Objectively intelligent.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

A majority of Alabama voters in 1960 thought black people should ride in the back of buses and give up their seats if someone who looks like you needed it. You don't think we need to have checks on the majority?

The parties used to check each other. Now they just follow MMT and argue about how to redistribute at the margins. And about who gets to marry or fuck who, or have an abortion.

ETA: Actually, that’s a bit unfair. Clinton and Obama were both fiscally prudent. But it was easy for Clinton, as he had the tech boom, and that imploded at the end of his term. Obama was close to “Democratic Austerity.” Biden will preside over a spending orgy, however, as he has no option. I think Trump would do the same, but not quite as much as he’d be less supportive of plans to lockdown to combat spikes, which would negatively impact growth, causing need for even more stimulus.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Bullshit. Didn't that start in Europe? And fueled here with the structure of mortgages from your pussy grabber's time?

You're a pretty sophisticated guy, Hank. Do you think there have been no differences between the parties on financial regulation?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

A majority of Alabama voters in 1960 thought black people should ride in the back of buses and give up their seats if someone who looks like you needed it. You don't think we need to have checks on the majority?

Not sure what I said that could remotely give you that impression. The point was, the Republicans are trying to disenfranchise people, if not at this point to bring us back to 1960 Alabama, and Sebby was pretending that's not such a bad idea, because something.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I don't have a dog in this fight, so if I've missed something let me know, but I thought the biggest trigger in the 2007 debt crisis occurred when US housing prices fell and the equity value of heavily leveraged securitized mortgage pools basic evaporated overnight, drying up the secondary mortgage as a source of funds.

And that the real acceleration of the crisis occurred with the collapse of first Bear Stearns and then Lehman Bros.

I don't think Republicans get all the credit for the collapse of the US housing market and the investment banks that bet on them. I mean, the Rs certainly did their part, but there were some Democratic policies that had a role, too, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley, often blamed as one major component, may have been written by a bunch of Republicans, but Democrats cut a deal to let it get through and it got signed by Clinton.

I certainly don't think Democrats are blameless, but Obama did make it a priority to try to fix financial regulation, and the Republicans fought him on it.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I’ll adjust my TX answer. I should not have to live under the edicts of a CA majority. And you shouldn’t have to live under those my state. Two different worlds. My only point on TX is, your state, which is a basket case that’s hemorrhaging bodies in all directions, shouldn’t tell anyone what to do, regarding anything.

If you don't want to live here, I'm not going to cry myself to sleep. The real estate market will hold up. And when you say that, you are talking about your own particular preferences, not any kind of principle that explains why people in California or Texas or New York should have to pay as much in taxes as people in smaller states, but have less say in how that money is spent.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The parties used to check each other. Now they just follow MMT and argue about how to redistribute at the margins. And about who gets to marry or fuck who, or have an abortion.

ETA: Actually, that’s a bit unfair. Clinton and Obama were both fiscally prudent. But it was easy for Clinton, as he had the tech boom, and that imploded at the end of his term. Obama was close to “Democratic Austerity.” Biden will preside over a spending orgy, however, as he has no option. I think Trump would do the same, but not quite as much as he’d be less supportive of plans to lockdown to combat spikes, which would negatively impact growth, causing need for even more stimulus.

Clinton and Obama were forced to be austere by their Congresses.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The primaries are a problem, true, but I don't see how the GOP could survive without the religious loons and ideologues. If they abandoned the fringe, they'd just be a smaller version of the blue dog wing of the Democratic Party. What would distinguish them from fiscally conservative/socially liberal Democrats? Not much.

If you looked at Hillary v. Jeb, which was the race we thought we'd get in 2016, other than in regard to health care policy, what was the big difference? What was the difference between Dole and Clinton in 1996? Was there a massive difference between McCain and Obama or Romney and Obama other than McCain's neocon leanings?

The looming battle going forward is going to be between the Biden moderates and Progressives. Most folks aren't voting for Joe for revolution. They're just voting against Trump, and for sanity.

No shortage of differences between Hillary and Jeb, just as there were no shortage of differences between Obama and Romney. Yet both mostly practice in the realm of reality. I think a Republican party that gave up the radical right haters would inevitably draw significantly more from the business community, likely moving the Dems left so we really had a center-right and a center-left party rather than having a center and left party and a radical right party. They'd still likely get votes from the haters, but they'd have enough balls to stand up to them.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

There are not a lot of people arguing that Texas ought to be compelled to follow the sorts of rules that loons in CA seek to apply. That's why CA is relocating to TX.

Yeah, but Texans are just as irked as Californians and New Yorkers that our cities are bigger than Delaware and yet we have two Senators.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I certainly don't think Democrats are blameless, but Obama did make it a priority to try to fix financial regulation, and the Republicans fought him on it.

The collapse really occurred before Obama take office, so he didn't get a chance to fix it. My general feeling is he managed it very well given what he had to do with.

Bush should have seen the crash coming a mile away and did squat to prevent it - his approach to the economy was to cut taxes to deal with every problem, and he really only realized what he'd done by doing that after it was too late, and he just couldn't do, and didn't really want to do, a 180 in the last 6 months of his administration.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

The collapse really occurred before Obama take office, so he didn't get a chance to fix it. My general feeling is he managed it very well given what he had to do with.

Bush should have seen the crash coming a mile away and did squat to prevent it - his approach to the economy was to cut taxes to deal with every problem, and he really only realized what he'd done by doing that after it was too late, and he just couldn't do, and didn't really want to do, a 180 in the last 6 months of his administration.

The following touches both your point and Hank's argument that Obama was a would-be big spender.

To get the full history, you have to go back to HW's Presidency. The 92 recession was followed by a jobless recovery. The internet boom came along, however, and the economy did pretty well for the next 8 years. Then that collapsed. Bush II was facing a recession with another jobless recovery. To get around that, he helped to create a speculative economic boom with his "ownership society" (everybody gets a home, regardless of credit). Greenspan enabled it, of course.

Obama rolled into office with two choices: (1) take a centrist traditional (actually quite old school Republican) approach to the economic disaster; or, (2) go hard left (nationalize banks, bailout main street instead of Wall Street, give widespread debt forgiveness to borrowers, revamp the bankruptcy code to allow for negotiation of primary residence debt). He chose Option 1, against a lot of heat from the left of his own party.

I hear Hank's argument that Congress kept Obama in check, and maybe it did a bit following his drubbing in 2010. But for two years prior to that, he could have done almost whatever he liked. He could have flooded the states and fed govt with money to create govt jobs, to assess one aspect of his economic stewardship during the time. Instead, he actually put the govt on a diet, again against much anger from the left of his own party, as well as Krugman and Summers and Stiglitz and many other esteemed voices.

One can argue whether Obama's response was wise or unwise, but I don't think it's in debate that he was fiscally quite stingy in a time when it could have benefited him to spend in an MMT fashion.

And his spending in 2008-2010 is most important because, regardless of what Congress looked like after the midterms, if he had started huge spending programs, they would have carried through the duration of his first term, second term, and probably still be with us today, as Congress is never able to take away benefits once it confers them on people.

Obama cannot be credibly charged with having been reckless with the checkbook, or even with having been a wanna be spendthrift.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Not sure what I said that could remotely give you that impression. The point was, the Republicans are trying to disenfranchise people, if not at this point to bring us back to 1960 Alabama, and Sebby was pretending that's not such a bad idea, because something.

Without basis, you assume the minority efforts I support are toward the negative. That logical fallacy needn't be further addressed. It fails on its face.

It is fact that critical thinking is rare among huge portions of the population. Thus, to get a majority, you're going to get a lot of dumb people and people who don't understand what they're voting for or even why they're voting. Many of them simply vote tribally. Even among the more intelligent voters, people succumb to emotion ("I could have a beer with that guy, but not the other one.").

I'm not saying a largely dumb or mal/un/educated majority can't vote for good policies. It can. But the idea that those policies are wise because a majority voted for them is application of the wisdom of crowds, which is in reality anything but wisdom. Consider the most successful art and movies of the day (the stuff that charts and sells like crazy) and you'll see the "crowd" is devolving to the infantile and base.

The majority needs to be controlled, manipulated, to avoid having it do really dumb things, like demand we build a hopelessly ineffective giant border wall. A cunning minority can and should do that.

Keep in mind, I am not excusing voter suppression in the moment. But it can be said and is probably irrefutable that, while people like you and I understand the valid criticisms of Trump that should inform voters' decisions, an overwhelming number of people voting against him do not. They are credulous members of the crowd, who only know of what they've seen in the media, or gotten from friends on Facebook. (The same goes for people voting against Biden or Democrats generally, without considering why - a very common phenomenon I'd chalk up to emotion and tribalism.) They may do a positive thing by voting against him, but they only do so by accident, playing as the Russians say, "useful idiots."

Useful idiots form majorities. They should be feared. To borrow Hank's example about Mississippi, they are just as often on the side of evil as they are of angels.

Or I could pose this argument to you in a couple questions:*

"Is it okay to legally suppress the votes of Trump voters in counties where we know Biden voters are being suppressed"

"Is it okay to legally suppress votes for local officials whom you know are going to vote for rules that effect voter suppression in elections?"

"If you can do it legally, is it okay to suppress voters for a candidate who says he embraces the Boogaloo Boys or Proud Boys?"

* By "legally suppress," I mean to manipulate procedures and laws to make it difficult or impossible for the targets of these efforts to vote.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

Yeah, but Texans are just as irked as Californians and New Yorkers that our cities are bigger than Delaware and yet we have two Senators.

2 more than the city I live in.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Keep in mind, I am not excusing voter suppression in the moment.

I linked to an article that said the media should do a better job of acknowledging and reporting on Republican voter suppression. You responded by saying that the Republicans are just playing the game, and dismissing the principle of majority rule. If you don't want to sound like you are excusing voter suppression, you might rethink what you say about it.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Or I could pose this argument to you in a couple questions:*

"Is it okay to legally suppress the votes of Trump voters in counties where we know Biden voters are being suppressed"

No. All votes should be counted.

"Is it okay to legally suppress votes for local officials whom you know are going to vote for rules that effect voter suppression in elections?"

No. All votes should be counted.

"If you can do it legally, is it okay to suppress voters for a candidate who says he embraces the Boogaloo Boys or Proud Boys?"

No. All votes should be counted.

* By "legally suppress," I mean to manipulate procedures and laws to make it difficult or impossible for the targets of these efforts to vote.

No. All votes should be counted.

See? Not hard.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)

2 more than the city I live in.

San Francisco gets 2 Senators, and the rest of the state gets none.