Diversity includes equal representation of the ignorant?

Hmm… well, all 55 counties in West Virginia voted for Bernie, but the delegates picked Clinton, so then West Virginia voted Trump, as did other Rust Belt states (which won’t happen again - once bitten, twice shy).

The progressive Bull Moose party is a 3rd party that could bridge the gap by winning impoverished Trump voters while also being adequate to democrats, yet not part of the deep state en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressi … ates,_1912

The problem now is that no one can agree what a moron is. Trump supporters think morons have a monopoly on the common sense that dissipates in proportion to education, so the dumber one is, the higher he is regarded since he doesn’t live in academic fantasy land.

FDR was a C-student from Harvard and although he seems very gifted to me, apparently people thought he was a regular Joe. The electoral maps for all 4 FDR terms were a sea of blue and my 95 year old grandfather still thinks FDR was the best president ever, especially after milking social security for half a century.

So, idk, Bernie? He’s the only progressive I can think of.

Bernie still a communist?

Not as much as the former presidents ranked #2, 4, 6, 7, 8 in the aggregate of scholarly surveys since he hasn’t advocated tax rates nearly that high yet bernietax.com/

Check it out. The “commies” rank at the top even if republican economists did the ranking. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historica … ey_results

Bernie needs to be twice as communist just to be half as communist as an ideal president, according to republicans.

Sorry, the smear campaign might have backfired just a little :wink:

6vqrpyccg7811.png

Oh, and Bernie has the highest approval rating of any senator usatoday.com/story/news/pol … 590329002/

If his approval rating ascends further you may have to step it up a notch and start calling him Hitler :smiley:

I only asked because he ran a communist organization in his younger years and honeymooned in a communist country, Cuba, during the cold war among other things.

Hello Wendy:

No one seems worried about the undertow, because most everyone concerned is coming around to the show , and is telling their friends and neighbors all about it.

The caged Bird is using the Wall in all its permutations.
The issue has long been a weak one, because there are not enough fingers to stop the ever newly formed leaks in the dam. Its bleeding it all over the place, and creating more insecurity, either way. And yet, it can not be capped, while the caged bird’s cry in the desert be totally ignored.

The big partisan Congress does check and balance when a major overhaul is due. For the rest , the show must go on.

Why are right wingers so obsessed with people who lost elections years ago?

Alright, let’s investigate this.

I discovered this article bit of propaganda that reiterates what you’re saying and then some, so I’ll address the claims therein and maybe that will cover it nypost.com/2016/01/16/dont-be-f … communist/

I found the YPSL here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Peo … ague_(1907

A quick read reveals that it actually competed with the communist leagues and therefore it wasn’t one.

Also, why did Bernie not join the Communist Party USA? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA Started in 1919 and continuing to this day, Bernie certainly could have joined, but didn’t. If he’s a flaming commie, why not?

That appears to be an innocent labor union for meat packers and I could find no mention of “communism” on this page en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Pa … of_America

This claim appears to be a fabrication with intent to demonize. Reagan was a union boss, twice, but does that mean he’s communist?

And being under investigation is not a conviction of anything. Trump is under investigation for colluding with Russia right now, but does that mean he is guilty?

Anyone with an eyeball can see Trump is in bed with Putin, but no one gives a shit. They only care if it’s Bernie because he’s the REAL threat to the elites.

I can’t find reputable info on that organization.

Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies), and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States.[1] Through his presidential candidacies, as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs

A socialist is not a communist.

The Red Scare was a propaganda operation to smear communism precisely like what this author is engaging in:

A “Red Scare” is promotion of widespread fear by a society or state about a potential rise of communism, anarchism, or radical leftism. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare

And he was not jailed for espionage, but speaking against “dear leader”:

Debs’ speeches against the Wilson administration and the war earned the enmity of President Woodrow Wilson, who later called Debs a “traitor to his country.”[41] On June 16, 1918, Debs made a speech in Canton, Ohio, urging resistance to the military draft of World War I. He was arrested on June 30 and charged with ten counts of sedition.[42]

[i]Debs was sentenced on November 18, 1918, to ten years in prison.

Debs appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court. In its ruling on Debs v. United States, the court examined several statements Debs had made regarding World War I and socialism. While Debs had carefully worded his speeches in an attempt to comply with the Espionage Act, the Court found he had the intention and effect of obstructing the draft and military recruitment.

On December 23, 1921, President Harding commuted Debs’ sentence to time served[/i] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V. … arceration

Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act and started the income tax. Who is the traitor? I’ll leave it to the audience to decide whether the pot or kettle is blacker.

Democracy?!? Oh the horror! Since when is democracy synonymous with communism?

Source?

I’d be more worried if the portrait were of that toryist traitor: Reagan :evilfun:

It’s just a political party competing with democrats and republicans by representing labor unions. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Union_Party I don’t care much for labor unions and would rather the state mandate working conditions. Unions are too easy to corrupt and incentivize laziness.

Problem?

It’s a good idea imo, and if that’s communism, then a communist has his picture on all $10 bills: Hamilton! He advocated a strong federal government with diminished rights for the states and he advocated a national bank.

I don’t know much about this nor how to find the relevant info presented objectively, but whatever the truth of it, Bernie said it was one of his proudest achievements in the first paragraph on his own site berniesanders.com/issues/fighti … e-housing/

Considering the tenor and journalistic scruples of this author so far (Paul Sperry, aspiring conservative bootlicker en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Sperry ), I’m betting there is an untold noble aspect to this story explaining why Bernie is so proud.

Problem?

Should enterprises be free to use lead? Asbestos? Should they be free to form backroom deals that screw the public? Should they be free to discriminate? Anyone who believes in absolute free enterprise is either an asshole or an idiot (Trump covers both by advocating asbestos rollingstone.com/politics/p … os-707642/ )

I’ve made trips to crack neighborhoods before. Guess I must be a crackhead :confused:

The Contras also carried out a systematic campaign to disrupt the social reform programs of the government. This campaign included attacks on schools, health centers and the majority of the rural population that was sympathetic to the Sandinistas. Widespread murder, rape, and torture were also used as tools to destabilize the government and to “terrorize” the population into collaborating with the Contras. Throughout this campaign, the Contras received military and financial support from the CIA and the Reagan Administration.[54] This campaign has been condemned internationally for its many human rights violations. Contra supporters have often tried to downplay these violations, or countered that the Sandinista government carried out much more. In particular, the Reagan administration engaged in a campaign to alter public opinion on the Contras that has been termed “white propaganda”.[55] In 1984, the International Court of Justice judged that the United States Government had been in violation of International law when it supported the Contras.[56] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinist … s._Contras

Oh hell… stop war? No, we can’t have that!

Reagan was a grade-A asshole who shouldn’t even qualify as a former president, but a traitorous Redcoat infiltrate who charmed his way into office for the purpose of consolidating power away from the people with his trickle-down nonsense, expanding the prison population with his war on drugs, and sowing the seeds for the destruction of the middle class, among other offenses now requiring someone like Bernie to clean up.

Politifact dug into that politifact.com/punditfact/s … sanders-u/

[i]We wanted to see if Sanders actually honeymooned on the turf of the United States’ former adversary during the final years of the Cold War.

The trip took place while Sanders was mayor of Burlington, Vt., from 1981 to 1989. Toward the end of his mayoral tenure, the small city on Lake Champlain launched a sister-city program with Yaroslavl, located 160 miles northeast of Moscow.

The program, which is still operating today, has facilitated exchanges between the two cities involving “mayors, business people, firefighters, jazz musicians, youth orchestras, mural painters, high school students, medical students, nurses, librarians and the (Yaroslavl) ice-hockey team,” according to its website.

The timing of the trip was unusual. Bernie and Jane were married May 28, 1988. The delegation left Burlington the next day.

“Trust me,” Sanders writes in the book. “It was a very strange honeymoon.”

When reached for comment, Sanders’ campaign said that the dates for the trip had already been set, and the couple “set their wedding date to coincide with that trip because they didn’t want to take more time off.”

Will made it sound as if Sanders was visiting to condone Soviet torture practices, but the Burlington trip was more of a dialogue-building exchange program. The Vermont weekly newspaper Seven Days reported in 2009 that the sister-city relationship “helped local residents who sought to ease tensions between the United States and Soviet Union by initiating citizen-to-citizen exchanges with a Russian city.”

Also, the Soviet Union was barely intact at the time of the trip.

The trip’s primary purpose was diplomacy, not leisure, and included about 10 extra guests.

Will’s claim is accurate but is missing context about the trip’s underlying purpose. We rate his claim Mostly True.[/i]

Good! The US lags the world in healthcare while spending 10x more!

Who would be against that?

Says who and how would they know? Most of Bernie’s initiatives would pay for themselves and increased efficiency would reduce costs, mainly by the removal of profit from the equations (the gov doesn’t make a profit).

The machines and those capitalizing off the machines and the people. The robots need to start paying taxes by our taxing the owners of the robots.

The purpose of machines is to make less work for people; not more!

Not according to this bernietax.com/

If the unfounded speculation comes about, then we’ll vote him out.

No, but people shouldn’t be expected to struggle just so the rich can be a little richer, especially considering that most of the rich want to raise their own taxes.

That whole diatribe resembles a demonization operation straight from the Goebbel’s playbook.

They call people marxists, communists, stalinists, etc because nobody knows what those terms mean except that they conjure the association of miserable tyranny where everyone wears the same color of drab brown while standing in long lines for bread.

The last thing the plutocracy wants is to have Bernie come to power or they’ll be back in the same pit where they endured FDR’s reign, so they’ll resort to all manner of ad hominous propaganda to prevent that fate.

The real question here is why are poor, uneducated, exclusively-white people coming to the aid of their oppressors by slandering those who want to help them?

Well do you believe in the wisdom of the crowd or not? :wink:

Personally I think stupid people should be listened to and taken seriously, because stupid or not they are still people. That’s not to say they should be debated, this forum alone has historically shown that it is fruitless and I’ve even managed to get caught up in such a debate recently on a different thread. Does this eliminate their eligibility to being in the white house? Well they certainly shouldn’t be in charge, but the idea that the US president is a dictator makes me laugh. Stupid people make superb figureheads, because they can appear to be such “straight-talkers”, and that’s all the president needs to be. So they can be presented like they’re in charge, sure. They should also be listened to too, and I don’t just mean given lip service. Smart people make the actual decisions because they are able to know where stupid people are coming from better than they themselves (or they should) as well as be able to understand smart people, and they should do so with respect to all diversity in ability.

Hmm… :-k Actually, no, not really. I mean, in some respects, maybe, but I prefer democracy not because the crowd is so smart, but because it’s the only system that can dethrone an aspiring authoritarian and expel corrupt leaders, but a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and a crowd is only as smart as the individual members, so education is paramount in a democracy.

And Helmuth Nyborg has even said that democracy cannot exist once the average IQ of a population drops below 80 (or was it 90? Well, something that like anyway). He stated that’s why it was so ridiculous to think that democracy could have been instituted in Iraq. He said only dictators can rule people so stupid (to put it bluntly). Further, he is worried that nuclear countries will eventually have their ave IQ diluted due to immigration and then who knows what hell could be unleashed. He makes some good points.

At the same time, Satoshi Kanazawa is positing that the ave IQ will decline anyway due to the lack of reproduction by intelligent women.

My view is that the IQ may drop in terms of sheer cognitive power, but educational opportunities should increase making for an overall more intelligent population… even with immigration, because I believe every human has sufficient brainpower to learn (barring deformities), if they can get past the arrogance that they already know everything.

I used to believe there was no such thing as a stupid person and I could learn something from anyone, but then the internet came along and forced me to rethink that lol

George Carlin said not to argue with stupid people because they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience :slight_smile:

He is in some ways. He appoints people to power and selects those who will spend a whole lifetime on the supreme court. I’ll never outlive Gorsuch who just raised all my internet purchases by 7% and tried to give the cops rights to sift through phone data without a warrant. Luckily the liberal judges out-voted him 5-4, one of whom is battling lung cancer at the moment.

Trump portrayed himself as a genius at picking people, but just about everyone he hires either quits, gets fired, or Trump wishes he could fire them.

To regard Trump as a dummy is an insult to dummies.

So, a dummy is a dummy (puppet)? :slight_smile:

Essentially, poor stupid people want other poor stupid people to suffer because they believe adversity is the path to prosperity. To what extent should we placate them? Should we let poor people go hungry and restrain access to education just to make idiots feel better-represented? To what extent should we have sympathy for the arrogant?

“Aww… there there now, don’t cry. We’ll end all welfare and give tax cuts to the rich. Feel better now? Don’t you feel smarter now that we’re taking your advice, even though you yourself have no reason to believe that you know what you’re talking about, considering you didn’t even try to educate yourself, but just listened to a cigar-sucking fatass on the radio, whose own mother said he flunked everything, but just the same, your feelings count, you special snowflake!”

These people want to end handouts for those who don’t work, but I want to end handouts for those who don’t study. :techie-studyinggray: Stop handing idiots unearned power!

And to hell with their feelings because they’re arrogant pricks who deserve more than being made fun of! :angry-soapbox:

Actually the stupidity was on the invaders, that is the US. They did not know shit about the tribal and other conflicts in the country. They did not realize that the minority could expect what happened that the majority took power and used it to get revenge. This disenfranchized a huge part of the population and connected them to Iran and other happy to fuck with things elements. The Bush admins cultural ignorance was so enormous - and since they didn’t really care, this is no surprise. It was actually some general, I forget his name, who started focusing on dealing with tribal and religious leaders individually and with respect and putting a wedge between them and extremists that began to set up things for potential democracy, town by town, area by area. But since the goals of the invasion were never about democracy or the well-being of Iraquis, the solutions were not supported. And really, how can an oligarchy, with a system controlled by finance and corporate power, care enough or have the audacity to set up democracies elsewhere. When the US is a democracy perhaps it will be an effective manager of other countries transitions.

Yes, that’s what Helmuth said, but for different reasons because he asserts that only someone like Saddam could keep the people under control and reduce the rogue terrorists that currently plague the country. Maybe he is wrong, idk, but that’s what he said.

FWD to 25:45

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t8yOmoW6o8[/youtube]

Transcript (broken English):

if you reverse the situation and look at the programs, the United States going into Iraq, or going into Afghanistan, going into some of the Arab countries, and then if we go there and put enough soldiers, enough guns, and enough support, then we will introduce democracy there, but there’s one thing that is missing in this understanding: you cannot introduce democracy into a country with an average IQ below 90. The Finnish scientist - - Vanhanen have shown that in several books, but this lesson is not communicable to those responsible. They still believe that if you go in and you build up a cement factory or any anything else and then leave it to the people, for example in Africa, then it will all work and they could begin to support themselves, but five years later there are no spare parts and the administration is missing in some parts and everything goes to pieces again. We have seen it years and years again and we never seem to learn from it.

Wow so it was 90 IQ. The US is 98 :open_mouth: Remove the non-minority liberals and 88-90 is about what’s left.

You know the details better than I do, but I remember the plan sold to the people was we’re doing Iraq a favor by toppling that miserable tyrant Saddam and instituting a democracy. Then we watched the “shock and awe” on tv from the comfort of our living rooms. I never expected to see a president dumber than Bush.

lol where did Wendy go?

He was a kind of state terrorism and that can work in a way, but it not the only way. You could actually see the difference when some of the military leaders started to use tribal knowledge, bring in experts in the region, deal with tribal leaders. You could see it working. Flat out democracy needed to be long after that. Also firing the entire military was a bad idea. Hey, let’s make a lot of well-armed, well-trained soldiers angry and poor.

That plan was the new plan after they couldn’t find WMD’s. T is smarter than B, though what he is up to I have no idea.

That makes sense, but I’m a bad judge for lack of paying attention in those days. After the Patriot Act, I stuck my head in the sand to save being pissed off all the time like I am now lol.

Are you sure?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az8bwpkpcNs[/youtube]

[i]Democrats have refused to listen to the border agents and they say this is a “manufactured crisis”. That’s their new soundbite all over. I turned the television, you know, I call it “the opposition party”, it’s called “the fake news media”, and what happens is every every network has “manufactured crisis, this is a man…” every one of them… it’s like, they, you know, send out to everybody “let’s use this soundbite today” so it’s a manufa…, but it’s not. What is manufactured is the use of the word manufactured, it’s manufactured by them: every single of the negatives, but they’re not winning because it’s common sense, it’s common sense.

They say a wall is medieval. Well so is a wheel. A wheel is older than a wall and I looked at every single car out there, even the really expensive ones that the Secret Service uses, and believe me, they are expensive! I said “do they all have wheels?” Yes, oh I thought it was medieval. The wheel is older than the wall. You know that? And there are some things at work, you know what, a wheel works and a wall works. Nothing like a wall![/i]

Yes, walls work so well that’s why Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev please build more walls, because wheels are older than walls and therefore walls work! (And if you need concrete, I know this Italian fella in NY)”

The only genius of Trump that I can see is he singlehandedly caused the extinction of the republican party. Whether it will stay extinct this time or erupt again like the herpes virus it is, remains to be seen.

The next time the left controls all 3 bodies of government, they need to amend the constitution prohibiting trickle-down supply-side econonsense from every plaguing humanity again.

I’m sure I don’t know what he’s up to. I never said Trump was a genius. There’s a lot of swing room between Bu and genius.

Oh I know. I forgot to say that it’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference in genius and stupidity and for a while I thought Trump was a genius in some way, but that was a superficial observation.

I remember factory workers telling stories of college guys coming in with their fancy numbers and telling everyone how things should be done, so they say these college guys have book smarts, but no common sense (putting others down as a way to build themselves up). If by “common sense” they mean “experience actually working”, then I agree, but I think it’s deeper than that. I think they’ve deified ignorance as either being an attribute or prerequisite of common sense (probably as a way to feel superior).

Note that Trump appealed to common sense, twice.

It’s common sense that the wheels are older than walls.
It’s common sense that if wheels work, and are older than walls, then walls work.

Just like it’s common sense that witches float because they’re made of wood.

That’s why common sense is common :wink:

Common sense is what’s readily apparent to even the dumbest person, so it should be common sense that the earth is flat because: look around! But then these idiots come along with their fancy numbers and rockets and fooled themselves into thinking the earth is round and are indoctrinating our kids with their liberal bs. If the earth were round, then why don’t people fall off the bottom???

If people came from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys? It’s common sense! :smiley:

HIs campaign was very canny. That doesn’t mean it was him, but it seems like it was. One can be a genius in certain areas. It was genius not to worry at all about contradicting himself. To campaign in places like infowars online. To shock and change and shock in a different way. He broke a lot of rules and it worked. That was very smart. Not good, and perhaps the work of some of his staff, who knows.

That’s a good point! But is that anything he actually devised? I think that campaign strategy kinda fell in his lap. Trump has a knack for dumb luck. He didn’t intend to run for president and he didn’t expect to win. He’s just mindlessly bumbling along and falling into luck (kinda argues for Taoism lol)

Michael Moore claims Trump ran for president because of Gwen Stefani usatoday.com/story/life/ent … 210403002/

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNoo5-y6V_M[/youtube]

As I said, I don’t know. Though frankly, I think he had a big hand in it. I mean, it suits his temperment so well. Further, I doubt any of the other candidates or past candidates would have dared. He broke basic conventions of communication. He did not pretend to be honest, not that he ever admitted he lied, but there is a big difference. It’s not like ‘oh, he got caught contradicting himself’, he ran around joyfully contradicting himself. He was openly Machievellian. I don’t think Bush 2 would even have understood the strategy. Bush 1 would have hated it. Clinton was smart enough to do it, but as a liar, like the Bushes, to openly lie would likely have made him uncomfortable. Noble or ‘noble’ independents like Ross Perot or Ralph Nader, would have been way too priggish to even consider it. So far, Trump has not actually changed much in terms of concrete foreign policy, legislation, walls, but he has changed the way politicians can talk - not sure if they will - forever.

I think he intended to run for president. It cost him money and time, and time is money. He wanted it.

That’s true, but I think Bernie would have also broken traditions as Ocasio currently kinda is.

In 2015 I watched him tell Anderson Cooper that he doesn’t ask god for forgiveness because he doesn’t make mistakes. Coming from a church background, I figured he just pissed off the religious right, but as Trump said, “I could stand in the street and shoot someone and not lose a fan.”

The things is, he’s not aware that he’s contradicting himself, so it can’t be a plan. He just has dumb luck. His aides fuck with him by adding zeros to 10s to make him say stupid things like “employment hasn’t been this high in 100 years.”

Yes I agree.

Depends if politicians want to pander to idiots or intelligentsia. The way to cater to idiots is to piss smart people off by doing everything wrong like the kid in the back of the class aggravating the teacher and making the class laugh. So Trump has a free ticket to do anything he wants, so long as it pisses off educated people, and about the only mistake he could make is doing something right because that would be boring.

I’m not sure he spent one nickel. His air time was free and the rest paid for by contributions. It was just meant to be a publicity stunt.

[i]Wolff wrote that Don Jr. said his father “looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears—and not of joy.” Steve Bannon, who helped run the Trump campaign and helped Trump’s team through the transition, said he saw Trump morph from “a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump.”

Trump’s longtime friend and former head of Fox News Roger Ailes used to say “if you want a career in television, first run for president.” And that’s just what Trump did, with plans to start a news network and become “the most famous man in the world.”[/i] newsweek.com/mike-pence-don … ent-769701

I don’t blame him. Who would want to be president? He just wanted to run so he could get more fans. I think actually becoming president was the worst thing that could happen to him because now his name is mud.