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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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One of the first and most strange economic measures taken by my country's government during this crisis was to suspend business inspections by our tax enforcement agency. But in the last years "just Balkan things" apply more and more to the US, honorary member soon?
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The US president appears to have been sending mixed messages regarding General Motors and ventilators based on the information in these three tweets:
+ Show Spoiler +
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
Trump staked his entire presidency upon really good numbers in the stock market and has been blowing a glorious bubble to keep things there. Now that things have all shut down, he's clearly in full-on panic mode about how bad it all is. The common theme there isn't production of respirators or not, it's opening up factories and getting "the economy" moving again.
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TLADT24920 Posts
Literally overnight
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This crisis does certainly highlight how mercurial Trump's temperament is on a given issue. It puts it in sharp relief how, for all that he claims to operate via instinct, gut, and his "best brain," he ultimately bases most of his positions and decisions on whoever talked to him last (or whatever was covered on the TV he is watching last). Just convince him something is his idea and in his own self-interest and voila, you've got a backer until someone else gets to him!
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On March 28 2020 05:27 JohnDelaney wrote:The US president appears to have been sending mixed messages regarding General Motors and ventilators based on the information in these three tweets: + Show Spoiler + He's officially invoked the defense production act to force their hand. Good move, but honestly too late.
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Well, thank god he waited to use his leverage to get nothing done
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He has the guts to add 'GM was wasting time' when the internet is plastered full of him flip flopping. sigh
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On March 28 2020 05:41 LegalLord wrote: Trump staked his entire presidency upon really good numbers in the stock market and has been blowing a glorious bubble to keep things there. Now that things have all shut down, he's clearly in full-on panic mode about how bad it all is. The common theme there isn't production of respirators or not, it's opening up factories and getting "the economy" moving again. It feels a bit crass to already jump to “what do we think all this will do to Trump’s chances in November?” But it’s clearly the frame he’s using for a lot of his decision-making in the crisis, so it’s probably worth talking about.
What feels to me like an uncertain question is the exact relationship between the economy and electoral chances. It’s sort of conventional wisdom that the current economy is one of the biggest factors in electoral success of an incumbent president, and to my limited understanding the empirical case for that is pretty strong. Incidentally, I’ve always found that somewhat troubling about the efficacy of democracy, considering the correlation between “good president” and “good economy at end of first term” is probably pretty weak, and in general the president probably doesn’t have that much impact on the economy 90% of the time.
But I’m also not sure a case like this has been tested before. The economy is bad, but that’s plainly because of the coronavirus, not some general mishandling of monetary policy or regulations or something. Of course, if you still think that’s Trump’s fault it might not matter how the economy got bad. But if you think coronavirus is basically a natural disaster that was going to devastate our economy no matter who was in charge, the normal rule of “bad economy -> vote against incumbent” might not apply. It takes some digging into the heads of voters and why they tended to follow that rule in the first place.
If voters just follow a sort of “the buck stops here” logic, you’d have to figure Trump doesn’t stand a chance. So from his perspective you’d have to be hoping that voters’ judgment is more contingent on how “at fault” they perceive him to be, and then try to pass the buck when this all goes as bad as seems inevitable at present. If that’s the logic, he’ll be trying very hard to sell the idea that a) the economy was good before coronavirus because of him, b) it wasn’t his fault that the coronavirus ruined everything, so c) he’s the best guy to make the economy good again.
b) seems like the hardest sell, so I’d expect most of his efforts to be toward finding someone else to blame when stuff goes bad. Maybe something like making a big fuss about wanting to reopen everything, letting health experts overrule him, then later making a big fuss about “if everybody had listened to me and reopened everything, the economy would be doing great now!”
Edit: typo
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On March 27 2020 22:20 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2020 22:11 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 27 2020 21:59 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 27 2020 21:55 Biff The Understudy wrote: That's not really my point though. People vote for all kind of reasons, rational and irrational, well or ill-informed. They are lied to, or told the truth on various degree. That has little to do with populism.
Populism is when Maduro paints his opponents as enemy of the people guided by foreign powers. Or when Trump supporters oppose the real american, white, working class midwest folks against the "globalists", costal "elites" and minorities, all not-so-real people.
And populism is, sorry, when your candidate represents the american people, but your opponents represent "the establishment". And when the numbers are not in your favour, you call the game rigged and you declare the other side illegitimate. The description you give of populism can just as easily be applied to the Russia bot/interference/Berniebro narratives and the Democratic party. To absolutely none of those, you really don't understand what I'm saying, but as I said populism exist on all points of the political spectrum. Including the centre left. I do and it does. I remember vividly 2016 and being told constantly I was endangering the country and world by allowing myself to be a useful idiot for a foreign country. Wild conspiracies about how criticism was driven by Russian propaganda and the whole lot. That definitely was a huge part of the Clinton campaign. We're seeing the same thing with Biden. Also "#MoscowMitch" is basically part and parcel what you describe. I just don't see the analytical value in your articulation of what you identify as populism. Let's say populism is what you say it is. What's your point? That politics has an element of popular support, and you find it unsettling? No you don't understand and your example are beyond terrible.
No democrat has ever said that Trump voters were not real Americans or that Bernie voters were fundamentally illegitimate.
I imagine very well you don't see the value of the concept of populism.
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On March 28 2020 07:29 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2020 22:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 27 2020 22:11 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 27 2020 21:59 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 27 2020 21:55 Biff The Understudy wrote: That's not really my point though. People vote for all kind of reasons, rational and irrational, well or ill-informed. They are lied to, or told the truth on various degree. That has little to do with populism.
Populism is when Maduro paints his opponents as enemy of the people guided by foreign powers. Or when Trump supporters oppose the real american, white, working class midwest folks against the "globalists", costal "elites" and minorities, all not-so-real people.
And populism is, sorry, when your candidate represents the american people, but your opponents represent "the establishment". And when the numbers are not in your favour, you call the game rigged and you declare the other side illegitimate. The description you give of populism can just as easily be applied to the Russia bot/interference/Berniebro narratives and the Democratic party. To absolutely none of those, you really don't understand what I'm saying, but as I said populism exist on all points of the political spectrum. Including the centre left. I do and it does. I remember vividly 2016 and being told constantly I was endangering the country and world by allowing myself to be a useful idiot for a foreign country. Wild conspiracies about how criticism was driven by Russian propaganda and the whole lot. That definitely was a huge part of the Clinton campaign. We're seeing the same thing with Biden. Also "#MoscowMitch" is basically part and parcel what you describe. I just don't see the analytical value in your articulation of what you identify as populism. Let's say populism is what you say it is. What's your point? That politics has an element of popular support, and you find it unsettling? No you don't understand and your example are beyond terrible. No democrat has ever said that Trump voters were not real Americans or that Bernie voters were fundamentally illegitimate. I imagine very well you don't see the value of the concept of populism.
I hear that kind of rhetoric all the time (Trump and Bernie supporters get called Russian bots regularly), so I presume you're making a semantic point about elected officials.
Google says populism is:
a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.
Neb also mentioned populism's important function in leftist thought. Of course populism is a concept I value, what I didn't see value in was your articulation or what point you were trying to make with it.
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On March 27 2020 21:04 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2020 20:50 Sr18 wrote:On March 27 2020 18:03 TomatoBisque wrote: I don't agree that everyone who is against Bernie has been brainwashed, but I think it's impossible to deny that many voters are less informed than they could be and vote for irrational reasons (because the brain is inherently emotional while simultaneously very good at rationalizing its emotions). I think you'll find uninformed voters within all voter groups. Serious question: is there evidence that one side in the US has on average more informed voters? Yep; there is a decent correlation (not causation) between where you get your news and how informed you are. On average, Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don't watch any news at all, who are in turn less informed than mainstream moderate/ liberal media news sources. There have been several studies on this. Here's one: https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2012/survey-nprs-listeners-best-informed-fox-news-viewers-worst-informed/ Here's another one: http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/ More information: https://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes-you-less-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5 This shouldn't be particularly surprising, considering that Republicans, pound-for-pound, assert more misinformation, lies, anti-education, and anti-science than Democrats do. That's not to say that all Republicans do this on purpose, or that all Democrats are better informed than all Republicans, or that Democrats don't lie or engage in conspiracy theories or are wrong on many, many occasions, but if we're talking about "on average", as you indicated, there is indeed a distinction. This predates Donald Trump as well, although obviously he's the quintessential example of this.
Thanks for the reply and the links. It's appreciated.
After reading the articles, it seems that the studies specifically only researched how informed the viewers of different news sources are, as opposed to how informed voters of the two main party are. The researchers even explicitly stated that they adjusted the results for partisanship. Because of that, I don't think these studies provide much if any insight into which voter base is on average more informed.
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On March 28 2020 07:41 Sr18 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2020 21:04 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 27 2020 20:50 Sr18 wrote:On March 27 2020 18:03 TomatoBisque wrote: I don't agree that everyone who is against Bernie has been brainwashed, but I think it's impossible to deny that many voters are less informed than they could be and vote for irrational reasons (because the brain is inherently emotional while simultaneously very good at rationalizing its emotions). I think you'll find uninformed voters within all voter groups. Serious question: is there evidence that one side in the US has on average more informed voters? Yep; there is a decent correlation (not causation) between where you get your news and how informed you are. On average, Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don't watch any news at all, who are in turn less informed than mainstream moderate/ liberal media news sources. There have been several studies on this. Here's one: https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2012/survey-nprs-listeners-best-informed-fox-news-viewers-worst-informed/ Here's another one: http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/ More information: https://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-makes-you-less-informed-than-watching-no-news-at-all-2012-5 This shouldn't be particularly surprising, considering that Republicans, pound-for-pound, assert more misinformation, lies, anti-education, and anti-science than Democrats do. That's not to say that all Republicans do this on purpose, or that all Democrats are better informed than all Republicans, or that Democrats don't lie or engage in conspiracy theories or are wrong on many, many occasions, but if we're talking about "on average", as you indicated, there is indeed a distinction. This predates Donald Trump as well, although obviously he's the quintessential example of this. Thanks for the reply and the links. It's appreciated. After reading the articles, it seems that the studies specifically only researched how informed the viewers of different news sources are, as opposed to how informed voters of the two main party are. The researchers even explicitly stated that they adjusted the results for partisanship. Because of that, I don't think these studies provide much if any insight into which voter base is on average more informed. Are you suggesting that it's impossible to shorthand associate the audience of particular news sources with particular political bents?
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It's not, but those kinds of handwaving correlations are precisely the thing you do research to verify.
We're already shorthand associating conservatives with fox with being ignorant. The whole point of such a study is to see if that holds up.
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On March 28 2020 07:39 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2020 07:29 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 27 2020 22:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 27 2020 22:11 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 27 2020 21:59 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 27 2020 21:55 Biff The Understudy wrote: That's not really my point though. People vote for all kind of reasons, rational and irrational, well or ill-informed. They are lied to, or told the truth on various degree. That has little to do with populism.
Populism is when Maduro paints his opponents as enemy of the people guided by foreign powers. Or when Trump supporters oppose the real american, white, working class midwest folks against the "globalists", costal "elites" and minorities, all not-so-real people.
And populism is, sorry, when your candidate represents the american people, but your opponents represent "the establishment". And when the numbers are not in your favour, you call the game rigged and you declare the other side illegitimate. The description you give of populism can just as easily be applied to the Russia bot/interference/Berniebro narratives and the Democratic party. To absolutely none of those, you really don't understand what I'm saying, but as I said populism exist on all points of the political spectrum. Including the centre left. I do and it does. I remember vividly 2016 and being told constantly I was endangering the country and world by allowing myself to be a useful idiot for a foreign country. Wild conspiracies about how criticism was driven by Russian propaganda and the whole lot. That definitely was a huge part of the Clinton campaign. We're seeing the same thing with Biden. Also "#MoscowMitch" is basically part and parcel what you describe. I just don't see the analytical value in your articulation of what you identify as populism. Let's say populism is what you say it is. What's your point? That politics has an element of popular support, and you find it unsettling? No you don't understand and your example are beyond terrible. No democrat has ever said that Trump voters were not real Americans or that Bernie voters were fundamentally illegitimate. I imagine very well you don't see the value of the concept of populism. I hear that kind of rhetoric all the time (Trump and Bernie supporters get called Russian bots regularly), so I presume you're making a semantic point about elected officials. Google says populism is: Show nested quote +a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. Neb also mentioned populism's important function in leftist thought. Of course populism is a concept I value, what I didn't see value in was your articulation or what point you were trying to make with it. Can't we just agree that there is a difference between populism and demagoguery, but in practice most populists are demagogues?
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On March 28 2020 08:53 Belisarius wrote: It's not, but those kinds of handwaving correlations are precisely the thing you do research to verify.
We're already shorthand associating conservatives with fox with being ignorant. The while point of such a study is to see if that holds up. Well yeah, but that's why I asked, I'm not looking to derive some kind of deep-rooted trend, rather figure out when and where we might use basic transitive logic to connect a study with some other generally agreed upon notion. That's a fraught undertaking, no doubt, but is it useless? I'm not sure.
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On March 28 2020 08:59 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2020 07:39 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 28 2020 07:29 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 27 2020 22:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 27 2020 22:11 Biff The Understudy wrote:On March 27 2020 21:59 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 27 2020 21:55 Biff The Understudy wrote: That's not really my point though. People vote for all kind of reasons, rational and irrational, well or ill-informed. They are lied to, or told the truth on various degree. That has little to do with populism.
Populism is when Maduro paints his opponents as enemy of the people guided by foreign powers. Or when Trump supporters oppose the real american, white, working class midwest folks against the "globalists", costal "elites" and minorities, all not-so-real people.
And populism is, sorry, when your candidate represents the american people, but your opponents represent "the establishment". And when the numbers are not in your favour, you call the game rigged and you declare the other side illegitimate. The description you give of populism can just as easily be applied to the Russia bot/interference/Berniebro narratives and the Democratic party. To absolutely none of those, you really don't understand what I'm saying, but as I said populism exist on all points of the political spectrum. Including the centre left. I do and it does. I remember vividly 2016 and being told constantly I was endangering the country and world by allowing myself to be a useful idiot for a foreign country. Wild conspiracies about how criticism was driven by Russian propaganda and the whole lot. That definitely was a huge part of the Clinton campaign. We're seeing the same thing with Biden. Also "#MoscowMitch" is basically part and parcel what you describe. I just don't see the analytical value in your articulation of what you identify as populism. Let's say populism is what you say it is. What's your point? That politics has an element of popular support, and you find it unsettling? No you don't understand and your example are beyond terrible. No democrat has ever said that Trump voters were not real Americans or that Bernie voters were fundamentally illegitimate. I imagine very well you don't see the value of the concept of populism. I hear that kind of rhetoric all the time (Trump and Bernie supporters get called Russian bots regularly), so I presume you're making a semantic point about elected officials. Google says populism is: a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. Neb also mentioned populism's important function in leftist thought. Of course populism is a concept I value, what I didn't see value in was your articulation or what point you were trying to make with it. Can't we just agree that there is a difference between populism and demagoguery, but in practice most populists are demagogues?
I can agree there are differences between populism and demagoguery. I think arguing "most populists are demagogues" is just meant to blur those differences to give an illusion of substance to the implicated smear behind arguments saying Maduro, Trump, and ("sorry") Bernie are all populists.
If folks want to argue Bernie is a demagogue they should do that, not attempt a slimy smear like Biff tried imo.
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So.....literally no words. Thoughts?
Section 1. Emergency Authority. To provide additional authority to the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security to respond to the national emergency declared by Proclamation 9994, the authorities under section 12302 of title 10, United States Code, and sections 2127, 2308, 2314, and 3735 of title 14, United States Code, are invoked and made available, according to their terms, to the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security. The Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, at the direction of the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard when it is not operating as a service in the Navy, are authorized to order to active duty not to exceed 24 consecutive months, such units, and individual members of the Ready Reserve under the jurisdiction of the Secretary concerned, not to exceed 1,000,000 members on active duty at any one time, as the Secretary of Defense and, with respect to the Coast Guard when it is not operating as a service in the Navy, the Secretary of Homeland Security consider necessary. The Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of Homeland Security, as applicable, will ensure appropriate consultation is undertaken with relevant state officials with respect to the utilization of National Guard Reserve Component units activated under this authority. Source
User was warned for this post.
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I don't understand what's so crazy about it. It's pretty thick legalese but it seems like hes opening the door to federalize national guard and coast guard units whenever the DOD wants to.
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