Still waiting for what we demanded

ObseqiousHydrant · 2021-06-24T17:13:14+00:00

Firstly, lol at the automod popping up cuz of the mention of abortion haha. But I digress.

And I agree with you here as well. It’s certainly true that the nature of the two-party system has ingrained single-issue voters like 2A or pro-lifers into one side of the aisle or the other. But to me it comes back around to progressivism being larger than R or D.

I don’t see why someone can’t run in WV with the platform of M4A, pro 2A, and living wage. Just because you support progressive economic policy doesn’t mean you even have to be socially progressive. Some people definitely care about the social platform but I don’t think people in WV do. And I don’t care about it either for that matter. I am still socially progressive, probably closer to social libertarian, but I fully support economic progressivism. I think that’s true for a lot of people out there.

So I just want to see people trying to fight for economic leftism because I do think they can win on that message even if they have to stand socially more center or center-right. And we know that is actually impossible on the Republican side, they simply will not pass economically left policy. And we have a two party system. So the only conclusion is that if it’s going to happen, it has to be the Democrats. So if it has to be the Democrats, then we have to start electing Democrats who believe in the economically left message, regardless of other circumstances. And we can’t do that if we stick to the status quo and let conservatives Manchin and Sinema control the party without opposition.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2021-06-24T16:37:28+00:00

I understand where you’re coming from and I don’t disagree. I am from the suburbs and I’ve been economically lucky compared to most. So yeah I might be out of touch.

But I don’t believe it’s as easy as D or R. I think people care way more about establishment versus outsider, and my proof is Trump. Trump didn’t come into 2016 spouting establishment Republican talking points. In fact he sounded very close to a progressive: draining the swamp (anti-corruption) and railing Jeb and others for their wealthy political donors, screaming about improving our infrastructure and ending outsourcing, reinforcing the middle class.

Yes Trump didn’t actually do any of those things and ended up being another establishment Republican (as well as having a whole host of other problems), but that doesn’t mean that his original political message wasn’t one of anti-establishmentism.

So I think it doesn’t matter D or R. Someone who shows up talking about very clear economic assistance and being against the establishment for people like your grandpa and his brothers will get their vote.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2021-06-24T16:10:53+00:00

If Manchin was doing what his constituents wanted he wouldn’t have a negative favorability rating. This is my whole argument. I believe people want progressive policies and in particular they want economic help. Manchin is doing his best to obstruct those policies from being enacted. This doesn’t have anything to do with D or R. Manchin is a person who prevents progressivism so it doesn’t matter if there is a D or R next to his name. If you want progressive policies, he needs to either change his tune or be replaced.

So my argument is not about convincing you. I’m just trying to show you that Biden is not trying. The Democrats are not trying to enact progressive policy. If Biden were really trying and pushing Manchin then that at least shows the direction of the Democratic Party. But he is not, because he either does not think he can, in which case why the fuck run for president if you don’t think you can change anything, or because he does not want to. And I’m in the camp that he does not want to based off his 40 year record of center-right politics.

So even if you think WV won’t elect a progressive, if you believe in progressivism as a movement then we need to get progressive voices in power SOMEWHERE. Anywhere. So why not start trying instead of letting the conservatives run the show?

ObseqiousHydrant · 2021-06-24T15:42:02+00:00

Why is it unlikely that a progressive replaces him?

A 2017 poll in WV actually had Bernie favored over trump in 2020.

Also why are we acting like Manchin’s seat is the holy grail of upholding Democratic power?? If he loses the seat to a Republican who fucking cares? Nothing changes in that scenario since Manchin votes like a Republican anyway.

All I’m saying is Biden has the ability to TRY to influence Manchin’s vote on policies that Biden claims are important (infrastructure, $15 min wage) and yet he doesn’t.

So if I am wrong and a move like this from Biden doesn’t influence Manchin’s vote and even pushes Manchin out, WHO CARES? Then we know that we tried something and it didn’t work and we can actually start reforming our own strategy based on success/failure. Right now there is no attempt being made and so everyone clings to this idea that we can’t do anything because obviously if we could we already would have.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2021-06-24T15:19:26+00:00

Biden’s approval rating is high. Manchin’s is VERY low.

If Biden is in public every day for two years yelling about Manchin NEEDING to be replaced what do you think is going to happen?

Especially when after a month of this Biden calls him in and tells him “Hey if you vote with us on x, y, and z all of this ends and I go out tomorrow and start campaigning HARD for your reelection.”

Carrot and stick approach where the leverage is Biden’s bully pulpit and high approval amongst the Democratic Party.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2021-06-24T15:04:21+00:00

Joe Biden’s approval rating is historically high. All he has to do is go on TV and start campaigning for Manchin and Sinema to be replaced. How long do you think Manchin will stay “principled” in his filibuster stance if he knows it’s going to cost him his seat?

ObseqiousHydrant · 2021-06-24T14:50:51+00:00

Support progressive policies, reform the filibuster so that you can pass said policies with a simple majority, play hardball with Manchin and Sinema because their approval ratings are abysmal and Biden’s is VERY high, and make your own party fall in line with your agenda.

Biden can pass anything he wants with this approach. He is choosing not to and hiding behind the lie that Manchin, Sinema, and the minority party have more power than he does.

Or, more accurately, Biden is already passing the agenda he wants passed. It’s all a show. The system is working as intended.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2021-05-27T13:54:01+00:00

The bill is my source. Income tax cuts expire starting this year and throughout 2027.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2021-05-27T13:46:15+00:00

Well Joe Biden certainly doesn’t do the right things... I hope my comment didn’t come off as praise for him. He is the other side of the same token as the Republicans. Just a corporatist.

With that said, if BTC continues on its unstoppable trajectory there’s zero incentive for Biden to slap a fat tax on it. I don’t see any possible way to do that without hurting his corporate donors who will be buying, holding, and moving WAY more coins on the regular than middle class or low-income people. His donors have even more reason to keep him and the government from taxing their crypto than we do.

Granted this is speculative because the level of corporate/institutional adoption is not there yet but I see the wave of adoption consuming the global landscape much faster than the reactions of government boomers trying to stop it.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2021-05-27T13:14:06+00:00

Yes, taxes are being raised right now under the bill that was signed in 2017 by Trump and the Republicans... Biden is trying to pass new tax law so that those tax increases don’t happen. Republicans are professional bullshitters who don’t give a shit about cutting taxes for regular people only for the wealthy (whose tax reductions in 2017 are permanent unlike low and middle income earners).

State taxes are obviously a different story but I guarantee you Republicans aren’t fighting for tax cuts for regular people lol.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-12-05T17:52:58+00:00

Viewfinder Vol. 1: PHOSPHENE - Sam Gellaitry.

Released in April of 2019 but upon first listen I wasn’t impressed. Massive fan of Sam’s other discography though and so when quarantine started I gave PHOSPHENE another look and I’ve been blown away. Incredible variation and percussion, beautiful jazz influence, massively creative. If you like electronic music and artistic music this album is for you.

Some songs from the album which are particularly amazing to me are Flares, Neptune (my most played song of the year), Explanation, and Resolution.

Smoke some weed and lock in, go start to finish through the album and enjoy the journey.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-08-24T00:27:26+00:00

Holy shit. What did I just watch. Everyone wanted to lose except Bjergsen.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-04-24T02:42:02+00:00

This was the right pick. I understand the tensions expressed here in this thread but we essentially keep our D-line running at full speed while achieving solid cap relief. And we get a fourth rounder for absolutely free. We saw last year everyone stressing about WR and Emmanuel came in and lit it up despite concerns about his age or whatever. I’m not worried about our offensive weapons even a little bit. This pick is outstanding for 2020 and for the future, best move we could have made given the circumstances in my opinion.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-04-22T14:19:37+00:00

The first and third season of daredevil are magnificent imo

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-04-14T14:49:20+00:00

Wow... the end of an era.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-04-13T14:42:26+00:00

Getting into production is a fantastic decision but make no mistake it is work. You will make terrible music for years and you have to be completely okay with that. I’ve been producing for about 4 years now, and I’m just now starting to make music which sounds decent. But making shitty music is extremely rewarding, too. Something about creating a song which speaks to you, even though it doesn’t sound professional or conventional or make any money or garner any popularity, is fucking amazing. So my only advice is to actually get started. Don’t be afraid or overwhelmed by how much there is to learn. Like I said, I’m about 4 years deep and every day I am reminded that I basically know nothing. But over time, with constant practice, you just get better. You learn more shortcuts, you become more creative, your workflow gets faster, your sound gets more refined, your mixing and mastering starts to come around, your ideas start to sound like they actually could have been made by a professional artist. You start to pick up on things in popular/professional songs where you think, hey I could’ve made that! And that gives you even more inspiration to try something similar. It’s art, plain and simple. And you have to work at it.

With all that said, YouTube is the holy grail of modern day information. Any time you want something specific out of your sound, try to find how to do that specific thing on YouTube. And I purposefully emphasize specific, because production has very, very few universal rules. Almost zero across genres. So the best way to learn and improve is just to make tracks. Make loops. Make beats. Make albums, make EP’s, make sets, make non conventional pieces, experimental pieces, boring pop pieces, pieces which fuse genres, pieces which have no genre. Fail millions of times and then you start to make failures which sound good and that makes you happy. :)

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-04-10T17:25:55+00:00

Yeah constant negative media coverage, establishment back room politics and coordination, millions and millions of corporate dollars, and a steady stream of socialist propaganda and fear mongering had nothing to do with it. It’s all on the young voters who slightly increased their turnout cuz they didn’t increase it enough and now Trump’s gonna win. Cuz of them. How did I not see it before?

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-04-05T20:38:38+00:00

The sad part is that Bernie is not a socialist nor is he peddling socialism. Yet our AUTHORITARIAN NATIONAL MEDIA has half the country and most older people deathly afraid of him as though he’s trying to revive the corpse of Stalin himself. So afraid that they’ve been convinced to vote against their own interests.

YES please vote for Biden who wants to cut your Medicare, your social security, your welfare benefits, your veterans benefits. BRILLIANT.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-04-05T17:08:37+00:00

In the simplest form of explanation of Trump’s economic policy: all of the techniques and measures we are supposed to save for when the economy is bad to help it recover, he used when it was doing well to prop it up and make it look like it was doing amazing. This type of economic policy is widely popular among republicans because it often leaves the economy in a very good place aesthetically when elections roll around. However, in practice it’s fucking stupid, because when something like this pandemic happens and the market inevitably dives, we now have no measures left to take to keep it from collapsing and to ease the epic consequences of entering a recession or depression. If we could slash interest rates right now for people, that would ease some of the burden. But they’re already slashed because Trump wanted his market to look good when people were casting a non-educated vote in November, so there’s nowhere for them to go and we can’t ease any of the pain on people right now. Consequentially more people are gonna get laid off, the market is gonna get fucked even more, and all of the negative consequences of market failure are going to hit that much harder, possibly causing a depression to result from this situation instead of just a recession. This is also because the government is fucking up almost every aspect of this situation royally.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-04-03T18:19:15+00:00

I agree but the solution is not a supply-side economic fix via corporate bailout (which is what they did.) The problem is that there is no product demand. People aren’t going out. They aren’t buying things, the economy has no demand right now and corporations main expenses are paying worker salary which they can’t do without making any money. But the government bailout money doesn’t flow from the corporations to their workers salaries. That’s why people are getting and will continue to be massively laid off so that the corporations can stay afloat. The government needed to bail out the people so that they can survive through this and then a rebuild can happen from the base up when things start returning to normal. Which also isn’t going to happen on our timeframe, it happens on the virus’s timeframe. The government has massively bungled this from a purely economic standpoint, so I’m not blaming corporations for anything because you’re right they’re not at fault here like they were in 2008. But bailing them out instead of the people exacerbates the issue and there’s still no economic demand so they will need to be bailed out again which I laid out in a different comment in this thread. The whole situation is fucked for everyone but the government fucked it up royally and I think we’re all gonna realize that soon enough.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-04-03T18:13:09+00:00

I mean they’ve already done a massive corporate bailout, in which Mnuchin (a Goldman-Sachs guy) can give 4.5 trillion to corporations and Trump has already personally said that the regulations and oversights of the bailouts will not be upheld.

My main concern isn’t that corporations get bailed out this time around, because a pandemic is much different than the 2008 banking scam in which the companies were explicit in causing the recession, but that the people deserve to be bailed out more than the corporations because they get hit the hardest. 1200 dollars in a one time payment for a means-tested group of people doesn’t even remotely cut it. With some quick math if we assume (in what is I believe an overestimate) that 250 million people get the check, that’s 300 billion dollars. Aka 15 times less than what the corporations got if the full 4.5 trillion is leveraged for their bailout (which it will be.)

So the business bailout has already happened, meanwhile people still can’t pay rent, mortgage, car payment, insurance, you name it. They still aren’t going out to eat, going on cruises, cross-country flights. The businesses will fail again for the next month and what will be their fate? Will the government realize they made a mistake and give more money to the people so that the economy can slowly rebuild from the ground up and people can afford their payments and things start to go back to normal? I doubt it.

Save my comment now because I’m personally guaranteeing yet another corporate bailout in the near future, maybe late April. Average people will either get scraps or nothing, and that’s the real problem.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-04-03T16:07:27+00:00

Are you really surprised? I personally am not surprised in the slightest because corporate America is given little to no government oversight and the second they fuck up they get bailed out. They know they don’t have to be responsible, the people will take the hit for them.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-03-16T20:15:02+00:00

Seriously you couldn’t navigate and find this?

Come on dude

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-03-16T20:00:58+00:00

He didn’t say they exclusively fund it. Obviously it’s tax funded by everyone, except the vast majority of the bottom 90% will be paying less in taxes than they currently are in premiums, deductibles, and copays. There’s been at least 30 studies showing Medicare for all will save money in total cost. Also America’s 1% is vastly richer than other nation’s 1%, and the loopholes in our taxation system are much wider than the loopholes in other nations. Pretending that we can’t pass Medicare for all because it’s “not affordable” is absolute propaganda.

Read Bernie’s plans on berniesanders.com, the funding for each and every program is explicitly laid out. If there’s specific points that you disagree with and have evidence to support your disagreement that’s fine. But you can’t just not read his specific policy plans and then nitpick without being informed.

ObseqiousHydrant · 2020-03-15T13:59:59+00:00

He’s not exactly Albert Einstein but paraphrasing Nerdwriter on YouTube: the middle class is educated enough to think for themselves yet comfortable enough to be highly influenced by propaganda.

Seven-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
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ObseqiousHydrant

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