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from the they're-all-ryan-through-their-smiles dept.
Many media outlets are saying "Paul Ryan Retires" (For example, Vox's original headline.) This doesn't mean he won't still be there until the new Congress is seated in January 2019.
Vox reports:
More and more Republicans are looking at how the 2018 elections are shaping up and deciding they want no part of them--with Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) just the latest to announce they won't run for reelection this year.
This makes 25 House Republicans and three GOP senators who are calling it quits, not counting several more who are stepping down to run for another political office (or who have already resigned). That's the highest such number[1] for just one party in decades.
Revealingly, only nine House Democrats and zero Democratic senators have so far made the same choice. (Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota resigned due to scandal, but his seat has already been filled by Tina Smith, who will run this fall.) That's a dramatic discrepancy.
Though the explanations offered for these decisions differ, and though many of these GOP-held seats are in no real danger of flipping to Democrats, these retirements are revealing how members of Congress currently view the national political environment. That is: they think there's a real possibility of a Democratic wave.
But the trend is more meaningful even than that. These very retirements could help make such a wave even bigger, because it's generally easier for the opposition party to flip open seats than it is to knock off incumbents.
[...] According to FiveThirtyEight's numbers,[2] the only time in the past 40 years there's been a bigger partisan discrepancy in [the who's not running for reelection stats] was 2008, which turned out to be a Democratic wave year.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday April 12 2018, @02:25PM (13 children)
My general opinion:
* Most of the Republicans are evil. They're basically for sale to the highest bidder, and if the highest bidder wants the death of millions of people or to steal billions of dollars, they'll get it.
* Most of the Democrats are evil. They're basically for sale to the highest bidder, and if the highest bidder wants the death of millions of people or to steal billions of dollars, they'll get it. (The Clintons are very much in this category)
* The rest of the Democrats are idiots, because they either don't know the game the Republicans and the rest of the Democrats are playing, or they're stupid enough to act like they don't notice or don't care.
* Donald Trump and his closest backers are an evil idiots. Their 2 major goals are: 1. Make a lot of money for themselves. 2. Be able to turn to his fan base and say "I'm the greatest evar!" Secondary goals involve racism and violence. But because they have no experience in government, they have about as much subtlety and skill as a rampaging bull.
* The third-party folks I've encountered were generally speaking idiots. For example, I just yesterday had a Green Party candidate give me the spiel about how bad the Democrats and Republicans are, and when I told him I wouldn't vote for him based on a negative campaign, he continued to give me the spiel about how bad the Democrats and Republicans are. He and one of his buddies was lobbying me hard for my vote for their party, because apparently they are having a hard time coming up with 500 votes in a state of 11 million. The local Libertarians I've chatted with weren't any better.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @03:08PM
He's the closest thing I can find to a respectable politician anywhere in the upper echelons of our government, and seems to be the only one year after year fighting for common sense (at least in regards to technology.)
Is there really any hope left for America? Or is it just time to start over?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @04:00PM (2 children)
Well, what else is there? wswswswswswsws seems to be pushing this Socialist Equality Party. More idiots?
I guess we'll all just disenfranchise ourselves because we can't figure out how to get non-idiots on the ballot.
Might as well make the aristocracy official if the ballot box is broken. Leaves only the ammo box, and aristocrats are one kind of people you can be sure about using the ammo box against.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @05:05PM
You call socialists crazy but then promote murder as a means for social change? Hmmmm
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @07:51PM
You have it backwards.
(It's not like the relationship between Fox so-called News and The GOP.)
The official media outlet of The Socialist Equality Party is The World Socialist Web Site.
As for WSWS's message, if you think about it for about half a minute, you'll realize that brown people with no money and no political power aren't the source of the world's problems.
The problem is inequality: concentration of wealth (and the political power that comes with that; Thomas Pikitty wrote a 696-page book about it).
There's a list of problem-makers (insanely rich individuals and global Capitalistic operations) on this page. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [dissidentvoice.org]
Those have no loyalty to any nation and no concern for the wellbeing of Mother Earth.
They exist only to extract profit.
The greatest threat to Democracy is Capitalism.
Brilliant guy Michael Parenti [wikiquote.org] has a great 20something minute talk where he lays it out.
Capitalism’s Apocalypse [tucradio.org]
Of late, more of his brilliance on various topics has been presented at TUC Radio. [tucradio.org]
I wish I could find a link to a gratis copy of his "On Democracy" thing (via AlternativeRadio).
That's mostly about how Capitalism is destroying it.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @04:33PM (8 children)
I always find it weird that people think that "Donald Trump and his closest backers" are in this to "Make a lot of money for themselves". That makes no sense. They were already billionaires. They were making good money outside of politics, and now they are losing billions of dollars.
The more reasonable explanation is that they literally want to make America great again. I'm sure you would disagree with their definition of "great", but that's just you.
Another weird thing is that you would think they are idiots. Come on now, seriously, no idiot is ever able to win a presidential election. I suppose it is all relative and maybe Trump can't compete with Einstein, but if Trump is an idiot then all the other candidates are worse idiots. I think the trouble here is a matter of judgement, specifically: you don't agree with Trump, and you are loath to call yourself an idiot, so therefore you conclude that Trump is the idiot.
The claim about violence is also weird. It's all relative of course: Obama was at war with at least 8 countries. Clinton participated in the state department, voted for war in Iraq, and has been stirring up hostilities with Russia. Meanwhile we see Trump showing some restraint on Syria, working to peacefully solve the North Korea issue, and even getting a few improvements related to Israel and Saudi Arabia. In a relative sense, Trump is working miracles toward peace, and you want to call him violent.
The "racism" claim is wrong too. Trump is way more comfortable around black people than Clinton ever was. He even had a black girlfriend. Do remember that "illegal alien" is not a race, and "muslim" is also not a race.
That bit about "subtlety and skill as a rampaging bull" suggests that you don't understand all the facets of diplomacy. It's not all about being "diplomatic", if by that you mean kissing ass and never causing offense. Those tools are sometimes appropriate. Other times, you need to be more threatening. There can be value in being unpredictable. Remember that the goal isn't to make friends. The goal is to exert control to America's advantage. Sometimes the goal is achieved by being friendly, and sometimes by other means.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday April 12 2018, @05:08PM (3 children)
1. Many billionaires spend a lot of their time trying to make even more money. The Forbes 400 listing is their equivalent of a sports playoff run. Indeed, billionaires often are more concerned with making more money than many middle class people.
2. There's reason to think Trump's claims that he's a billionaire aren't actually true, largely because we the masses have absolutely no idea what's on the liabilities side of the ledger. The suspicion is that his liabilities are much much larger than he's ever let on, and that he's doing the upper-class equivalent of paying off his Visa using a Mastercard, and then paying that off using an AmEx card.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:21PM (1 child)
Sure, and many do not. Very many of them switch from "earning" to "burning" when they get old. Bill Gates is a recent example. He was obsessed with getting his billions, but now he runs around spending it. A much older example would be Carnegie.
Trump is old. The pattern fits.
There are old interviews going back into the 1980s that show him with the same sort of patriotism we see today. The man is legit.
Meanwhile, the main alternative somehow got 65 million while doing modestly-paid government work as a senator and as the secretary of state. Hmmmm. Clearly, that was an unsatisfied and corrupt person seeking to abuse the presidency to make money. The country dodged a bullet there.
There is more reason to think it is true. Third-party estimates suggest he was at 4 billion prior to the election, and has since dropped to 3 billion.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @08:07PM
You are a fool.
Gates has never done anything that wasn't about profit.
He's heavily invested and is making sure that those investments are going to pay off.
Every "giveaway" he makes comes with stipulations that enriches a corporation in which he has lots of stock.
Carnegie
After years of abuse of The Working Class, trying to do damage control by putting your name on everything is sight isn't charity either.
WRT to the my-name-on-stuff thing, Carnegie and Trump have a lot in common.
secretary of state
Yup. Killery getting $150k per speech is clearly payback from Wall Street.
The Clinton's foundation isn't about charity either.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @08:20PM
Trump biographer and former NYT tax columnist David Cay Johnston figures Trump is worth $700M max.
If all of Trump's loans were called in, he'd be deeply in the hole.
...and several economics specialists have said that if he had simply put his inheritance in an index fund, he'd have more wealth now than he's accumulated through his various schemes (which have included 6 bankruptcies).
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @05:26PM (3 children)
I hate Trump all right, but not for any of the reasons you've laid out. I hate him because he's a bully and a real estate developer. In my 60+ years, the lowest form of human I've had to deal with are the developers, they will say whatever they have to say to get their way. Trump is well known to use lawyers that fight dirty, use bankruptcy law to avoid paying his contractors/sub-contractors and push for eminent domain to oust people from their homes. Basically, this type of person will walk all over anyone that happens to be in the way of their grandiloquent plans. And I've hated him since the first time I saw him on Howard Stern, many years ago.
At the same time, it's clear to me that he's pretty clever in his own evil, self-centered way, and of course he has a lot of resources. Before the election I was very concerned that he would beat Clinton, although I'm certain that she would have been the lesser of two evils.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:01PM (2 children)
The role of the president is not to be a pal, to you or to any country. He is there to gain advantage for the USA.
Part of the problem with Obama was that he wasn't too comfortable being a bully. When we needed to push other countries around, he would almost always make concessions and try to buy favor. That strategy is only correct on rare occasions. If you try it with Putin or Xi or even Kim, you'll get walked all over.
Sometimes you have to physically shove the prime minister of a minor European country, tweet a threat of nuclear war, walk away from a treaty, or apply huge tariffs.
I would really hate doing business with Trump. I'd hate to be Trump's neighbor. I was happy to vote for him, and I'm glad I did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @10:15PM (1 child)
And idiots with no morals like you are part of why the US is declining. Abuse the rest of the world too much and they turn against you. We could have gently slid from empire to average country, with no nation claiming the empire title, but nooooo. The US was too greedy, now the entire world is paying the price.
You are gamed by the elites, manipulated into your own downfall, and the elites laugh their asses off watching you cheer them on! Boomers please stop voting, you're obviously incapable of adult decisions what being emotional reactionaries. Just retire and volunteer, leave the nation building to the more capable generation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @11:48PM
Our economy is booming again. This is not "declining".
The world can turn against us, and that is fine. Of the large economies (we being largest) we are the least oriented toward international trade. We are best able to go it alone.
You seem to desire "no nation claiming the empire title". That should be "no nation able to challenge our empire title".
Accepting defeat is sick. Shame on you for the idea that we would "have gently slid from empire to average country". The only problem with American exceptionalism is that some people spend too much time believing it and not enough time fighting for it. We can and should fight for absolute dominance.
The generation leaving high school right now is abnormally alt-right. You're in for a ride if you think population trends might go in your favor. Part of this is that the young like to change the status quo, and today that pushes many to the right. Part of it is that the average family is far to the right of the average person; this is because liberals don't raise families much.
FYI, I'm alt-right and I have 11 kids. Most are to the right of me. Only one of them, a girl, is even slightly at risk of doing the whole vegan cat lady thing. A bunch of them make normal alt-right people look like leftist cucks.