The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Like Black Lives Matter, the idea isn't that men don't have a future, the idea is that women will have a larger say in the future than they do in the present/did in the past. This is not about putting white men down (at least outside of the fringes of Twitter), it's about addressing the fact that women still don't have the same opportunities and privilege as men in American society, even if we are ahead of many countries in the world. Sometimes, people have to use bold wording to get others to pay attention. Just like for me, as a music educator, saying "all subjects are critical to education" doesn't grab anyone's attention like "music is critical to education." I'm not saying "math, language arts, science, etc. are irrelevant", obviously. On a similar note "the future is for all people" might sound nice, but it doesn't address sexism.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The world is a smaller place than it used to be, and much more interconnected. Americans on both sides of the political spectrum feel free to criticize the 'liberal world order' but don't hesitate to take advantage of its boons in the form of a higher standard of living. People underestimate the value of it because Western policy in recent years has (wisely) been to attempt to nip potential threats to it in the bud rather than waiting for a real crisis, which admittedly has in recent years led to overreactions and poor decisions. But it is not possible anymore, as it was in the past, for America to hide behind its oceans without severe economic consequences in the long run.

But beyond the economic argument, don't you all think it is time to stop pretending that our moral obligation to each other as people ends at a arbitrary border or ocean? What is the moral difference between the Kurds (or the Ukrainians, or Estonians) as opposed to Floridians or Hawaiians that make the freedom of the latter worth my and my kin's blood but not the former? Believe it or not, my hometown is closer to Tallinn than it is to Pearl Harbor, and my great-grandfather, who died for the latter, was born closer to Kurdistan than to what would become his. Nationalist isolationism is a weak enough moral code on its own, and only more so in a multi-ethnic society like the United States. Pragmatic restraints are necessary at times, but to believe that those born beyond a border do not deserve even a moral consideration is ignorant at best and inhuman at worst.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Write-in: when more than one accuser comes forward. Usually that indicates a pattern of behavior and usually are just as accurate as the first accuser. When the numbers increase so does the likelihood of guilt and the pressure for that accused person to face some sort of consequence.

If it's just one accuser entirely though, if they can clearly and concisely recollect the incident with at least some corroboration and is a severe enough accusation, that is usually enough for me. Accusers do not want attention or "fame" for bringing these to light. Often they don't even want the accused in question to be punished. They just want to be heard and to be believed.

 False accusations do happen sometimes, but those usually fall apart on their own and are still rarer than likely or outright true accusations and shouldn't be used as a shield to protect the accused from consequences in every circumstance.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I don't get what's so hard to understand. Evangelicals aren't voting for a pastor or a religious authority who they want to model their life after. They're voting for a warrior to protect their way of life against an increasingly threatening society. He seems to be performing that role quite well so far.

     It is hard to understand because many here subscribe to a rationalist delusion wherein they assume that people choose who they support based on weighting a matrix of all political issues. The overwhelming majority of voters support candidates based on cultural considerations, and they may also care about a handful of issues that relate to those cultural considerations. You understand this, but the political nerd types that are overrepresented on Atlas never will and instead seek to clumsily fit a liberal activist worldview on Evangelicals (a worldview that presupposes conservative Christianity as an evil creed, thereby requiring an assumption of bad faith to make the narrative come together).

I don't think conservative Christians are evil by virtue of being conservative Christians. I think they are so obsessed with their cultural preferences being upheld that they'll embrace evil to work on their behalf without any considerations to the long term damage they are enabling.

     When the alternative entails significant long-term damage as well and seems all the more inexorable given the trends of the past few decades, it becomes easier to take a risk and embrace someone you probably should not.

Yes, I realize that's how they feel. What they seem to have trouble grasping is that by signing onto that Faustian bargain, they paint a massive target on their backs to be ridiculed and condemned for resorting to nihilistic power grabbing as a compensation for their psychological angst. Their behavior represents the shameful cowardice groups will sometimes turn towards during their most vulnerable and insecure moments. Al summarized quite nicely when describing his changing thoughts on how social conservatives should approach politics how the religious right entered into the political foray under the arrogant assumption that they held cultural hegemony. That has blown up in their faces and now they are scrambling to guarantee some form of political security in the face of a society that is rapidly shifting away from their cultural paradigms. After decades of growth through cannibalizing other sects' adherents, Evangelicals are now suffering the same decline that has already befallen Mainline Protestants and Catholics. Among Millenials, Evangelical representation has collapsed to the same ratio as Mainlines, about 10% each.

They want a future in which they still feel relevant on the national stage, or at least secure from hostilities. The way they have gone about doing this, by embracing Trump, will achieve the exact opposite. They are alienating almost everybody that resides outside of their circles by so fiercely attaching themselves to such a divisive and polarizing figure. If Evangelicals decided to follow the example of somebody like Russell Moore in order to guide them in these times of decline, I doubt they would be generating anywhere near the amount of backlash as they have with their ethically bankrupt embrace of Trump. That would require acceptance of the present twilight and a turn towards self-reflection and internal reform, something most Evangelicals apparently have no interest in right now, given the amount of heat Moore has taken from others within the SBC for even daring to suggest it. They continue this stubborn refusal towards introspection by acting as the main roadblock towards any internal partisan accountability towards Trump. They are why Republican officials and operatives are so afraid to criticize him, because Evangelicals are so opposed to anything other than lockstep loyalty. They care only about getting their policy preferences pushed through and favored judges appointed and don't give a damn about what abuses of power Trump is carrying out in return, so what good does introspection do for them? Every wrongdoing that Trump commits, they are his accomplices by shielding him from accountability and demanding that their elected officials and media pundits do the same. Yes, they will be judge in accordance with that, as they should be.

Evangelicals have embraced Trump out of desperation and in the process have backslid into transactional morality and hypocrisy. I recognize many like Fuzzy Bear keep trying to make the case that Evangelicals are not hypocrites for supporting Trump, and to his credit, Fuzzy Bear is heads and shoulders above the average Evangelical when it comes to ethics. But he and the writer in the article he linked are wrong, they are hypocrites. It may have been a rationally chosen hypocrisy elected due to how unpalatable the main alternative was, but it is hypocrisy nonetheless. These are the same people that spent decades warning us how dangerous the moral decay of self-indulgence was to the harmony of American society and have now demonstrated that wisdom by becoming its main purveyors and elevating the most narcissistic, reprehensible man in living memory to the most powerful office of the land and providing him a carte blanche.

Evangelicals may have rationalized their support for Trump, but they have not come to terms with the inevitable consequences. People will judge them by their actions and the actions of those they declare as their representatives, and the vileness of Trump speaks for itself. The belief they've internalized that they must alleviate their decline through national politics speaks for how ill-advised it is to graft an entire theological perspective so close to the bones of a singular partisan perspective. Evangelicals are now political creatures first and Christians second, just observes how many Evangelicals leaders have been gushing over their unfettered access to the halls of power under Trump. They consider this a golden age for political inclusion. They seem utterly oblivious to the inexorable reality, that this will be remembered as a time of shame that stains the legacy of Evangelicalism as they sold their souls for short-term access to power.

They didn't have to go down this route, there are alternative redoubts for Evangelicals to retreat to. The situation is not as desperate as they've made it out to be in their minds, Christians, even conservative Christians, will never be persecuted to the degree that the religious right has sought to persecute others. They could have decided to go down Moore's path of disengaging from partisan politics and turning their collective gaze inwards towards personal reform and maintenance, or even Al's suggestion of localizing political activities. In time, they may still decided to go down these paths instead as the inevitable reality comes to pass. For now, they have chosen Trump, a choice that has denigrated their integrity, serves them up as a negative example for all else to heed for what not to do in times of duress, and alienated their fellow Americans as they continue their fall from grace. This thread demonstrates how most Evangelicals have yet to accept the consequences of their choices.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

This is a complicated problem that does not have one cause nor one simple solution. Parents sometimes have some responsibility, but not always. I think that our classrooms are reflecting the current zeitgeist in our country very well. A lot of students think respect is something that they only have to give to certain people, and can you blame them? That's how a lot of the so-called "adults" act in society nowadays. Many students feel neglected. Not just by their parents, but by society in general, by previous teachers, and by their peers, and act out in order to get some kind of attention. Students also face enormous stress with the omnipresence of high-stakes tests and assessments which they may feel incapable of doing well on. Others have been taught from a young age through many mediums that they can't succeed and have come to internalize it; if they can't do well, why even try?

And then, there's the reality that for those of us teaching middle and high school, we get very little time per student. The best we can often hope for is to move the needle, and sometimes even a small amount of progress from a student can be undone if they have a bad experience either at home, in another classroom, with one of their peers, etc. Smaller class sizes would help each student get more attention, but the reality is that issues outside of the classroom need to be addressed as well, and parenting is still only part of the equation. Not to mention, holding parents accountable sounds great, but how do we actually achieve that? Giving students recognition for good performance and behavior (note the distinction between recognition and a "reward") is usually what schools try to do, but for students who aren't doing well, they and their parents often either don't care, or see improvement as impossible.

I think that it would take a change in our entire society and values to truly improve our education system, and while things have changed in the past 5-10 years, it hasn't been for the better.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Omar isn't the problem, she's a symptom. She's being used as a stalking horse to test out these radical opinions with the voting body. They don't have to get a majority or anything close in support, they just have to get enough people strongly in support to cow the moderates into submission. But because she's a Somali Muslim, if it backfires "She's just one crazy lady, doesn't represent the party/left".

But if it works, make no mistake, in a few years there'll be a charismatic white man saying the same things and much worse. And as we're seeing in the UK, that's when things get dangerous for a lot of people.

Israel isn't in danger from this campaign. Israel will last exactly as long as human life on Earth. It's the rest of us who have to fear.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

No region is sacred or free of wrongdoing, not even perfect Appalachia. The sanctimonious attitude people have about this place is sickening. You all can scream and rant and rage and cry and violent hit out at the suburbs all you want but no one in the suburbs is pushing the idea that they are real America, unlike places like Appalachia.

And nobody here implies the contrary.  But if you really believe that urban elitism isn't a thing, you're living in as much of a bubble as the rural hicks people like the OP who posts these stories just to mock.  Swaths of the country are routinely called "flyover states."  Sure, you can disagree with their voting habits.  You can support scrapping the electoral college that favors them at the expense of states where more of the people vote.  But for the love of God, don't haphazardly analyze this as if we were measuring a pissing contest.

The country already caters enough to rural populations giving them large benefits of what effectively mounts to affirmative action. In modern day culture you can criticize urban/suburban areas all you want but dare to touch the lord and savior region of Appalachia and you get criticized for not understanding the average American.

     People usually don't like it when you kick a man while he's down. Appalachia gets criticized pretty much all the time, to the point that it has engendered a significant backlash. To act like Appalachia is something sacrosanct or worshipped in American society just because people get on your case for perpetuating vicious libels against the region and its people is quite out of touch with reality.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Fuzzy, what is the alternative universe that you've apparently just emerged from like? I would dearly like to know all the major differences between the Mueller report issued in that world which apparently largely exonerates Trump, and the report issued in this timeline which really really REALLY doesn't.

But seriously though, man. You have got to quit being so damned stubborn about simple facts. You keep repeating things that are just simply factually untrue. This is not a matter for debate or any of it. This is not a liberal vs conservative. This is two plus two equals four not five level facts.

I strongly suggest you go back and re-read excerpts of the report and what it actually found. I would start with the concluding paragraph switch or simply a page long. That one succinct statement alone literally disproves most of the bunk you have been trying to convince yourself of.

Somehow somewhere somebody you admire told you that this was an exoneration. I know you were not one of those types to buy into what Fox News reports on hesitatingly, even if you do buy into complete crap websites warning about the Muslim danger with mostly crap stories and butchered statistics. Whatever its source, you really need to stop, reassess this from Ground Zero, and above all learn what the report actually says.

It's much easier to go on a narrative, sure. But you're better than that I think. There are certain folks on this website like Sanchez who are such died in the wall Trump supporters that he would back Trump to the nines if Jesus himself came down from heaven and told us all that Trump had colluded with Putin in person and did everything possible just like Miller reported to cover up the investigation. Heck, I'm pretty sure that's the reason he and some of his ilk DO support Trump so much. It's the Spiro Agnew and Patrick Buchanan G Gordon Liddy, attitude of " the world is a tough place so you got to have a thug in charge" neo-fascist mindset. Again, I think you're better than that, but your habitual rampant stubbornness has kind of painted yourself into a corner here. Please try to stop Andre review the reports findings with a truly open mind. You are not a literate, so I can't believe that if you do so it won't substantially change your mind.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Massive FF.

Sure, it has issues and problems, but overall, it's a huge, HUGE success story. Europe was blood-drenched continent where old scars and wounds caused and would cause again countless wars. The European Union brought something unprecedented and amazing to the continent- stable and long-term peace. With close connections formed on issues like trade, politics, laws and the military, and most importantly, by sacrificing some of that sacred "sovereignity", it managed to unite a continent and make it an island of peace in a still-troubled world. One of my professors once told us that when we Israelis mock the European Union, we should remember that while they managed to establish peace, we're going to a military campaign every year, so we should be more humble. Americans, who just recently started an unnecessary war that destroyed stability in a whole region, would do well to remember that too.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

If Sanchez actually deserves a permanent ban, what shall we say for any number of posters I can think of.  Yes, I am willing to do the research to prove that point. 

People have used the exact same language to address me, more than once, and nothing happens. That's fine, and I'm a big boy.  Atlas USGD is tackle football, and I'm prepare to take hits.  Just don't make it tackle for me and flag football for them.

I literally deleted a negative post aimed at you in this very thread yesterday.

I’m not criticizing you individually as a moderator at all (seriously I think you’re fantastic in the role), but while that may have happened here, I feel that doesn’t happen enough in other forums. Whatever you may think of the philosophy or debating style of Fuzzy, this man is given more sh!t than anyone else I’ve ever seen on this forum after nearly a decade. Some of the posts are outright viscous. I’m partially at fault for not reporting them, but in the future I’m going too.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Cuckgressive Democrats reject push to let 16-year-olds vote:

The Democratic-led House on Thursday turned down a proposal to let 16-year-olds vote in federal elections, which Republicans said is a plot to put more Democrats in office.

Almost every Republican and nearly half of the Democrats voted against the amendment from Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and it failed 126-305.

Cuckgressive Democrats help Republicans shut down AOC psychedelics research measure:

In a sweeping rejection of what advocates regarded as a commonsense drug reform measure, a large majority of Democratic House members joined all but seven Republicans on Thursday in a vote against an amendment that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) filed to expand research into the potential benefits of psychedelic substances.

The measure, which was cleared by the House Rules Committee and was initially approved in a voice vote earlier Thursday morning, was soundly defeated in a 91 to 331 afternoon roll call vote. Democrats accounted for 148 of those “nay” votes.

Cuckgressive Democrats reject two AOC amendments to limit Trump border crisis crackdown:

The Democratic-led House rejected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-led efforts Friday to curb President Trump’s border crackdown.

Two amendments Ocasio-Cortez authored to a defense authorization bill failed to get enough support from her colleagues on the House floor Friday.

The Bronx Democrat, who has called for defunding ICE and disbanding the Department of Homeland Security, pushed an amendment to prohibit Trump from deploying troops on the southern border for immigration enforcement.

The House rejected her measure 179-241.

Ocasio-Cortez also sought to bar Trump from using funds to detain undocumented immigrants in Department of Defense facilities.

It failed by a 173-245 vote.

Let's just drop the illusion that the Democratic Party is center-left.  At the very best, it's a centrist party.  I'd even go as far to say that it's a conservative party in the old Burkean sense.  But it's most definitely not a social democratic party or even a center-left party.  And they'll do anything to throw progressives under the bus while convincing us that Joe Biden is the best alternative to Trump.  They'll sure as hell take your votes, though!

But no, I'm the bad guy because I dared to say that I might vote third party next year.

What.  A.  Joke.

Or maybe, and here's just a mad idea I've come up with, having something pass the House doesn't automatically make it law? And putting something before a Republican Senate and President that can then tear it apart might hurt such a law if it came up under a Democratic trifecta in the future if the public reaction to it has already been defined. And maybe, and again, I'm just throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks, Pelosi is experienced enough to know that playing into Trump's hands is the last thing the Democrats need to do right now and that whatever proposals come along need to wait until they can be something other than posturing that would be at best a net neutral for the party? And maybe even, and stop me if I'm wrong, that this grand conspiracy to disenfranchise progressives is a load of bullsh*t that only came up because Pelosi won't cower to the demands of a couple of loudmouth freshmen who give Trump ammunition every time they open their mouths?

That's all some harmless theorising.

(fwiw I would identify more with the progressives than the establishment and I definitely think the Dems need to get rid of the stupid consensus centrist crap and start acting a lot more hardline. But there's a difference between that and stupid posturing that doesn't achieve anything apart from writing GOP attack ads. And also, crying foul every time something doesn't go your way is not a great strategy to get other Democrats (i.e the ones you need to vote for progressives to win primaries) onboard.)

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

We have a bit of strawman here, because there's a far cry from having an affair and being a murderous dictator.

come on man, obviously I wasn't saying they were the same.  It was just an extreme example of "relatively speaking".

Look guys, I understand that I'm in the minority in caring about our politician's integrity.  Clearly most people only care when it's the other side that's doing it and are much more willing to ignore it when it's done on their side.  Just like most other bad things.  The other side is "bought off" by special interests, my side is "invested in" by like minded NGOs.  My side left the state house so they wouldn't have to vote on a corrupt bill, the other side left the house because they lost an election and don't want to suffer the results of that.  When their guy marries a secretary it's a disgusting abuse of power, when my guy does it it's true love.  When we come up with motivations in our head, it's easy to think the worst of the other guy and the best for your own.  It's human nature.  Just like adultery, unkempt beards and hating people that don't look like you.  And we should try to be better.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1181945686906081281
Oh, look, a Republican offering the victims of imminent genocide "thoughts and prayers".

Oh look, an opportunity to denigrate religion for no reason.   

Not praying for the Kurds doesn't make you a better person.

Praying (virtue signalling to God) for the Kurds doesn't make you a better person either. You either care or don't care, but a religious gesture to SHOW God physixally that you care has no effect when he can see into your heart and mind anyways.

For people who pray, truly caring about someone means you pray for them.   If you don't believe in prayer, fine; maybe save that argument for another time when people aren't expressing their concern about a crisis in another land in the best way they know how.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

All moderators resign.  Modadmins resign as well.  This place should be run by Dave and Dave alone until things are sorted out and certain wealthy hateful disgusting evil people explain themselves.

Running the forum is not high on Dave's priority list, as opposed to the site in general. He'd simply appoint new mods, who would have to work under the same system. A mass resignation wouldn't change anything.

It's very easy to say "I'm resigning, look how brave and principled I am", as opposed to trying to do something constructive from the inside. And let's dispel with the prevalent but fundamentally incorrect notion that an individual mod has any power others than solving reports for their respective boards. There is no such thing as "mod team", working together, making decisions by consensus. We don't even have proper discussion, as most mods rarely even speak in the cave. In fact, we're pretty short of active mods, especially now that Virginia (a modadmin) and Lumine are stepping down for personal reasons.

The forum is indeed at its low point, but it's unfair to attribute everything to "muh bad mods". There's some very valid criticism which I would love to see fully taken into account, but without having Dave stepping in to set some rules (preferably making it sure that certain behavior, like bigotry, hate speech, homophobia, bullying and so on would be dealt with more harshly), it's trying to do your best.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I may have missed someone else pointing it out so forgive me if this has already been said, but it’s not merely Corbyn and his friends in Leadership (although they certainly are part of the problem), but what (who) the phenomenon of “Corbynism” has attracted to Labour.

That is to say, even if Corbyn and his allies in the Party are not intentionally engaging in anti-Semitic tropes or ignoring incidents of anti-Semitism within Labour circles, the indisputable reality is that Corbyn’s rise to Leadership has brought out the most noxious and extremist aspects of the Left who do indeed, to one extent or another, believe in some kind of (((Zionist))) conspiracy - and, as indicated, wrap their anti-Semitism in a thinly veiled condemnation of ISRAELI APARTHEID (or “Jewish supremacist settler-colonialism” *le sigh*). And that’s when they’re being subtle.

Not that I want to make some sort of false equivalence, but if you look at how white nationalists seem to love Donald J Trump and how he doesn’t seem to have any problems whatsoever with that support, one would hope that the anti-Semitic parts of the Left loving Corbyn would give him and his best intentioned supporters pause. Especially since, as CrabCake and others have noted, a leftist party ought to hold itself to higher standards than “but wait, we’re not any worse than the Tories!”

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

For the record, my own opinion of IceSpear is that he's (sadly) a sort of prophet of the (profoundly toxic and, yes, deplorable) political and social trends of rural America, but that he oversells this with his obvious relish at how this confirms his snobbish preconceptions about non-yuppie lifestyles. I think he's someone who (more or less rightly) hates anything and everything that the Republican Party stands for, and that currently includes rural culture writ large, on account of the, again, escalating knee-jerk sectional voting. Hopefully the fact that people seem to like him and his #analysis overall will make him more receptive to the pushback he gets for the more overtly classist remarks he sometimes makes.

The one thing I wish more than anything else is that he'd decouple his perceptions of "the working class" from his perceptions of "rural areas"; I object to many of his takes on both but his takes on the former are significantly more galling. The most frothing-at-the-mouth MAGA bigots in rural areas tend to be the people who are relatively well-off (although obviously not nearly as rich as people on the Upper West Side or the Philadelphia Main Line), and both afleitch and I wrote about the presence of a pointedly left-leaning sector of the working class among young people in urban areas in this thread.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I think we can all agree that Pete has a ways to go as far as making inroads with the black community and it starts specifically with him being more forthcoming about his Douglass Plan and not just attaching the names of black community leaders onto the plan who didn't actually endorse it.

But the sad attempts to disqualify him, say he's a racist, say he's a Republican in disguise...all stem from the fact that he had the unmitigated gall to challenge Warren/Sanders (both of whom I support and agree with on most issues) and run for President without having "better experience" (which, since we're doing buzzwords, is an Obama-era Republican talking point)

You can disagree with a candidate, you can find their approach lackluster or even cringeworthy, but hurling accusations of racism at someone and saying they "never cared about black people until they ran for President" is disturbing.

We have to refocus and realize that any of the candidates running on the Democratic side--including Delaney, Gabbard, Biden, Marianne, etc--are all leagues better than Trump, who locks kids in cages, spits in the face of our allies fighting ISIS, sides with dictators over our own intelligence community, is using the Presidency to enrich himself, is both an accused and admitted sexual predator, couches everything he says about minority communities in racist language, and flat out does not believe people who disagree with him are entitled to equal rights.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't fight for the candidate you believe in, and if you believe Pete is not left-wing enough for your liking, that's understandable. But playing into these GOP talking points about the other candidates, especially the ones who may have a legitimate chance to win the nomination, is not helpful and only makes the work we have to do once a nominee is chosen that much more difficult. And that also goes for the hashtag moderate heroes tearing apart Warren and Sanders. Because if one of them wins the nomination, we have to get behind them in a unified fashion as well.

Anyway, that's my 0.02 after reading the last couple pages on this thread. Have a good day, y'all.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

On Trump's anti-Semitic executive order:

Again, we know what he is. Sure, his antisemitism is "benevolent" right now, in that he likes us for our supposed money savvy. That only lasts until Jared and Ivanka have a bad fight or his stock portfolio takes a tumble.

This is why you don't vote for unstable populists. No, his SOP isn't "kill the Jews", but he's clearly internalized a lot of the views that lead to that.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I'm not sure he has to do anything particularly noteworthy to win it; unlike SC, IA has never had one candidate running away with the race and there's been a lot of movement in the top 4.  Sanders just needs his people to show up.

What he does afterwards is the big question, and I agree with a lot of what DINOTom has been saying, and I've been saying it myself for months- I'm not sure Sanders has a realistic path.  To the extent he has one, he has to win IA/NH, and likely in a decisive way.  Which wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility- he has a high floor and possibly the most loyal base of the nominees.  But he also seems to have a low ceiling- he's never been able to break out of his faction.

The problem is he hasn't been able to expand to the 3 Dem groups not in his tent- a) Biden voters that may have Sanders a second choice but are sticking with Biden for now; b) blacks; c) the group of voters that went Harris > Warren > Buttigieg.

Group B is not that critical for IA... but in any case, if A and B were going to abandon Biden, I think the signs would've been there way earlier, and we're running out of time for that.  I don't think group C is ever going to warm up to Sanders.  Now I know people on this forum keep saying things like, if the Warren and Sanders groups could just unite, they'd overtake Biden!  And yes, that might be mathematically true, but it ignores the fact that they had multiple chances to embrace Sanders and have rejected him 3 times now- he's never been the flavor-of-the-month for them.

Now why is that?  That's a more interesting question and a little beyond the point of this thread, but one reason is because they simply don't share interests with the Sanders folks.  This group are Dems mostly because of social issues and their revealed preferences through polling this entire cycle have demonstrated they're more interested in the demographics, identity, culturally affinity etc., with a candidate, and not so much their policies.  People have kept saying on this forum, if Warren would just drop out... oh please please please (or vice versa, please drop out Sanders!), well.. Warren didn't drop out per se, but she certainly declined, and lo and behold- guess where all those voters went?  Not to Sanders.

And I think it's that group which is going to keep Sanders from really getting the decisive victory he needs to have groups A and B start to re-evaluate their Biden support. 

So in short, sure- he can win IA, and it wouldn't even be that surprising to me.  But I don't know where he goes from there, even if he takes NH.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Per the Associated Press: "Iran abandons nuclear deal over US killing general"

https://mobile.twitter.com/AP/status/1213884397004427265?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%...

So where are the posts about how these are shameless, evil Jihadist cultists, mourning their War Criminal Dear Leader over his demise, which was the predictable result of his living by the Sword?  Are these at his funeral not sheep?  Are they not the scum cultists of a Jihadist War Criminal and an LETHAL enemy of the United States of America?

So many here freely and regularly talk of Trump and his supporters in these terms.  That tack ought to be exposed as ridiculous on its face, but the Worst of Atlas have, indeed, doubled down on this tack here.

To question Trump's strategy here is fine and good, and part of democracy.  To cast him as the villian here is utterly ridiculous.  Beyond ridiculous, but there are folks here who are so invested in their hatred for Trump that they can't even back of that.  

It is the casting of Trump as the villain here, which many here have done, that places individuals in the category of being ANTI-American.  That posture goes beyond mere criticism of a President and his strategy.  (And it's a strategy people would have been fine with if Obama did it, regardless of how close we were to election day, and what the polls said.)  Trump may not have made the best decision; he may have even made a flat-out wrong decision, but to cast him as the villain goes beyond mere questioning of our President and his course of action.  

I have to disagree with some of what you say here, in part. First, you are correct when you say that partisan reactions to this might very well be different had President Obama, or President Hillary Clinton, ordered this strike. Democrats are universally condemning Trump's actions, and Republicans are to a man defending them. Secondly, I will repeat that Solemani was a notorious terrorist and a man who deserved the fate that he received. However, that does not mean that the strike was justified, or that it was a reasonable exercise of the President's discretion. The fallout ensuing from this has led to Iran resuming its path towards nuclear armaments, has exacerbated tensions within the region, and damaged our relationships with Iraq and with other allies.

Thirdly, I would think that opposition to a strike such as this would be the correct stance, for one who is anti-war and against interventionism overseas. You yourself have expressed disgust with the foreign policies of the neoconservative camp-such as John Bolton-and of the Bush Administration. What Trump did here is a reversion to that approach. Finally, Trump's action continues in a long and disturbing tradition, extending back at least to Theodore Roosevelt, and probably even earlier, of Presidents taking military action without informing Congress or adhering to the letter of the law. I will remind you that Korea and Vietnam were undeclared military conflicts, and that only Congress has the power to declare war. What Trump did here could instigate a new and unwanted conflict.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

To repeat again:

I don't care about a $218,000 donation, I don't care what Our Revolution did with it.  Anyone making jokes about how I think OR is some "shadowy organization raising tons of money" is intentionally mis-representing my argument.

What I care about is hypocrisy.  Sanders has spent decades insisting that everyone except him is corrupt because they take all their money from millionaires and billionaires.  His campaign even says "funded by you (not the billionaires)" on all its media.  Yet he has, through his pet organization that has always functioned as an arm of his movement/campaign, engaged in exactly the same fundraising practices.

In other words, if Pete is hopelessly, cravenly corrupt for raising $2,800 from high-net-worth individuals in a wine cellar, how is Bernie not similarly for corrupt for having his campaign staff operate a Super PAC that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars in individual contributions from presumably high-net-worth individuals?

Is it because Nina Turner was the one spending it, not Bernie himself?  That would mean all Super PACs are OK.

Is it because Our Revolution doesn't explicitly say it's working for Bernie Sanders, even though it obviously is (and it does say that)?  That would mean all Super PACs are OK since no PAC can explicitly coordinate with a candidate.

Is it because the money wasn't raised at an open-to-the-press dinner in Napa Valley?

Or is is just because you like Bernie Sanders and don't like Pete Buttigieg?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Bernie is entirely within his rights to go negative, but these phone bank scripts are absurdly terrible strategy.

Calling a Biden supporter and telling them "nobody is excited" about their candidate is incredibly dismissive of the affection that person likely has for Biden.

Calling a Pete supporter and telling them that Black and young people don't support him can easily make one feel as though their support is considered less important, and of course opens the door for an incredibly awkward confrontation if the phone banker calls a Black or young person supporting Buttigieg.

Calling a Warren supporter and telling them "she is the candidate of the elite" is essentially calling that voter an elitist. You can imagine a parent who works paycheck to paycheck and struggling to pay their healthcare premium being incredibly taken aback by that, and of course insulted. The line about her supporters being people who will vote Democratic no matter what is particularly gross - again dismissive of the importance of someone's support.

I plan to vote for Sanders, and I would imagine much of his base will enjoy these talking points. But it will not grow his support, and these scripts demonstrate a stunning lack of self-awareness among his campaign and an underlying problem of his team not understanding a lot of the resistance to his candidacy.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

History will look very favorably indeed on Mitt Romney as a man of faith, courage, conviction,  ability, compassion, honesty, integrity.  

History will view Donald Trump, on the other hand, as an unstable, petulant, immature, vindictive, small minded, dishonest, petty man who was impeached for attempting to sell out America to the Russians and to the Chinese, as the President who took the word of the Russian dictator, Putin, over that of the intelligence community of the United States.  

Trump will always, permanently, have impeachment on his record.  Nothing can reverse that.  

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Good luck winning with this racist POS.

https://twitter.com/Trisha_Tahmasbi/status/1227014773021323270

Everything he says in the speech is objective true and was believed by 90% of people (including Bernie Sanders and most Black people) until about 4 years ago.

The 95% statistic is clearly wrong, and if you adjust for demographic socio-economic factors crimes by latino-americas is not higher than by the general population and it is only moderately higher amongst black Americans.

As much as I am opposed to stop-and-frisk, the statistic isn't wrong at all. Bloomberg was just stating a fact. In 2015, 94% of murder victims in NYC were minorities, 94.2% of murder suspects were minorities, and 93% of those arrested for murder were minorities.

I don't think this will have a non-negligible impact on his campaign. This is just an old clip of Bloomberg using an accurate statistic to justify stop-and-frisk. I think Bloomberg's past support of stop-and-frisk is already common knowledge. Yes, stop-and-frisk was a really bad policy that had a negligible effect on crime, but it was a policy Bloomberg inherited from Giuliani, Bloomberg reduced the # of stops by 95% during his last two years in office, and Bloomberg has apologized for it and has released a lot of criminal justice policies. How is this more racist than Bernie assuming that "most drug dealers are black' a little while ago when that is not even close to being true? At least Bloomberg's "most murder victims and suspects in urban areas are young minority males" claim is absolutely true. Don't get me wrong, neither Sanders nor Bloomberg are anywhere even close to being racist. I just wanted to point out the double standard.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

We’ve got billionaires Bloomberg and Steyer rising in the polls, mostly to the detriment of Joe Biden.. what does this say about the Democratic Party during the era of Trump? Will Democrats essentially embrace Citizens United just to oust Trump?

Needless to say, I’m not a fan.

I've thought a lot about this too. The more I watch how these primary results are playing out, the more I realize the Dem party now is nothing more than an amalgamation of people who dislike Trump and his raucous politics, rather than one with any consistent principles or ideological conviction. The Republican party has become the party distrustful of major institutions in public life (the media, the tech giants, international bodies, and lately the top law enforcement agencies). Meanwhile, the Democrats have become apologists and/or defenders in many ways for these major institutions, and most Dem voters still have trust in these institutions. If this road continues, the Dems will effectively become the 'establishment' party while the R's will always run populists who rail against the powerful, despite the contradiction of how some policies benefit the poor/the powerful. This is why Bernie is having such a hard time getting to clear frontrunner status despite almost everything lining up favorably for him at the moment, he is running in a party that does not have the same populist fervor as the Republican party (and why the comparisons to the way Trump won in 2016 are not quite accurate).

A lot of the same stuff is true for the Republican party too, just in case anybody wants to respond to say 'but the cult of Trump', yeah, I know. I railed against that all throughout 2015/2016.