I was hoping it would be some kind of Mech he would get in and fight.
We can tell Trump that’s what he means, and see if he starts referring to it that way in his speeches
They say Biden is building a mech, that’s what he’s doing folks. Your tax money, his mech. I’ll tell you I know a lot about mechs we could build a beautiful mech but no. It needs to be gas. Biden wants nuclear I want gas, we’ll get gas back in America that’s your jobs in honduras
I’ll give this a 4/10, mostly it’s too coherent, not rambly enough, and I doubt Trump would know Honduras is a country, let alone where to find it.
Everything after “I want gas” is just mobile keyboard auto fill words 🇺🇲
he needs to call biden obama and forget his wife’s name at least once
Now, listen, I don’t… because, folks, have you heard, I don’t know if you’d, maybe you hadn’t heard this one. But people are saying, good people, saying he’s building a robot. You know, like King Kong, a real… it’s yuuge, folks, really big. And it’s coming out of your tax dollars. Now I don’t know if… because when I was telling Valerie about this, because it’s really gotten to the point, you know, you walk down the street and they’ve got his face just posted up everywhere, Obama’s… sad. Very sad, folks, and it’s just the beginning, won’t be long before they’re breaking out the prayer mats in elementary schools, folks, and I could have told you that fifteen years ago, that we’d get to this point, and now they have this giant robot… well, maybe we’ll have to get one for me, right folks? Only we’ll make it run on coal, folks, clean burning coal, get some good hardworking Americans to keep their jobs, and we can have it up at the border - boy, that’ll keep them back in their country, folks, and they can keep lying and stealing and raping over there, keep it outta the States. I said we should get a giant robot, I told John Kelly - crooked John Kelly, he’s just no good, and Hilary and Obama and they’re just, they’re out to get me and you gotta put a stop to it.
Can we go further than that? I think we should try to convince him to build his own gaudy brass-plated mech, then laugh at him when he shuffles up a slow ramp to get inside the thing and it malfunctions in the process. Then he’ll try to convince Elon to buy it in order to afford his next appeal.
Anything you challenge him to do by insinuating he’s a lesser man by not doing it, he will do
Only soy wojack soft boys with tiny hands don’t have their own mechs.
The Knights of Dark Brandon
Even in death, I serve
It is better to die for the Emperor than to live for yourself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Wolf_Chaos
Just needs a little tweaking to work.
I will accept nothing less than a biden-mecha vs kaiju trump movie franchise now
Robot Jox
I was hoping it was some kind of lair in a volcano.
We call that a robust democracy.
Can’t Biden just kill him? He has Presidential immunity. The Supreme Court doesn’t give a fig and Biden can do whatever he wants since they take 4+ years to eventually kick the can and further delay their decisions. By that time, Biden may well be 106 years old.
Also, Trump has stated the Vice President has the power to certify the election results or not. So now Kamala can just usher Biden into a second term, “if she has the courage”.
Like Mike Pompeo said, “There will be a very smooth transition to a second Biden Presidency…”
My fuck, if only the Democrats had the balls to use the Republican’s own tactics against them
“Oh so since a president is, according to you, immune to all laws even after no longer being president, then Biden can just order a hit on Trump and all of you? Because as long as Trump isn’t arrested and left unable to run, that seems to be what you are saying. You have til the end of May :)”
That’s a big mistake. Dekocrats don’t lack balls to do what the republicans do, the just have a little bit of morals that the republicans completely lack.
That plus stopping the genocide would get my vote.
Why bother giving the ultimatum if you wouldn’t benefit by them responding though?
Which genocide? Rohingya? South Sudan? Ethiopia? Uyghurs in China? There is a lot of shit going down around the world.
Dude’s a concern troll. Don’t feed him.
I detest what’s happening to the Palestinians too, and what’s been happening to them for ages. But pretending that it’s the only thing going on in the world right now that needs to be addressed urgently honestly just belies an enormous lack of awareness of current global events.
And pretending that it needs to be a litmus test issue for whether people should vote for Biden is frankly idiotic, because I would bet my aggregate professional salary that Trump would have enthusiastically sortied several squadrons of B-52s to carpet bomb Gaza all Vietnam War style, and if you think that’s an improvement, you need your head examined.
Troll is probably a .ml GRUbot doing pootin’s bidding
The one Biden is can stop at any moment by not giving them the equipment they’re using to carry it out.
Also the Uighur claim is laughable. Xinjiang doesn’t even have travel restrictions, journalists can just go there.
Yes yes, let’s not vote Biden, Trump would be a much better option to stop all of those genocides. ~ Says fucking no one…
Trump is friends with all of the dictators. If you want to actually make a fucking difference then protest and write to your local politicians to put pressure on Washington. You trying to push this pathetic “don’t vote for genocide” bullshit is going to do nothing but it worse. Moral superiority doesn’t mean shit if you fucking burn everything down because you can’t make a big boy decision. An American Dictatorship will do nothing but make the world a darker place, and it seems you and the rest of the rest of these “don’t vote Biden” chucklefucks are doing your damnedest to bring thst about…which in turn only makes me think that you aren’t American.
~ Says fucking no one…
Says Russian agents.
If you want to actually make a fucking difference then protest
I’ve been doing that.
Why are you wasting your time trying to shame powerless voters for not pledging to vote for Biden unconditionally instead of trying to get the people with power to see that if they don’t stop the genocide, they will lose reelection?
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Hey they’re an alcoholic corn husk give em a break
Instead of threatening to kill Trump, should the SCOTUS rule in favor of immunity, Biden should threaten to kill SCOTUS. Then they’ll sit up and pay attention.
He’d be able to jail governors until they agree to amend the constitution to make the president subject to laws henceforth.
What a fucking joke.
Throw trump in Guantánamo. If anyone in Congress says anything against it or tries to impeach, send them as well. When the SC even decides to hear a case against Biden, throw them in Guantánamo as well. And then, hopefully bring back some sane laws. SC has already decided they don’t really care what The Constitution says.
Like Mike Pompeo said, “There will be a very smooth transition to a second Biden Presidency…”
I forgot about this horseshit
Smooth transition? I don’t remember…
Honestly, if the Tribunal of Six decides that Trump has total, unequivocal, blanket immunity at any point before Jan 6, 2025, Biden should just sic Seal Team Six on him. It would be 100% legal.
They won’t, because that’s insane. What they’ve done is make sure to the Supreme Court case will keep other federal trials on hold, and thus Trump won’t have a guilty verdict before election day. Trump can keep running and perhaps win, and at the same time the obvious and sane answer to the case will still come down.
That’s why they’re delaying all his cases. If they rule in favor of Trump, Biden will have the same immunity. If they rule against Trump, he probably loses the election. The only way for the fascists to win is to delay until past the election, preferably past the point when Trump is sworn in. And then on his 2nd day in office release their ruling that the President has complete and total power to do whatever he wants whenever he wants. All hail King Trump.
I really hope it doesn’t turn out that way, and at this point I think it probably won’t get to that point. But if it does, I genuinely don’t think there’s a way out of the situation without a civil war, and I say that because I am fully aware of how much of a psychotic toddler Trump is.
He used the government as a punitive instrument pretty much the entire time he was in office. Anything genuinely good and humane that occurred was done by accident. I will not be surprised if he tries to nationalize the state ANGs in blue states and straight up depose the state governments, and THAT would absolutely trigger serious, violent, and organized backlash.
I will not be surprised if he tries to nationalize the state ANGs in blue states and straight up depose the state governments
Agree.
and THAT would absolutely trigger serious, violent, and organized backlash
Disagree. Democrats are toothless. I bed Biden’s “robust” response to another attempted coup will be a strongly-worded letter. He shouldn’t be talking with lawyers, he should be talking with generals.
Immunity doesn’t make something legal, it just protects you from prosecution unless it’s revoked
The “immunity” that Trump wants the USSC to give him is effectively intrinsic, monarch-caliber “I am the law” immunity - effectively, he is working to get the court to declare that he is somehow just above the law in a categorical sense. We are not talking about immunity in the context of its understood and agreed upon legal definition in the United States.
Oh lol, I mean I think his legal team is just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks
Sadly people will point to this and see it as proof that “Biden’s rigging it for himself!” and people will sadly believe it
They will do that regardless.
People said we couldn’t vote for Sanders because Floridians wouldn’t vote for a socialist. Biden lost Florida by a wide margin, because Trump painted him as a socialist.
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Yeah. That’s why Biden lost Florida.
If you check exit polling, that was a significant factor.
tldr: it’s a dyson sphere
it’s definitely just producing 600 science per minute.
No, its an oneill cylinder.
with two dyson spheres next to eachother on one end.
I was hoping for an Aldrin Cycler…
Huh. TIL.
Makes sense, considering he wrote the book on orbital rendezvous as his doctoral thesis.
So if we took all the non solar matter in the solar system we would still not have enough matter to build a full Dyson sphere
True, but if we expanded our scope to all the space dust in the cubic light-year the sun occupies the center of, we will have enough material to build between 10-29 solar systems, complete with their own stars, so that’s probably enough material.
To collect the space dust, we need a Dyson vacuum.
But we could build a Ringworld, and then we can spin it for gravity, add shadow squares for a day-night cycle, and not have to rely on artificial gravity generators to prevent us from falling into the sun!
Depends how you do it, if its just a thin reflective foil focusing light on a few collectors then we could probably do it inside a century on just the worlds current production capacity. (baring actually getting all the foil there and engineering collectors and so on, just talking making the foil itself here)
I think that would just make a really big solar oven.
Thats the basis of quite a few solar power plants.
Let’s hope Trump doesn’t have a Gravitational Beam Emitter.
Except - Trump owns the courts thanks to Bitch McConnell and his justice stealing, and the Republicans don’t give a shit about the rule of law anyway.
What are a bunch of lawyers going to do in the face of a crowd of well armed republicans determined to fight to put Trump in the presidency? Jan 6 was a shitshow and they were lucky it was disorganized.
Regardless what happens trump is going to claim the election was rigged anyway.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Numerous Democratic lawmakers, operatives, Biden campaign advisers, and administration officials tell Rolling Stone that if the president does ultimately beat Trump this November, the election will be exceedingly close.
Top officials in both the Trump and Biden camps are expecting an uncomfortably tight election outcome in November, sources in both campaigns have told Rolling Stone on numerous occasions over the past year.
Sources in and around the president’s legal and political operations say the Biden campaign’s current wargaming is informed by questions aides asked themselves in the wake of the 2020 election: What if there’s a rematch in four years with Donald Trump?
Still, Team Biden has been planning for years sketching out what Trump could do as the leader of the GOP, and has partnered with the Democratic National Committee and a vast network of liberal attorneys and legal groups to conduct similar doomsday-style wargaming.
Bidenworld’s closely-held list of nightmare scenarios — in which Democratic legal teams would have to battle it out tooth and nail with Republican counterparts before, during, or after Election Day 2024 — has grown “comically long,” says one source with direct knowledge of the matter.
Biden campaign officials and other Democrats familiar with the topic tell Rolling Stone that a key concern, for which step-by-step gameplanning has already begun, is how to robustly respond if Trump and other leading Republicans try to engineer another Jan. 6-style power grab.
The original article contains 1,511 words, the summary contains 234 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Oh, I was hoping they were going to literally trap him inside a giant obelisk. Shame.
Tartarus?
Phantom Zone
When Republicans want to make sure the elections are fair: “You’re all just losers and conspiracy theorists!”
When Democrats want to make sure the elections are fair" “They’re just being careful.”
Unironically yes. Democrats are no saints, but republicans are just straight up evil, and actively attempting to dismantle what little democracy we have.
Can you please explain your comment further? What do you mean by “fair”. Can you provide examples of how the GOP was trying to make elections “fair”, and contrast with what the democrats are attempting to do?
No, they can’t.
Is he doing that between naps and ice cream while these fucks are on vacation all while thousands of children starve in Gaza?
We could have just ran a popular candidate that helped people for four years instead of spending that time what to do about the unpopular candidate not being able to decisively beat the worst president in the history of America.
A random empty suit off the street would easily beat trump.
Probably would be handling genocides better too
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Who is “we”?
What is a “popular candidate”?
There were actually elections, you know.
Biden isn’t exactly my cup of tea but he’s more or less reasonable on the national field. And people should understand when you elect a president (despite what Trump would tell you), you are actually electing an administration, a structure of workforce based on certain values. As long as something crazy doesn’t happen that puts the speaker up there, for the most part it’s those ideas that are winning the elections.
And people should understand when you elect a president (despite what Trump would tell you), you are actually electing an administration, a structure of workforce based on certain values.
A-fuckin-goddamn-men.
This is what I always had a problem with as far as Trump is concerned. Trump only cares about Trump and he also believes he knows everything. He hires “yes men” not people who will inform him, not that he’s the type to accept information from others (unless it’s a lie meant to disparage his opponents.) That’s way more dangerous to us than his stupid Twitter usage and drawing on weather maps.
It’s also why, although I don’t love Biden, I’m ok with him. I know he’s only responsible for putting the rubber stamp on ideas his administration is coming up with. He may issue initial goals, but the administration has the expertise and does the work and they don’t exactly seem like a bunch of ghouls in this administration.
There were actually elections, you know.
In less than half the states…
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-primary-elections/calendar
The primary is performative, the DNC has been openly admitting they’re not interested in fair primaries go like a decade now, even openly saying if they don’t get the results they want, they’ll ignore results.
You might not have realized it yet, but you personally don’t need to understand something for it to be true
You might not have realized it yet, but you personally don’t need to understand something for it to be true
Literally one of the shittiest ways to talk to a person and ensure they won’t take you seriously.
this is the shitty world we live in for 2024. Unless one of these geezers dies this is what its going to look like.
And no, a random empty suit off the street would not easily beat trump; when the corporate media aparatus is pointed at you things will always be like this because they want the worst guy to win, always.
The amount of downvotes you’re getting for the most common sense solution is really sad.
I have a feeling all those crazy 2016 Clinton supporters were IP banned from most major social media sites.
So now they’re on Lemmy.
Theyre just as bad as trump voters. They don’t care about issues or what a candidate achieves if they win. They just want their “team” to win an election.
That’s their end goal, so if anyone ever says a negative thing about their teams candidate, they take it personal and say the worst thing you can ever do is admit any flaws.
It’s blind loyalty to a person. And that shit is fucking dangerous.
I just can’t support that shit. I paid attention in history class. If the only two political options are that far gone, there’s been other political parties in America before, and there can be again.
There is nothing as bad as trump voters
The neoliberals here have formed the same rabid fanbase around Biden that trump has in his safe spaces.
You are right, but we’re kind of past the point where saying so is useful. But if Biden resigns and hands the reigns to Kamala, no way in hell should anyone accept another sham primary because she is an encombant. I’m so sick of these supposedly pro-democracy Democrats and their entire bullshit primary system.
Just fyi, it’s “incumbent”
Thanks
but we’re kind of past the point where saying so is useful
Bruh, the general hasn’t even started…
It’s not too late to run someone that can beat trump.
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Biden, for whatever reason, is an extremely unlikable president. Undeniably so. These two candidates might literally be the only two candidates that could lose to the other. Sad state of affairs.
Personally I think Bernie would still easily steam roll trump and is far more popular than Biden. Only way he would run tho is if Biden stepped down which he won’t… but that’s sorta the problem
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I don’t think you can say what Bernie would do if Biden stepped down, he has stated that he will not run precisely because Biden is running again and he doesn’t want to make any voters think he was an option, the incumbent is just automatically going to win the primary. He doesn’t want to sour any voters that really wanted him to win the primary when there is no chance he will win going up against an incumbent. If Biden stepped down and it was an open DNC primary then I think Bernie would almost certainly run again.
You are being weirdly stubborn in considering actual possibilities. I get that we are likely stuck with Biden but that’s because Biden is going to run again, not because there are no other options. Biden is not a good choice though and he should honestly step down, there are way better choices. Newsom would also be better than Biden and you could be sure if there was a primary with no incumbent in it he would be in there.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He’s a proven leader, appeals to many on all sides of the political spectrum, and the supreme court has ruled they can’t keep someone off the ballot, and neither can states, so if the Senate Democrats don’t stop it then there’s nothing that can be done about it.
If the leader of an insurrection can be on the ballot, a foreign born American citizen can.
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Yeah, that’s kinda my point. He’s ineligible, but so is trump. The Supreme Court said that only Congress can keep someone from running, and the current Congress won’t do it for trump, and may not do it for someone running as a Democrat, if they could beat trump.
He’s not running because he didn’t think he could, but the general hasn’t started, so he has time.
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If you have a working strategy to get there, I’m all ears. Despite Biden’s lack of popularity, the vast majority of Democratic voters seem to be in the “don’t challenge an encombant” camp.
the vast majority of Democratic voters seem to be in the “don’t challenge an encombant” camp.
Why would you think that?
The DNC canceled NH’s primary because it’s been going progressive. And less than a third of voters would be happy if Biden was president.
Voters didn’t get a say, lots of states haven’t even held.primaries yet
Still not seeing a plan. My state hasn’t voted yet, and I won’t be voting for Biden, but I still know he is the nominee. It’s not even really possible for him to lose at this point, and everyone else has dropped out. The party could replace him, but I don’t see that happening without some kind of major medical episode.
Still not seeing a plan.
No, you just keep ignoring it, I said it a long time ago…
A random empty suit off the street would easily beat trump
We run someone else in the general.
It cost a literal billion dollars for Biden to win his first presidential election. And that was by like 30k votes in a few states. He’s less popular now, especially in those states due to his actions in Israel.
Do you legitimately think a random American couldn’t be trump with a billion dollars?
Because it’s not going to be cheaper for Biden this time.
I wasn’t as clear as I thought. Since you and I don’t get to choose the nominee, what’s the plan to get Biden replaced on the ballot?
bUtTrUmPiSwOrSe!
Legitimately just do one thing for people that makes a visible, palpable change in their lives for the better and you’ll never lose an election again.
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Except the mods are compromised so after a few hours it always gets removed.
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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.
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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
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Biden took the biggest action on climate change in US history; the goal of the climate bill is to put us on track for a 40% reduction in US emissions by 2030
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.
Biden ordered the forgiveness of half a trillion dollars in student debt
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.
Biden introduced a bill to legalize marijuana federally, which the Republicans killed in the senate.
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.)
Biden achieved the lowest unemployment in 20 years after having been handed an economy that was still digging out from the apocalypse that was 2020.
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.
Wages at the bottom end of the economy have actually been growing, outpacing inflation,
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.
The vast majority of which should have been forgiven decades ago.
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:
- Biden: Gave $6 billion loan relief
- FuglyDuck: Gave $0 loan relief
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.
Now I think it’s you being a bit ridiculous. By that logic, no American can ever legitimately criticize a Presidency.
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.
Now I think it’s you being a bit ridiculous. By that logic, no American can ever legitimately criticize a Presidency.
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.
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.)
This has been a known problem for two or three decades
And Biden wasn’t President for two or three decades.
he’s taken almost zero action to actually resolve the problem
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.
Mostly by corporate subsidies for things they were either already doing or wanting to do.
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.
Simply removing government subsidies from oil would be very nearly sufficient to that end, too.
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.
he -personally- approved the willow project permits
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.
The vast majority of which should have been forgiven decades ago, and wasn’t because of scammy loan services.
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.
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.
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.
He does just enough to mollify you while with the other hand funneling money into corporations.
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:
I’ve given you a little constructive criticism on your overall debate strategy in one of the other threads,
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.
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.
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.
Biden has given a massive boost to unions in multiple ways, restarted enforcement of anti-trust laws, eased enforcement of Marijuana laws / moved towards decriminalization, and has forgiven $138 billion in student debt.
I’m no fan of Biden and we should definitely demand better, but it’s ridiculous to claim he hasn’t done just one thing to make people’s lives better. This list is just off the top of my head, except the figure for student debt. I didn’t even include climate issues since there has been some bad to subtract from the good, but he’s been far better than any Republican would be.
what is this “move to decriminalization”?
Just appoint a head of the DEA who won’t arrest people for pot and pardon everyone in prison for possession/distribution. He chooses to allow the violence of criminalization to continue.
has forgiven $138 billion in student debt.
The overwhelming majority of that was due to a bush-era law.
We saw how much unilateral power the executive has under trump. We see how capable the democrats are of whipping the vote when it’s funding to bomb foreigners or lock them in cages. What would it take for you to realize they are not unable to do these things, but unwilling? I struggle to imagine a scenario that would prove that, which hasn’t already happened.
what is this “move to decriminalization”?
Just appoint a head of the DEA who won’t arrest people for pot and pardon everyone in prison for possession/distribution. He chooses to allow the violence of criminalization to continue.
You know he already pardoned everyone who was in federal prison for simple possession, 2 years ago, right?
And told the DEA to reschedule it
And passed a bill for full federal legalization, which the Republicans defeated in the senate?
We saw how much unilateral power the executive has under trump.
Yes, Trump famously got everything he wanted. Ukraine never got their military aid that he tried to block, and the Department of Justice famously bent to his every whim and prosecuted his political opponents when he kept ordering them to. I remember it well.
We see how capable the democrats are of whipping the vote when it’s funding to bomb foreigners or lock them in cages.
This is actually the most heinously dishonest of the things you’ve been saying but I have become discouraged and don’t want to spend too much more time researching and illustrating why this is all wrong.
Family separation at the border was already dead when Biden took office; it only ran for about a year in the middle of his presidency. But Biden did start the task force to find the kids’ families and reunite them. The flow of immigrant children was quite literally in the exact opposite direction of what you’re saying under Biden: From being imprisoned in cages to being back with their families. Look up your own citation for it, I’m getting genuinely irritated that I have to spend time talking about this.
And passed a bill for full federal legalization, which the Republicans defeated in the senate?
The president doesn’t pass bills, and this one wasn’t passed by those that do pass bills. Tell progressives again that they don’t know how government works.
I’m gonna cut to the chase of a longer comment I typed out. The only part that really needs to be said:
“So, since there’s no way to argue with it factually, the combatant seizes on a deliberate misunderstanding of what I was saying and tries to reframe the whole conversation around that misunderstanding, in order to create a thing to disagree about which isn’t the factually-indefensible original thing to disagree about.”
The rest and the context are pretty self-explanatory.
You wanted to give him credit for passing something that didn’t pass and that he can’t pass. If you don’t want people getting on your case for it, don’t tell others that they don’t know how government works.
He proposed legalizing it. Nothing passed. Proposals and failures are not accomplishments. He doesn’t get credit for BBB for the same reason: it failed.
You may be willing to give him credit for failures. I give him credit for his successes, such as selling weapons to Netanyahu for genocide.
Any new DEA administrator would have to be approved by the Senate, and an an appointment that was a defacto decriminalization vote would not pass.
The bar that was set in this discussion was that Biden hasn’t done anything to improve lives. I have already made a comment elsewhere in this thread indicating that I do not suffer from the delusions you are putting on me. Biden absolutely should be doing more, that just wasn’t the bar presented.
Or you could just deny reality like some do
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Also helps that any instance that gets taken over by MAGA or Russian Trolls can be ejected
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Gotta love being called an evil shitlib for suggesting that Joe Biden isn’t turbo hitler and the current system, while flawed, can be improved and burning it all down would likely result in far more hardships than reforming what we’ve got.
Oh, come on. Centrists have been saying that everyone to their left is all the way to their right since before Clinton lost to every centrist’s second choice.
Quite a few instances block lemmy.world because it’s so overrun by shouty accounts with bad opinions as to be a significant problem.
lemmy.world mods are also compromised. They’re just more subtle about it than lemmygrad et al.
Do you have a source for this? Reddit’s mods on big or politically-or-commercially-relevant subs were very clearly compromised, but I hadn’t seen any indication of that on lemmy.world and I was kind of hoping that it would be a lot more resistant.
Comments with blatant falsehoods? Cool. Comments calling out those falsehoods? Removed by mod, rule 3
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