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Biden Is Building a 'Superstructure' to Stop Trump From Stealing the Election
(www.rollingstone.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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politics
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Thank you for this. It’s great to see the anti-Biden propaganda being struck down with facts.
Except the mods are compromised so after a few hours it always gets removed.
They removed propaganda. Nothing wrong with that.
Maybe if they removed all the propaganda, you'd have a case. Removing only one side's propaganda and not the other is still being compromised.
Especially if the propaganda on the side being removed is just a collection of true things, and the propaganda on the side being left up is about half lies.
Most if not all far-left rhetoric is easily disproven misinformation and propaganda. If they’re removing anything that’s demonstrably false, good for them.
Sure but they're not removing far-left rhetoric. They're removing centrist rhetoric, and leaving up the far-left misinformation and propaganda.
I’ve yet to see that. Check the mod logs. There’s a lot of misinformation being removed that come from far-lefters.
Any of the centrist stuff being removed from what I see, is usually because they’re uncivil and being derogatory. Which is hard not to be when arguing with those people.
Not excusing incivility, but I understand it.
This is actually the first time it's been removed -- for some reason a bunch of copies of it going back a few days all got nuked at once this morning.
I actually don't really hard-disagree with removing it. To me it's extremely productive to the conversation and I didn't see the point in having to retype all that stuff out for every thread where the exact same arguments come out, but it is also clearly a repost; maybe it's better for the mods to just evenly apply all the rules to all the comments instead of trying to play the game of "well I feel this particular way about this particular comment so it can stay / so it has to go."
To me, I'm fine just rephrasing if it comes up in the future or linking to it or something. I don't get the feeling that mods are deliberately removing it specifically because of the viewpoint of it.
What about the genocide?
If your goal is to reinforce the pro-Biden crowd, good job. If your goal is to convince anyone who is anti-Biden, this won't do.
Fluff has opposite effects for people with different biases. Someone with a bias in favor of what you're saying reads all the fluff as "yup this is a metric fuckload of facts that weighs in favor of my heuristical understanding of the world", while others would read it as "this person is obviously reaching and fluffing up the pro-Biden rhetoric, so is any of it impressive?"
I'll be more concrete in my criticism, you mention both the climate action (materially important and good to mention) and also his failed attempt to pass marijuana legislation. Even bringing up marijuana legislation when the kinds of discussions we're having are about genocide, climate change, employment, etc. seems out of place, but you bring up a failed attempt to do this comparatively extremely unimportant thing, it reads as you having an immense bias and reaching for anything you can. Same thing with his failure to get proper student loan relief to people.
Essentially the only actual legitimate win he has is the passing of the climate action. Wage growth and unemployment shrinking are parts of natural boom bust cycles, not any executive orders he's put in place or action signed into law by Democrats.
For what it's worth I'm not a moderate, I'm a socialist, so I'm not normally the "truth is in the middle of two positions" type of person, but your comment is the exception to the rule, where you're not spewing out just straight falsehoods but you do have an obvious bias and are fluffing up his achievements more than deserved.
Marijuana legislation has less to do with marijuana as more to do with prisoners in prison for marijuana use, distribution, and or possession. It's a step toward decriminalization of most drugs which accounts for up to 25% of state facility incarceration depending on the state. Why the fuck am I paying tax dollars to keep a drug user in a cell? Why would you want to pay to feed them 3 meals a day?
You missed the forest for the trees. He failed to get this passed. It's absolutely fluff to reach to Biden's failures in a list of his greatest accomplishments.
Obviously I agree on decriminalizing marijuana, but that's not what my comment or the broader discussion was about.
I don't know if you genuinely missed the point of my comment, or if you're just arguing in bad faith.
this is spam
Mostly by corporate subsidies for things they were either already doing or wanting to do.
Simply removing government subsidies from oil would be very nearly sufficient to that end, too. But instead Biden’s admin has released the most oil from the national reserve than all other presidents combine; he -personally- approved the willow project permits; when everyone expected it to be dead (despite promising no new drilling on public lands,); and oil production in the highest it’s ever been.
1, 2
The vast majority of which should have been forgiven decades ago, and wasn’t because of scammy loan services. Who are still being scammy loan servicers.
A bill that was going to go no where, and he’s dawdled on legalization/reschedualing since. The only real action is pardoning nonviolent weed charges. Which is good for those affected, but not nearly as impactful as you might think (most drug convictions are state charges.)
Unemployment only measures those who don’t have jobs but want them. A lot of people that left after Covid never came back- they fully retired.
Also most jobs that came back are current either about to be massively laid off (tech,) or were very low paid service industry.
This is a lie. Wage growth cs inflation is still net down, even if you only restrict it to Biden’s time in office. Compared to since I’ve been working? lol you don’t want to know that statistic.
1, 2, 3,
Yet it wasn't until this Presidency.
I love how he throws that out like some kind of gotcha 😃
I mean, I think what he's trying to say is a little more coherent argument: That Biden's doing it wrong, and should be reforming the student loan services instead of doing programs to explicitly forgive portions of debt for specific borrowers. In which case my question would be this: The scorecard for this week is:
So it seems weird if FuglyDuck is giving Biden feedback on what is the right way to give student loan relief, like Biden's just fucking it up when it's so obvious that if FuglyDuck could get in there he could set everything right with a different approach. As we all know, getting big new things done in government is actually super simple.
Now I think it's you being a bit ridiculous. By that logic, no American can ever legitimately criticize a Presidency.
There are reasons why Biden didn't take other approaches available to him, and they aren't laudable ones. His donors don't want a precedent set that would make it easy for a future president to relieve even more debt.
Biden gets credit for what he has done, but ultimately the limit comes from what the establishment negotiates with the banks. It's way past time for leadership that will remind the banks that they weren't the ones elected.
That's fair. I wasn't trying to say "you can't criticize the president because you're not in that position," but that is sorta what I said, and that's a little ridiculous, you're right.
What I was meaning to say has one important caveat though, see: So on overall greenhouse gas emissions, and on overall amount of money forgiven on student loans, Biden has a great record. The total number of tons and total number of dollars is moving more significantly in the right direction than anyone else who's ever been president. And, he objectively tried to do a lot more than he did, but had to pare it back because other powerful people in government told him no. All of that is a little hard for FuglyDuck to directly argue against, because it's... well, it's true. So he's doing a little rhetorical dodge where he picks some element that's one small-minority piece of the whole issue, and says if Biden really cared about student loans or climate or whatever, he'd have done this piece in a different fashion. So clearly he's doing damage on purpose and we need to not vote for him.
It's honestly a pretty solid strategy for FuglyDuck to focus in on single issues like that, because I don't really know the issues well enough to say he's wrong. So what I'm saying instead is, look, Biden achieved objectively a good overall record on this issue. To pick out some piece of his overall big picture and say, sure he's winning the game, but he obviously doesn't really care, or else this minority piece would be different, to me isn't reasonable.
It'd be different if FuglyDuck was saying "Sure, Biden achieved a significant success with the climate bill, but I still think he fucked up on decision X." That shows he's in it for some honest purpose even if he and I disagree on some details. The fact that he ignores me repeatedly when I'm referring to the bigger picture, and keeps insisting the individual issues are the only things that matter (and only the ones that happen to line up with his overall narrative), makes me a lot less trusting of the overall "Biden hates the climate" picture he seems to be trying to paint.
I think we are in agreement. I don't believe FuglyDuck is commenting on good faith.
I think you might be onto something 🙂
By all means criticize but don't make it sound like he's completely ineffective or gutless because he couldn't squeeze out more given the extreme levels of obstruction from Congress and the clear conservative bias in the SCOTUS.
It wasn't me doing that.
Oh yes. so because I'm not obscenely rich, I don't get to have a say in how my tax dollars are spent, or the effort elected officials put into solving problems?
Ultimately he hasn't forgiven any student loans that weren't already supposed to be forgiven. the loan servicers used loopholes and gotchas to keep people indebted outside the spirit of the rules. many of those loans should have been forgiven back when Obama was in office. So you don't get to make that argument either.
This has been a known problem for two or three decades. He's only taking small steps to resolve it because the people it affected are very close to getting their pitchforks and torches for it. (proverbally speaking.) he's taken almost zero action to actually resolve the problem- which is that tuition is ridiculously expensive. that's the problem he should be fixing. (while yes, also honoring contract obligations. and throwing the book at people who failed to do just that.)
And Biden wasn't President for two or three decades.
Funny how you people started pitching a fit whenever anyone suggested reforming tuition rather than one-time handouts. But now that Biden has actually started doing the handouts, now you're pitching a fit that he isn't reforming tuition.
I did what now?
He was VP for 8 years. Senator for 36 years prior to that. He has been part of federal politics and a leader in the DNC longer than I’ve been alive.
He’s absolutely part of how we got here.
This statement is, as far as I can tell, simply made up. Here's a quantitative comparison of what they were already doing or wanting to do, versus the plan after the climate bill.
Good luck with that. Pop quiz: Which industry gives a fuck of a lot of money to congress? Follow-up question, in order for something that's a good idea to become law, does it have to (a) go through congress or (b) nothing further, being president means you get everything you want with no other branch of government involved?
It's common knowledge that the climate bill is not nearly enough action. But, it's also clear to me looking at it that (a) it was extremely impressive to be able to get that amount of climate improvement through the current US government to become law, and (b) giving Biden shit for it because the rest of government blocked him from doing more, seems almost guaranteed to weaken his ability (or anyone else's) to do more with a second term.
This whole mythology that "well we have to give Biden a hard time over the climate, because he's already attempting to do a lot but more action is needed, and if Trump wins and reverses every small bit of progress anyone's been able to make then that's just the price of environmental success" is, to me, not very sensible. It's like shooting allied soldiers to help win World War 2. It's like not bringing a parachute because you're really really sure you don't want your plane to crash. It doesn't make any fucking sense.
Here's a good summary of why he might have done that.
To me, "does he care about the climate?" boils down to, what has he done for the climate, and the best way to measure that is with the emissions impacts of his actions.
Doing more and blocking more development projects on top of that sounds like a great idea, yes.
Glad we're in agreement that it's good to have an American president who's finally doing good things instead of just neoliberal horror! Yes, it's nice. I would like to see more of these things happen.
You mean like releasing more oil from the reserve than every other president combined?
His actions are clearly not for climate advocacy, but rather using American tax dollars to enhance profits of his largest donors.
As for the school loans, the point there is a central accusation: he doesn’t do enough. He does just enough to mollify you while with the other hand funneling money into corporations.
I am gonna use this thread as a testbed for a little AI moderation tool for observing who is operating in good faith within the discussion.
I've given you a little constructive criticism on your overall debate strategy in one of the other threads, if you're interested to hear it.
As with a lot of things you're saying, this one seems to be simply made up. The reality is actually the complete opposite -- Biden is spending literally trillions of dollars on things like the climate bill and student loan forgiveness, and funding it by raising taxes on corporations. His budget for 2025 is set to do more of the same. By way of example, Amazon went from having a $1.2 billion tax credit to now paying $3 billion per quarter after Biden's 2022 corporate tax reforms.
It is interesting, you accuse me of arguing in bad faith.
Yet do nothing about blatant insults, blatantly bad faith accusations- and indeed engage them here. (how else am I to interpret the threat of AI mod tools?)
Further you mention your mod status, to what end? Chill the conversation?
And mentioning “AI Tools”/ presumably programmed by you or somebody in such a manner as to confirm your own bias.
I disagree with you. I think Biden is beholden to his corporate donors.
However, I hold nothing but contempt to those who engage in such forms of “persuasion”, and especially those who also hold authority.
I am acting in bad faith? Get a mirror. How else am I suppose to take that comment? Or any one else here?
As for his track record on student loans… student loans are themselves part of the problem. They’re subsidizing the very problem. while private colleges/universitoes jack the cost of tuitions and public 4 year universities to follow behind.
If you think the trillions being funneled into student debt are actually a solution and not part of the very problem, think again. Schools- particularly private universities- have zero reason to address the core problem; they got paid their unaffordably high tuition. The loan servicers have no reason to address the problems- they too are getting paid.
Meanwhile, they failed to have loans forgiven- frequently by fraudulent means- yet they’re not being reprimanded (never mind facing a criminal investigation,).
As long as the loan forgiveness exists. As long as easy-to-get loans are available, schools will continue to raise costs.
You might say “oh, but they sued to stop it”, and yes. They did. They sued because of the difference between Making a lot of money, and making even more money. (And republicans sued because they’re republicans.)
Student loan forgiveness doesn’t solve the core problem- in fact, it justifies the core problem. (That is, greedy private schools jacking rates because they can.).
Was it necessary and appropriate for Biden to act? Yes. Absolutely. But it’s far from a solution. It’s like slapping a tourniquet on an arterial laceration - yes you have to stop the bleeding; but you can’t just leave the tourniquet on there. You have to go to the emergency room and deal with the giant cut before the lack of blood flow cause the limb to be lost.
Same goes with the EV subsidies mentioned by another user. Did they really make EVs affordable, or were they unaffordable in the full knowledge those subsidies exist? (EV subsidies have existed off and on for quite a while now.)
As for the tax rate on Amazon… last year they reported just shy of 150 billion in profit. They’re a company valued at 2+ trillion dollars. The way you’re trimming it makes the 36 billion seem large. It’s literally pocket change, and they benefit greatly from the infrastructure spending and significant other government spending.
Also, to address another point- as far as policy is concerned he has a very long history in government; he’s a very large figure in how we got here in the first place. He’s been in federal office for longer than I’ve been alive. The only reason he now gives a damn about climate is because his base demands it of him.
Same goes for Gaza. He’s a self-avowed Zionist. The only reason he’s now critical of what Israel is doing is it’s untenable to not be critical, and I don’t even know wtf he’s doing on immigration and border security.
Accusations of expecting him to manage things that are the jobs of congress is idiotic when he also takes credit for things like the Infrastructure act. He wants to take credit for their the good parts he can take credit for the bad, too, or for defending things that are literally his DoJ’s job to defend.
I can’t think of a single area where he’s not done a half-assed job. Don’t get any of this wrong, Trump would be worse in every aspect. Biden, however isn’t the guy that’s going to save us.
Edit:
That links to a reply to somebody else... if that advice was meant to me... I missed it. But this reply should address why I don't think "his record is amazing" on school debt forgiveness. Federal school loans is a very large part of why tution has ballooned as much as it has. Forgiving school loans that should have been forgiven decades ago- including when he was Obamma's VP, and including when he was a Senator- per the contractual agreement in the loan... is the bare minimum of effort. the only people made whole here are the crooks.
I am not a mod here; I think you have me confused with someone else. Have I given you the impression that I'm unable to argue for myself without resorting to asserting some sort of authority? I actually think this kind of disagreement is good for the discourse; I just think it would also be good to have a separate place that wasn't subject to shouty bad faith people clogging up the comments in quite so high a number.
Your whole student loan analysis I'll more or less agree with overall, and to some extent with its application to other domains. I do think if someone's artery is cut that you should usually put a tourniquet on. It seems like Biden's been putting tourniquets on, and the other group has been trying to fistfight him for doing even that much, and trying to go through the accident victim's pockets and threatening bystanders. And they have weapons. And, somehow, he managed to get some important tourniquets on even so.
You're making a completely valid presentation of why the patient isn't yet "fine" after the tourniquet. But going further from there to "I don't see why I should support the tourniquet guy over the give-me-his-wallet-and-empty-your-own-pockets-while-we're-at-it people" doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Yes, it’s a challenging environment. No question there.
The problem is he’s incapable of doing what needs to be done. Holding Trump up as an excuse for not finding the person who can (or rather people,) is also exactly how we got here. To continue the analogy, the wound is festering, we’re about to die if the proverbial leg not removed.
Biden is either incapable or unwilling, probably incapable; at a certain point you’ve done everything you can and need to step back or you become part of the problem.
Biden's best move on climate was a subtle one that went almost unnoticed. The Democrats quietly slipped language into the inflation reduction act that reclassified CO2 as a pollutant, thus restoring the ability for the EPA to regulate it that has been stripped by the Supreme Court. That's Republican level hardball that we almost never see from the Democrats.
An agency that has almost zero power to do fuck all about it? (Compliments of Koch funding Republicans)
Again, it’s just enough to keep most people saying “he’s working on it” but isn’t actually enough to stop the republicans from fucking us over.
They had almost zero power. That is no longer true, and you have no idea what you are talking about. Furthermore, I don't think you even care.
oh, yes. I'm the one whose ignorant
not the guy using ad hominem attacks with zero evidence I'm wrong.
LOL, read my post again. My entire point was that Biden used a clever ploy to give control back to the EPA after the SC killed it. Making CO2 a pollutant bypasses that ruling.
I joked elsewhere that I would like to mess around with a little AI moderation bot that tries to go beyond "is this racism" and into whether something is actually a productive part of the conversation.
I actually started messing around with such a thing tonight, no real idea whether it'll come to anything. But I thought you should know that it particularly liked this comment. "A clarification of their previous point in a concise and clear manner. It refrains from personal attacks, engages with the substance of the discussion, and ... maintains a respectful tone and effectively contributes to the discourse."
I've been so far resisting the incredibly childish urge to tell people I've been disagreeing with that the bot thinks they are wrong. What's the point. I will however tell you that it roasted FuglyDuck for his accusation of ad hominem being, itself, ad hominem (spending half his message saying he's not the guy who is X Y Z, instead of just talking about the subject matter).
You made a bot that tells you you're good at arguing and other people are bad and wrong? Very normal and productive behaviour. Not a tool to reinforce your beliefs.
You sound like Donald Trump getting all upset on Truth Social that someone's subjecting his actions to legal scrutiny, when he should be able to go around being bullshit and lying and it's some incredible breach of justice if someone tries to tell him that he shouldn't.
Yeah but what does your bot think?
Sounds like an actually useful bot!
Do you believe the EPA is powerless?
Most regulatory agencies in the us are captured by the industries they regulate.
They’ve been largely ineffectual since bush junior.
Keep in mind almost all of them rely heavily on self reporting (“no benzene leaks here! Trust me bro!”). As long as they’re not setting lakes on fire or giving kids cancer at high enough rates doctors and civil liberties groups start taking notice, they’re going to get off with paying less than compliance would set them back.
This is an inevitable consequence of money in politics. And blaming while it absolutely isn’t fair to blame Biden for things republicans shit on….
… if you can’t be part of the solution, then, you bejng in office is part of the problem.
proceeds to blame Biden anyway
Your take is very lacking in nuance.
Perhaps a better way to say it, is that it isn’t that Biden is to blame for republicans being shit humans and the stuff they do.
He isn’t actively destroying America, no. As a country, we need more than he’s capable (or unwilling,) to provide. Intentionally or not, he and the other centrists are blocking progressives from fighting for what we do need. And by obstructing people that are capable… he’s becoming part of the problem.
Look at civil liberties and voting rights. Republicans are running roughshod over the American people. At the rate we’re going it doesn’t matter how unpopular Biden is… everywhere is going to be so gerrymandered that republicans win.
Or look at the documents case. It took over two and a half for them to get most the documents back- and they’re still missing a binder that was full of the “most sensitive intel on Russia”.
While the DoJ is nominally independent, one phone call. That’s all it would have taken.
“You have a week to get those documents back or I have your resignation. Get. It. Done.” Is entirely in his purview.
Right, those climate subsidies that went only to corporations ….. as I drive my EV that I could afford because of the government incentive
tl;dr Biden will lose because he's not FDR.