top of the levernews article doesn't match the content.
 
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I'm rather amazed at the backlash Don Lemon is getting for questioning Biden's competency. I wondered about that myself. I'm retired but decades younger than Biden, and I can't imagine working that hard at that age, dealing with the stress, etc. I've certainly been hoping he wouldn't run again but if he's the only shot against Trump (who I don't think will actually be nominated), so be it.
 
I don't know if 'competency' is the right word there, at least not in the colloquial sense. Don Lemon's question was: “Does the president have the stamina, physically and mentally, do you think to continue on even after 2024?”

And the answer is no. But if he would have asked, "Is the president competent?" then the answer would be yes, IMO.
 
Galaxie said:
I don't know if 'competency' is the right word there, at least not in the colloquial sense. Don Lemon's question was: “Does the president have the stamina, physically and mentally, do you think to continue on even after 2024?”

And the answer is no. But if he would have asked, "Is the president competent?" then the answer would be yes, IMO.
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Good distinction.

But I found another thread where that post might be more appropriate (will cross-post it there).
 
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