That's not a "biker," that's Lemmy from Motorhead.
https://slabs989.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/lemmy.jpg

If you want to eat meat, go ahead and eat meat. If you want to eat gluten, go ahead and eat gluten, Ditto for dairy, eggs, and everything else the PC food Nazis try to shame you into not eating.

Dad died at 92 purely from old age. He still had all his teeth, 20/20 vision, and a healthy heart for a man of his age. Time just wore his body down. Not the red meat he ate almost every day of his life.

"Remember that surprising study that recommended we should eat more red and processed meat?"

I don't remember that, because the study didn't tell people to eat MORE red meat, it just said that red meat isn't as deadly as the medical establishment would have you think. Nice straw man, though, Chase.

I'm giving that artwork a pass- very skillfully done. Sure you could say it is confrontational, strident, even menacing, but you could also turn that around and say it strikes a note of defiance.
Meinert may be a bad person but this particular work of art isn't terrible.

The thing I fear most is what comes after he’s gone.

He got away with so much shit- the Emoluments, bribing a SCOTUS justice into retirement, erasing the line between church and state, doing god knows what on Epstein’s island, all shit that should’ve landed him in jail by now. And they only Impeached him after he went after Biden, the guy the Establishment Democrats want as their nominee. I’ll bet if he went after Sanders, Pelosi would have just offered thoughts and prayers.

Anyway, the next corrupt bastard who gets in now had historical precedent for pushing tat envelope. I saw the same thing happen in the Philippines, you know. Marcos ran the place like a mafia, they booted him, and years later, Estrada got in there and looted the Treasury. He saw a Marcos got away with it for a long time, so why shouldn’t he try it, too? And after they booted that guy, you know, now they’ve got someone even worse.

Corruption is to the body politic what syphilis is to the body human. If you don’t kill it when it’s a new infection and before it can take root, it’ll soon take over everything and drive your country insane.

The fact that you didn't know that was Lemmy...

A super famous black velvet painting of Lemmy is far from dubious. You’re reaching for controversy. Thank god people who think this painting is of a “biker” wont be going there.

Folks with nut allergys ordering stuff from a place that uses nut based foods, no sympathy.

I've been going to the Mecca since 1992. Never again.

The ongoing hatchet job on Bernie Sanders by corporate media:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZhkKATtqtU

Dickhead Cheney had five heart attacks and no one gave a shit. Biggest surprise was that he actually had one, and now, like a monster in a horror flick, that grotesque ghoul has someone else's heart to continue his malevolent life of cruelty and evil.

Not knowing who the lead the singer of Motörhead is would have been a fireable offense in the old days at an alt-weekly.

Chase seems like a young lad so I'll cut him some slack on not recognizing Lemmy. If this post had been written by Dave Segal and HE referred to him as "a biker" there'd be a public execution

The taste of soy milk is quite different than almond milk. That case has no merit.

The Mecca will now serve up its food with sides of rape and entitlement. Eating that shit will kill you.

As far as I am aware, Dave Meinert has yet to be charged with any criminal offense. Nor is he the subject of any civil lawsuit.

If he is guilty, then press charges or sue the man for damages. Prove your allegations in a court of law.

The Constitution guarantees you a right to trial by jury, not trial by Twitter.

Had the Duke LaCrosse team been the subject of a #metoo attack, they’d have had their lives ruined. They were exonerated in Court after the accuser admitted she lied about the whole thing. The reason why we have Courts is because people do lie, not always and maybe not even often, but they do sometimes claim things happened which in fact did not. Remember the guy who accused George Takei of rape?

Yes, believe it or not, not everyone who is accused of wrongdoing is guilty. Sometimes people like Jussie Smollett or Amari Allen come along and decide they’re not getting enough attention so they lie. Sometimes you see a video of Nathan Phillips surrounded by Covington Catholic High School kids online and get outraged, only to find out it was very cleverly edited and you didn’t really see what you thought you saw. Sometimes, the mic gets hijacked by Asia Argento and then you find out that she’s not the suffering saint you thought she was. People fucking lie.

The Courts are not a perfect method of getting at the truth. As far as aleithometers go, they’re a lot more accurate than mass panics inspired by a Instagram posts. They still fuck up, like the Salem Witch Trials, but they also get it right more often than an angry mob does, like the McMartin Preschool Trials. Before you go on the hunt for devils and demons, be careful it’s not your own behavior that is creating hell on Earth.

Jacobin = Hipster Marxists, without a death toll (yet).

@17: Does your wrath extend to the employees who continue to work there? I'll go back someday and I hope that waitress is still there and will have a delightful breakfast.

@19: At the risk of blemishing your reputation with raindrops, double stars for you!

You know how boycotting lefties could actually make money? Create an APP for everything we're supposed to boycott, from chicken sandwiches, to hobby shops to restaurants. Make sure to update it regularly, something like "krugerrands are ok!" or "X was found not guilty of rape!" or "oil consumption is OK if it's you flying on vacation!".

My dearest Blip,

There are consequences for lying in Court. Mike Nifong lost everything for his manipulations-his law license, his job, his freedom (for a day, anyway), his reputation, and his money. There are, however, no consequences for lying on social media. It is perhaps for this reason that the deluge of accusations has been so torrential since the floodgates were opened by Rose McGowan and Asia Argento. When there are no consequences for lying, how do you know if anyone is telling the truth? How do you separate legitimate victims of lupine attack from the Boy Who a Cried Wolf? And if you have to rush to someone’s aid in response to such a call for help, wouldn’t you rather know which alarms are legitimately rung so you don’t waste time chasing after every fraud howling in the digital wilderness?

My dearest Raindrop,

To paraphrase Rose Murphy, “Whenever it rains, it rains penis from heaven.”

And to all my fans, few though he may be, I wish you penis.

Lemmy or Motörhead fans can't offer an objective view on the painting, because they admire it's subject too much. I'd have a difficult time objectively evaluating a painting of my dog, or a cherry pie àla mode. But since I don't have any admiration for or much knowledge of the man or his band, I can: It's awful.

Sure, there is some interesting shading technique applied in the hand, and I suppose it's possible that a man's ear can sprout perpendicularly from the head. (Did Lemmy have a birth defect, or did he get into a traffic accident? Like I said, I'm not a fan.) But it's an objectively ugly image of an ugly man in an ugly hat with ugly hair making an ugly gesture. Yes, there's a place for "ugliness" in art, but this isn't art, it's the visual equivalent of an airbrushed wolf-in-the-snowy-moonlight van-art, or a screaming-eagle-over-Old-Glory t-shirt, or one of those Trump-on-a-tank posters. If you love the sentiment, you'll love the "art".

It's nothing I'd choose to stare at while eating my bacon and eggs (I'd probably sit facing the opposite wall). But the Mecca is a well-preserved deco diner/bar, with an unfortunate rock and roll vibe. If I were doing renovations, my preference would be a bland landscape or no art at all. But whatever. It's an ugly painting. I guess it fits.

@13: Dickhead Cheney wasn't running for president, nor was he a 78-year-old man at the time. Sanders's heart might be fine, but his campaign is now in real trouble.

@25 - Oh yeah, right. Of course. Uh huh. Nice out.

Oops, @27 is for @24.

23,

That only works if the party lodging the false accusation is known. Most of the accusers of #metoo have remained anonymous, making it impossible to sue for defamation or anything else.

This is why a basic legal principle is the right to confront your accusers in a court of law.

Eater called Lemmy a biker. It’s a quote.

31,

A Google search for the query: #metoo AND "anonymous accuser" yields 30,200 results in 0.42 seconds. Now, the problem with bluffing like that is it was so damn easy to call you on your bluff. I mean, come on, you could have done this yourself before trying to bullshit your way through, just to make sure it wasn't easily thwarted. The only explanation for why you didn't is sheer intellectual laziness on your part.

Shall I review the 30 thousand results with you? Max Landis speaks out on anonymous accuser. How an anonymous accusation derailed my life. And these aren't from far right conspiracy pages, they're from publications like Forbes, The Daily Beast, Washington Post and CNN.

Now, don't get me wrong, I use bullshit a lot, too, but at least I'm clever enough to check to see if it floats before I put it out there. Youre capable of better than this.

The one about Max Landis features the accuser confiding in reporters that the reason she didn't reveal her identity is: she didn't want to get sued for defamation.Theres one in the Hollywood Reporter where an accuser of Paul Haggis says she won't reveal her identity because : she doesn't want to get sued for defamation. Jeramy Dodds is accused by an anonymous person (gender undisclosed) who also states anonymity is a shield against a defamation lawsuit (National Post, 2019). Placido Domingo's accusers are anonymous too, claiming anonymity is a shield against defamation lawsuits.

Shall I go on, or have I made my point?

@33: But to stay on topic, in Meinert's case his accusers are neither anonymous nor did they do so strictly on social media. If Meinert chose to pursue his accusers for defamation he has at least six named women that he could confront in court.
http://archive.kuow.org/post/six-more-women-accuse-david-meinert-sexual-misconduct-and-assault

36,

Rather than show you just one, in post 34, I have already listed four. Perhaps you should read the post and calm the fuck down rather than hastily typing an all caps reply to something you never even bothered to read.

Also, f your reply in 37 is at all true, why isn’t CNN getting sued for shielding the identity of the accusers in its articles? Why isn’t Washington Post or the Daily ab East or Forbes or for that matter anyone else?

Then again, in the absence of any real argument, I suppose you can just scam your fool head off and hope to intimidate me into backing down. You know, because you’re a real internet tough guy. I can tell because you talk in all caps. Only tough guys do that. And of course, since you can’t actually harm me in any real way, I have so much reason to fear your keyboard fury.

Lissa,

Please lodge your complaint against me with HR. They’re almighty, according to you, anyway.

41,

Obstinacy is actually a lot of fun, as I’m sure you’re well aware.

Then why are all these accusers stating flatly that they are using anonymity as a shield against a defamation lawsuit? I mean, that same claim, the claim that they are not revealing their names specifically to avoid a defamation suit, comes up over and over and over again, in just about every article. Which you’d know if you’d bothered to do the less than half a second Google search your obstinacy prevents you from conducting.

Did you study law? I mean, it seems pretty unlikely, since you used Wikipedia as a source rather than Black’s Law Dictionary or some other Law School text.

@40: I'm sorry my link kicked the sticks out from under your argument that Meinert is the victim of an anonymous internet mob allowing him no legal recourse to defend his good name.

The only person here displaying anger- such as shouting in all caps-is you.

I hate cliches, so I won’t go on about stone throwing from inside a glass house, but I think you get my point.

If anonymity is no shield against a defamation suit, as you claim, why is it used as such by almost every #metoo accuser in the articles I referred you to? You can access all 30,000 of them by conducting a Google search, by the way. I think you know the search parameters by now.

44,

Just send the link to HR.

Bernie Sanders should be Elizabeth Warren's Vice President. And why is that? Because he is a creature of the Senate, fundamentally. He authors legislation. He is interested in formulating policy. The only reason why he needs to be in the executive branch at all is to preside over the Senate and to cast the tie-breaking vote. He is not suited for the crazy amount of travel and sucking up all over the world that comes with the fierce and important vision he has laid out. He would be better suited in the role he is already best fit, and Warren would be much better suited to those tasks because her entire goal is to free the country from corruption and to enforce the law and to be a sound and trustworthy partner that represents what the Free World once meant and can mean again, nay, transcend it further as far as America can go because that is the true vision of America, not some jingoist visionary banner or insignia, just the Free World to the furthest extent possible and stable such that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are imparted to all, and that those that would bear the burdens of those values would be granted citizenship and humanely but firmly sheltered and protected behind our national security to join and bolster our collective culture and ranks, not to homogenize it into utter obedience to an escape from freedom.

@46: Ah petulance in the face of evidence.
How cliche of you. ;)

Hey! Just curious, but how many times are you going to deploy that HR remark, (which you obviously believe to be a real zinger), before you bring in your big guns and inexplicably try to insult me by calling me a German?

47,

I can see why they’d want to. However, if their method were ineffective-if they could still be sued despite their effort to prevent that by pursuing the exact same method- they would abandon this losing strategy in favor of a more effective one. They have not done so, and that calls into question your argument that this method is ineffective.

Lissa can go to HR.

@50: So three times so far. A hat trick for you!
BTW, before we get to HR zinger number four, or your "German/meth" material, I entirely agree with your comment @7. I thought it was a very astute assessment of the risks we face as a country going forward.
And with that I must leave you for the time being, as I am called away to nephew's wedding here at Camp Pendleton.
Semper Fi!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7aZOyLfqX0

Now, the problem could be that you don’t understand rhetorical questions. I get it, they can be confusing sometimes. If I say “It makes no sense to claim that anonymity is not a shield against defamation lawsuits, otherwise, why would so many people use anonymity claiming to do so because they feel it is a shield?” And your response is “How can you not understand why they would want to shield themselves?” You completely misunderstand the line of reasoning. The argument is that these people see anonymity as effective prophylaxis against a defamation lawsuit, and that is why they are all using this same strategy and they use it very often- and, this implies that it may in fact be an effective strategy as it is such a commonly used prophylaxis against lawsuit. You interpret that to mean something very different, BC a use you have absolutely no understanding of what a rhetorical question is, or how to follow an argument more complex than a+b=c.

Don’t feel bad, a lot of people suffer from low IQ. I understand your problem is organic, so I don’t hold it against you.

I also understand that a low IQ could in fact prevent you from understanding that your earlier claim that nobody ever uses anonymity as a shield against a defamation lawsuit is bullshit, because I found 30,000 examples of where they plainly do use anonymity as a shield against a defamation lawsuit in less than one half of one second by using a search engine just about everyone on Earth has heard of and has access to.

So please don’t interpret the pity I feel for you as anger. You May notice that I haven’t resorted to yelling at you in all caps, which I hope is reassuring enough. And I don’t take your anger response in all caps personally, as I realize it can be awfully frustrating when you’re still trying to figure out opposable thumbs in your personal struggle up the old evolutionary tree. Best of luck, my primordial friend.

Also, please do be careful. Low IQ comes with many challenges, and you may feel tempted to do things, say, taking up vaping as a method of smoking cessation, that seem like a great idea at the time just because you heard someone say that in a TV ad, but please don’t. It’s dangerous to just blindly believe whatever anyone ever tells you- like believing that all women everywhere are physiologically incapable of lying about sex. Believe it or not, women are fully functioning human beings just as capable of telling a lie as any man is. They actually have brains that are fully developed, believe it or not.

Please, my evolving friend, remember not to play on the train tracks, and dont fall for every line of bullshit you ever hear.

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”

― Socrates

55 - Actually strong minds discuss all three. Socrates was just trying to be profound.

Don't be mad at Socrates bro

57,

Have you ever actually read Plato? Socrates tore Euthyphro a new asshole in far colder terms than I did, and you should read what he said in Court about Meletus.

Socrates was a nasty little fucker when you pissed him ooff. Of course, you would only ‘now that if you actually read a book about him, rather than just watching Bill and Ted movies.

Dust in the wind, duuuuuuude!

Your powers are weak old man.

As are your literacy skills.

Seriously, get offline and go read a fucking book. Any book, I don’t even care if it’s Dr Seuss. Keep our library system in business, they’re good people.

Here, I’ll get you started:

Catherine the Great
Had such a huge twat,
Compared to it,
Poland is a minuscule dot.

There, that should start you off on the history section.

Take your own advice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8gt-EEpelY

Not much into history, huh?

How about a littl a James Joyce, then?

If you see Kay
Tell her, I may,
See you in tea,
tell her, for me.

It makes more sense if you read it aloud,

I'm reading history right now.

Escaping freedom

As 'freedom from' is not an experience we enjoy in itself, Fromm suggests that many people, rather than using it successfully, attempt to minimise its negative effects by developing thoughts and behaviours that provide some form of security. These are as follows:

Authoritarianism: Fromm characterises the authoritarian personality as containing both sadistic and masochistic elements. The authoritarian wishes to gain control over other people in a bid to impose some kind of order on the world, but also wishes to submit to the control of some superior force which may come in the guise of a person or an abstract idea.

Destructiveness: Although this bears a similarity to sadism, Fromm argues that the sadist wishes to gain control over something. A destructive personality wishes to destroy something it cannot bring under its control.

Conformity: This process is seen when people unconsciously incorporate the normative beliefs and thought processes of their society and experience them as their own. This allows them to avoid genuine free thinking, which is likely to provoke anxiety.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_from_Freedom

Now, did you write that book report.or merely copy-paste it from Wikipedia?

It hardly passes as original thought. The irony is, the point of the book you cited is the ability to think as an individual, and yet, while celebrating that, you merely steal the thoughts of others rather than conceive of your own.

Conformist individualism is the province of the libertarian. You’re fine with freedom as an abstract concept, so long as nobody excercises it. To you, the idea is nothing more than a means to establish your self concept of superiority, where merely claiming to believe in it automatically makes you better than those yo7 think do not, although you never exhibit any sign of it in your behavior. It’s not unlike the Christian religion in that sense. You’ll go to a jewelry shop to find the biggest gold cross you can afford in the hope of irritating those you think are not Christians themselves, but you’ll never act in any manner consistent with anything a Jesus actually taught. Pray loudly, but never feed the poor or house the homeless.

68,

The problem I have with Libertarianism is it’s just so conformist. For a movement whose raisin d’etre is individualism, it’s composed of idle drones who just repeat the same slogans, dress the same way, and express the same ideas. What is individualistic about that?

You’d think Libertarians would be the most divided party of them all, with members coming up with new ideas all the time, and so comfortable with having their ideas challenged that they’d have well thought,out counter arguments aplenty, as well as enough flexibility to think on the fly. But they don’t think, not for themselves. They just quote Milton Friedman as if they were robots programmed to make noises without having any comprehension of what the words they’re saying even mean.

Take for example our friend here. He knew maybe two sentences that Socrates is attributes to have said, and hadn’t bothered to read any of the rather easily accessible volume of literature about the man’s life. It’s not hard to find a book by Plato, every library in the world has the complete set. And if libraries are just too socialistic for you to patronize, you can buy them for maybe a dollar on amazon. So if you admire Socrates so much as to use his words to support your arguments, why not read something about him?

He can’t though. That’s too much work. Nor can he be bothered to write his own description of Escape a From Freedom, he has to copy-paste from Wikipedia.

What’s 5he point, of having a brain if you’re not going to use it? Do you have any original thoughts, or do you just steal them from others? Then again, Libertarians steal from workers all the time, don’t they? That’s what capitalism is.

The thing about conservatives is, they are the very embodiment of hypocrisy. Everything they say, they do the opposite of in their personal lives. Publicly, they’re against gay sex, privately, they’re diddling male prostitutes. Publicly, they’re for freedom, yet they vote to restrict the freedom of others. Publicly, they oppose government regulation, privately, they vote to regulate your sex life and whether a women can have an abortion. Publicly, they’re opposed to taxation, privately, they vote to tax the poor through sales taxes. Publicly, they’re in favor of the military, privately, they dodge the draft. Publicly, they’re in favor of the police, privately, they gut the pension schemes of retired cops. Publicly, they prize education, privately, they vote to reduce school budgets.

I think I could take conservatism seriously if you didn’t talk out of both sides of your mouth. And libertarianism is just conservatism in disguise, it wears the mask of liberty, and yet all the nominees are former Republicans, and all the supported policies identical to those of the GOP.

I, like Socrates, know nothing but myself.

You show great talent for saying less with more. If you wish to consider an original idea, glance beyond your flaccidlly verbose torrent of illiterate barbed screed and projection, and you may learn to think cogently, or even for yourself.

72,

Oh, go drink your hemlock and shut up.

After you.

Seriously though, the political right is entirely conformist. There is verbal praise of the individual, yet zero sign of individualism in practice. “We’re all individuals!” Oh yeah, so why are you all wearing the exact same Fred Perry polo shirt? And why do your signs all say the exact same stuff? Their chants at rallies never vary, either.

I’m a very proud member of the political Left. The reason why is because socialism represents the freedom to live for oneself as opposed to others. Under capitalism, we all are forced to live according to the whims of another; do otherwise, and you will not be able to find work-that means starvation. The least democratic time of day in America is between 9 and 5, Monday through Friday. If your boss tells you to do something epically stupid, and you don’t do it simply because it’s stupid, that’s it, you’re out, go starve. You’re not your own person, you’re a slave, maybe not owned anymore, but certainly rented.

Freedom under capitalism means the same thing it did in Ancient Greece. Freedom for the slave owners.

There’s an entire class in this country that has never worked a day in their lives. Born into wealth through no merit of their own, their hands are as idle as it gets. We all condemn the idle poor, but what about the idle rich? And if that’s just the reward for having succeeded through your efforts, what about those born into wealth who have never made any effort at all? What work did Robert Durst perform to earn his money?

If you capitalists really meant any of the crap you say, you’d do away with inheritance. Make your overprivileged brats spend half their lives in a frantic panic every time the rent is close to coming due for a while, rather than spending their spring break in San Tropez. Then maybe I’ll believe your bullshit about meritocracy.

And s for democracy, is it a democracy when you only get to pick from two capitalists every four years? Why not let our voices into the election debates, too? If you’re convinced your adulation of libertarianism is the better idea, then set it out to compete against socialism in front of the voting public, if you’re so superior, you have nothing to fear.

But you don’t, because you’re afraid we’ll win. You can promise them nothing but the freedom to starve. I can offer them the freedom to live.

@26 -- Precisely why I sent Bernie's Campaign a little CA$H.

@75 -- BINGO

Bernie has been very effective in congress, 5 examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44m2LHT5DLc

78,

In terms of the body count, your team has killed vastly greater numbers than mine ever will. And yours continues to massacre untold millions of anonymous homeless on every street in America. You add further insult to injury by pretending these victims of capitalism are somehow to blame for their fate, proving that nothing much has changed. You blamed Native Americans for the genocide you carried out on them, you blamed and continue to blame Blacks and Hispanics for the massacres you perpetuated from enslavement to he a Banana Wars to today’s ICE raids and mass incarceration, and you blame those born into poverty for their starvation while your lazy asses sit on piles of money you inherited from your parents. Your god complex is disgusting, and you have no room to point fingers at anyone until you first confront your own crimes.

Senator Sanders (I, VT) has been so Effective, he's drug the whole Democratic Party (kicking and screaming) somewhat back to the center -- policies once deemed too vastly Radical are now on the lips of most Democrtatic Pols and his Platform is favored by the MAJORITY OF US CITIZENS.

I know, lots and lots of 'conservatives' are proud of the fact that WE're the ONLY industriializecd country on the Planet without Healtcare for all. They love their Billionaires and would do ANYthing to not see them 'suffer.'

Shall we go with another Hillary, and hand the Presidency to the Repubs, yet again?

I don't Think so.

@83: It would certainly be a cringeworthy experience to have to vote for either of them, but Warren is likely more acceptable to moderates and classic conservatives than Bernie.

84,

The Overton Window moves. A moderate in FDR’s time would be a radical in the early 2000’s, and slightly left of center now. And what is a Conservative? A David Cameron Conservative is to the Left of a Donald Trump conservative. Leo Vradakar is conservative, but he wouldn’t find Bernie all that objectionable.

Rather than use these terms as if they were fixed definitions, constant at all, points in time and space let’s talk in terms of voters in parts of the country rich with electoral college votes. Bernie is extremely popular in the industrial Midwest. Drive through Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan and you will see Bernie signs everywhere. I attended a meeting in Griffith, Indiana, which had been posted to Facebook less than 24 hours prior- the line to get into the venue stretched down the street.

Bernie’s appeal isn’t to college intellectuals who study Marx asan esoteric exercise. He is popular among farmers and steel workers who have never read one line of anything Marx ever wrote, who attend church twice a week and who are otherwise what you would call ‘rednecks’. His appeal to them has to do with the realization that this system doesn’t work for them. They know they’re fucked. The steel mill offers wages at barely survival level, and a lot of folks die yo7n* from the shit they have to breath in 8n those mills. The farms are getting bought out by large corporate firms. The small towns like Kouts, where the only businesses are a Dollar General and a bar, are places where meth is killing one half of the town, and OxyContin the other half. And there isn’t a way out, even for the young people who want to leave-the education standards are so low, colleges consider a diploma from an Indiana high school to be worth the paper it’s printed in and not much else. SAT failure rates are very high, incomes are very low, and prospects for the future are dim.

And if the best you can offer them is Biden or Clinton, they’ll vote for Trump hoping that, if nothing else, he’ll blow up the system that has them pinned in a lifetime of poverty. Bernie is the most popular candidate, because he’s also trying to disrupt the system. To the Mennonite congregation on route 49 in Porter County, they refer to the system not in the terms I as a Marxist would- what I call capitalism, they call Moloch. One theming we both agree on though is, that system is evil and has to go. We may not agree on much else, but on that one point, we see eye to eye.

Now, if you look at Bernie with Seattle eyes, you see Kshama Sawant in drag. If you look at him with Whiting, Indiana eyes, you see the only chance you’ll ever get of not dying from industrial, pollutants in a trailer park next to the oil and gas refinery whose fumes your kids are inhaling as they walk to a school they’ll graduate from only to be told that’s as high as life will ever let them go.

@raindrop

I don't know what you are calling moderates and conservatives, but that is absolutely not the case with every disaffected and/or republican voter I've ever spoken to.

I think it's possible Warren could beat Trump. I honestly am not sure, but it would not surprise me if she won, would not surprise me if she lost. I think it would be extremely close.

More conservative people do not like her because she represents all the things they hate the most. Namely, she's a wonk, a beltway nerd, extremely "liberal", and she does that political speak thing where she talks around questions a lot of the time. She also does stuff for show- like when she saw AOC make a video while cooking dinner and next thing you know, Warren's drinking a beer in her kitchen. Plus the whole native thing- that really gets conservatives worked up. They are obsessed with it. And most importantly, she's thin-skinned when it comes to being bullied, she does what most nerds do, lets the bully work her up, gets flustered, responds to the bully- Trump bullied her about the native thing until she took the DNA test and made a video about it, a terrible move all around. Conservatives and people who vote Republican LOVE to "trigger the libs"- it's their favorite thing, Warren is easy bait.

Biden would win. Bernie would win. Both of them have steady, consistent personas, both of them talk the way they do without the wavering double speak thing, neither are polished, neither rattle easily when being bullied. I think a lot of this has to do with them both being old men too.

The thing is, people talk about "honesty" and liberals, media pundits etc think they mean how accurate their statements are. That is not what conservatives and Republican voters mean when they say this. They mean how "fake" someone is, hypocritical, performing according to media/think tank metrics. Warren is fake and shifty. Biden, Bernie, Trump, they are all consistent in who they are and don't care who they offend, how they come across to media pundits, etc.

And I'm not saying this as my personal preference- I definitely prefer Warren a million times over Biden and Bernie a million times over Warren. I'm telling you the way conservatives and Republicans talk about her. At least in Texas.

@wandering stars, while I agree with you generally, it's not really coal miners and steel workers and the like that matter so much anymore as it is people who've lost those jobs and the much larger base that is low paying service industry workers- fast food workers, Wal Mart employees, drivers, etc- plus the lower paying professions- health care workers, educators, etc. We've got ample evidence now of his base, and this is who they are.

But I agree with your point that none of these people are reading Marx (or at least very few of them) and this not relevant to their daily lives- they just want health care and child care and tuition etc and they are responding to new deal type political solutions to their material problems.

The other thing I think liberals and urbanites generally don't get, especially if they live in a blue city in a blue state, is just how much more likely non-conservatives in red states are to be radical. What I've found is that liberals in cities in blue states are much more conservative than they think they are. The status quo works for them, they are not very progressive. In red states, most people do vote Republican, but among those that don't, they are far more likely to want actual left politics- they will vote for someone like Bernie before they will vote for someone like Warren- the liberal status quo does not work for them, they want real change.

@80 Sir Toby

This is another thing that I really think liberals don't get. There isn't much a progressive can do in electoral politics- especially in the past 20 years. The whole point of Bernie is that his strategy is to maximize his impact outside of that field. Just like when they complain about him being an Independent. Yes that's the whole point.

Some things he's done recently: playing a key role in getting to Amazon and Wal Mart to raise their minimum wage, something that undoubtedly effects more Americans with more impact than anything else that any progressive in Congress has done legislatively since 2016. He also pushed for three years to end the war in Yemen and rescind the AUMF, something that would effect the lives of millions of people around the world, starting with a bill that almost no one paid attention to and building it up for years until there was a movement across the country for it and until he got bipartisan support for it and it passed BOTH the House and the Senate- quite an achievement in this climate- and then Trump vetoed it. And now they are starting again. Now if you want to blame Bernie for Trump's vetoes, that seems a little wrong-headed. Other things he's done: his campaign created Our Revolution and Justice Dems, both of which has managed to get the following people elected: AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressely, Ro Khanna, and loads of others who were elected in the midterms and which is now support a fantastic challenger to Pelosi. And he pushed the entire Democratic Party to the left on health care and on getting big money out of campaigns. And he's built a nation-wide diverse working class coalition of organizers, actual organizers, not just voters.

Honestly I can't think of anyone who's done more.

The fact that he did not achieve as much before says more about the Democratic Party than it does about him. He has consistently been voting and speaking and organizing for health care, against the bail out, against the wars, etc - you should be asking why so few Democrats have given a shit about these things before 2016.

BTW the whole point of these things is that movements - actual movements, not just politicians passing bills, but real change- takes time. Bernie was less effective before because there was no movement. And it's not Bernie that has built a movement, he's just been a part of it for years. The current moment started probably with the WTO thing, then went on through the antiwar years under Bush then into Occupy - that gave us the language of the 99% and renewed the focus on class issues which came out of the bank bail out and the disillusionment with liberal politics (see the election and then subsequent betrayals of Obama). From there, you got the convergence of DAPL, BLM and the movement for immigrant justice, all creating a generation of organizers across the US- Bernie was a part of DAPL, he came late to BLM (after pressure) and immigrant rights (and still hasn't done enough). What his campaign brought to the game is uniting organizers across the nation, radicalizing people, and explicitly his focus on bringing unions into it to make demands. And of course, building mass support by mainstreaming conversations about medicare for all, tuition, and getting big money out of politics. And from that framework, we've started to elect people and force real change.

It's slow, and liberals are right that it's not about Bernie as an individual- it's the mass movement that he's a part of that matters. It's his approach that matters- one that Warren explicitly rejects btw. This is the key differences between them. If Warren were focusing on this approach- mass mobilization of working class movements centering unions and material conditions while refusing corporate influence and private lobbyists and imperialists- then she would be preferable for a number of reasons including her slightly younger age. But she's not doing that. She's stating she will compromise with industry, will even take big money in the general. Her base is white professional liberals who are not organized in any way and media pundits. And she has no plan for what to do when her legislation dies in the Sentate- she will compromise. She will be another Obama.

Also the movement behind Bernie is also why his supporters aren't overly concerned about his age. If he dies in the White House and we have a president Khanna or Turner or someone else from this movement with the same strategies to mobilize a base against private interests in the face of legislative stonewalling, then that's fine, though of course I hope Bernie has a long life.

Liberals who aren't getting on board are literally thwarting a once in a life time opportunity to empower a mass movement. And it matters right now when people are taking to the streets in dozens of countries around the world. Turn off the cable news. The next few years are going to be violent. The US leadership matters, and Warren is woefully unprepared- she will simply go along with private industry and compromise, and she will use the military the way Obama did. On that issue, she doesn't even pretend otherwise.

EmmaLiz,

People are, at the end of the day, looking after their own best interests. We all like to believe our opponents are idiots, and to claim that is why they vote the way they do- Amazon execs see Trump’s base in Grand Rapids, and they think “Man, what a bunch of racist, homophobic and sexist pricks.” And Grand Rapids voters see Seattlite tech boys and thing “Elitist snobs”.

Both are wrong. The tech boys favor rainbow capitalism, where they get to keep all their money and not be disrespected in the workplace. The Grand Rapids WalMart clerk just wants to get out of the trailer park and not die of starvation when they’re too old to work anymore. Neither one is evil, or stupid, or bigoted, or crazy, even if the people on the opposite side will use all those rationales to explain why people disagree with them.

You’re right, Amazon execs aren’t going to back Bernie and want Biden. And Grand Rapids Walmart clerks want either Bernie or Trump.

This is where math and recent history become important. We already tried running a corporate centrist in 2016, and we lost. The electoral math did not lead to President Hillary. And it isn’t going to lead to President Biden, either. The electoral votes in those states add up to either President Sanders or Trump’s second term. It doesn’t matter what the popular vote says, that’s not how we elect POTUSes, and the rules aren’t going to change before 2020. If they don’t want Trump, it’s Sanders or it’s nothing.

And those Amazon execs are going to have to deal with that reality. It doesn’t matter how much coffee they give to Rachel Maddow so she can manically rant at the camera. It doesn’t matter how many knit pussy hats they hand out at the next Women’s March. If they prop up another Wall Street corporate capitalist, we’re going to fucking lose, just like they did last time.

Math, people. It’s not even algebra, it’s like 3rd grade addition and subtraction. Electoral college votes. Midwest. No, not stupid cable TV pundit rants and gesticulations, math, math, math. Clinton lost. Yes, she lost. We can lose again.

92,

Rural whites voted for Obama in the large Midwestern Astates I am referring to, which we need to win in order to capture their electoral college votes.

I’d like to reiterate that the real Mr Mehlman’s party lost in 2008 and 2012, so the fake Mr Mehlman is in no position to crow victory.

@92 Identity trumps logic. Better yet, to them, identity IS logic.

94,

Identity has little to do with any of it. It’s about money, not identity.

In the end, the answer to any question that starts with “Why do people do X” the answer is always the same, every time: Because money.

@95

I do not disagree. However, if you will permit me to co-opt another book report, I think it's also captured within the characteristics of demagoguery.

Identity as logic. Probably the most complicated aspect of demagoguery to describe is how identity functions. The central presumption behind demagoguery—and the most attractive promise it makes—is a stable taxonomy of identity, woven into the fabric of the universe. The taxonomy is also a hierarchy; some people are entitled to more goods than others by virtue of being better—they are better by virtue of having a certain identity, regardless of their behavior. Hence, paradoxically, members of the ingroup (by virtue of being essentially “better” people) are held to lower standards, and can behave worse.

Bad behavior on the part of ingroup members is explained externally (they made a mistake, they were forced into it) and is dismissed as meaningless; bad behavior on the part of outgroup members, however, signifies their true identity. Good behavior on the part of ingroup members signifies their true identity, and good behavior on the part of outgroup members is explained by external characteristics or bad motives.

One consequence is that precisely the same behavior in both groups is explained in dyslogistic terms for the outgroup (they are greedy) and eulogistic terms for the ingroup (they are hard-working). This dichotomy enables projection (explained below).

Another consequence is that effective performance of ingroup membership serves as adequate evidence for one’s claims (people believe the argument because the person seems reliable) and dismissal of counter-claims (she can’t have done that because she is such a good X).

http://www.patriciarobertsmiller.com/characteristics-of-demagoguery/

@Ken - in Obama's first run, he got an unprecedented number of voters. He did well with rural whites, but even if he didn't, it wouldn't have mattered because he turned out voters who don't typically vote. That's the key.

You'll notice than by his second run, when it became clear that he was just another corporate defender willing to sell out the American people, he did not do as well. He won, as an incumbent against an unpopular Republican, but voter turnout was quite a bit less and he lost nearly 3% of his former voters.

What that means is that the public was actually MORE willing to vote for him back when they thought there might be something to Fox News' mischaracterizations of a socialist than they were when they had evidence that he was just a corporate centrist like all the rest. Also this was in 08, when socialism was still a very dirty word, the boomers (the only people really scared of that word, Gen Xers don't care either way and Millennials prefer it) were a larger percentage of the voting public, and no one under 30 today was yet eligible to vote.

97,

It helps that the GOP are infested with herpes. McCain was a herpe, Romney is a herpe, Trump’s a bleeding pustule herpe, they’re all a bunch of fucking herpes.

As always EmmaLiz
thanks for your Elucidations.

I’m only posting this because prior to this post, we were at 99 comments. This one will bring it to an even one hundred. Aside from that, this post serves no purpose whatsoever.

What happens at 101?

I dunno about what happens at 101, it at 102, Dave Meinert’s cock explodes.

W.S. -- like Vesuvius?

Mine does that all the time.
Perhaps that might explain all these progenies...

@100

If you like centennials, celebrate the 19th Amendment's ratification by putting a woman in the White House in 2020.

104,

Only if Bernie comes out as trans.