Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

Never mind. I'm going to regret the answers.

if it seems like i'm overreacting, keep in mind that i have to call my mom later today, and she believes in Planet X, the apocalypse happening this year, a "one world financial system" that is coming because of the covid 19 hoax, AND, she DOESN'T THINK THERE'S A REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BIDEN OR TRUMP EITHER

if these people wind up not turning out for Trump then he's done

I'm posting here because it's the end of the work day and I want to get punched in the face to lift me out of one dream into another, but milo z: I see you are posting a lot in this thread about being anti-Biden. I only remember you from your past posts about guns. Are you still strongly committed to the legalization of guns?

I'm posting here because it's the end of the work day and I want to get punched in the face to lift me out of one dream into another,

Good morning!

he stopped being the angry gun guy and became the angry WWC guy about a year or two ago iirc i guess the two are not that different

If you would like the longer form - "is there enough of a difference in Trump and Biden on the environment, given the looming climate catastrophe. to earn my vote (if I could vote in the United States)" - if one does not see Biden making progress on climate change, that answer may well be no.

Even Joe agrees - he told a climate activist upset with his position on fracking to "vote for someone else" IIRC.

you recall correctly. iirc, i was the one who posted about that multiple times, the day it happened. isn't it weird how someone like me, who actively criticizes joe biden on climate and environmental policy and thinks he fucking sucks on numerous issues, and also as a human being, can still recognize that somehow he would be better at it than donald trump? it's almost like there are degrees of badness, that there is no "rock bottom", that the reality of climate change is trying to steer civilization toward the slightly less-horrific end of a range of horrific scenarios, and that things that are bad can always get worse

You know, Dante wrote a long poem about levels of hell.

*plane headed nosedown into a pile of shit*

"we must hit the ground harder to shock everyone else into progressive action"

You know, Dante wrote a long poem about levels of hell.

dante was too optimistic. (/werner herzog)

in dante's version, the 9th level is frozen, things stop moving, and at least there's a sense of finality and closure.

in our world, deeper levels are being constructed all the time, and there's a bunch of people on the 3rd level saying that it couldn't possibly get worse

the 10th level is this thread iirc

virgil is pretty much the same as brutus and judas. after all, they're both in hell

you believed what this ornery asshole told a voter who pissed him off?

You believe he wouldn't automatically, as a Democrat, be a better environmental president than any Republican

Obviously there are differences between the parties - but even the better party does a lot of awful shit like help lead us into criminal wars, bomb weddings and hospitals, yada yada yada. It is entirely understandable and reasonable for someone to not see the better party as different in a meaningful way if, say, they are adamantly and wholly opposed to bombing weddings.

especially with increasing evidence he's getting tugged leftward or to at least entertain left ideas?

There is no "increasing evidence" as of yet. We'll see! He has seven months to convince people and buy their votes.

your posts are like mad libs of all your previous posts

I'm posting here because it's the end of the work day and I want to get punched in the face to lift me out of one dream into another, but milo z: I see you are posting a lot in this thread about being anti-Biden. I only remember you from your past posts about guns. Are you still strongly committed to the legalization of guns?

I don't own any guns and haven't for quite some time. I was never "strongly committed to the legalization of guns," of course, but I don't particularly care about gun issues (pro/con/anti/etc.) at all politically.

whatever. it's depressing because it really doesn't matter. there are going to be a ton of people thinking like this in swing states, and it doesn't matter how wrong they are

If there are enough of them to matter, then it's Biden and the Democrats' job to sell him to those people, right?

It's really that simple. They can be right or wrong or confused or whatever, but if they're a relevant voting bloc it's the candidate's job to earn their votes.

i agree with that

i'm going to go eat homemade macaroni and cheese now

the answer is yes

― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone),Thursday, 16 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink

https://youtu.be/OULLiXkwVck

nope

man, i fucking HATE that, xyzzzzzz

have i argued with you under a different username on climate denial bullshit comment sections, from the early 2000s present?

I didn't say Biden and Trump were the same however their differences aren't enough to matter.

Karl - are you ok, or do you just hate Television?

Karl has been thoroughly otm

if one does not see Biden making progress on climate change

I feel like "progress" is the sticking point here. While I too would prefer to see actual progress—taking, say, 2015 as a baseline—even "less regress" still constitutes a significant difference, and I'm puzzled as to how the left benefits from pretending otherwise. How does framing Trump's relentless assault on environmental regulations as being equivalent to Biden's platform do anything other than soft-pedal Trump's actions?

alright that kind of got xposted to death, so let me ask: what does matter mean to you guys?

because speaking of not being able to tell the difference between things, i can't distinguish between you and a million WATTS UP WITH THAT blowhards who cite all the very important "skeptical" views on climate change that are absolutely bogus, and then when called out on it by people who know what they're talking about, retort "PROVE IT"

when something is very obvious and everyone agrees on it, the onus is on the guy who can't tell the difference between a petrified hairball and a can of lysol to PROVE IT

Biden would nominate a Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Biden would nominate Rick Perry and Scott Pruitt to the Cabinet and a major regulatory agency, respectively.

Okay.

xp

It's really that simple. They can be right or wrong or confused or whatever, but if they're a relevant voting bloc it's the candidate's job to earn their votes.

it's also biden's job to win the votes of centrist suburbanites. and the unfortunate structural advantage they have over the left bloc is that their votes are worth twice as much (because they're otherwise going to trump instead of being tossed into a black hole) and they actually aren't gonna be as bummed if trump wins regardless (so they have a more credible threat of not voting for biden.)

Then Biden should relentlessly pursue those centrist suburbanites and abandon the left - and no one should be mad at them when they don't vote for him. If their votes matter less or they're simply worth less as a bloc, then the outcome won't be changed.

he needs to win both it's a balancing act obv

nope, things are either exactly the same, or completely black and white mutually-exclusive options. there is either complete identity or there are polar opposites, nothing between

i'm color-blind to gray scale, i can only see pure black and white

I suffer neither from depression nor any degree of anxiety, thank my DNA. But when I see an intelligent poster in other threads typing twaddle like "their differences aren't enough to matter" that the United States has choked on since Gore-Bush and Clinton-Trump, I realize the posturing about being correct matters more than the evidence in front of their eyes.

Their differences aren't enough to matter

The Trump administration is expected on Thursday to weaken regulations on the release of mercury and other toxic metals from oil and coal-fired power plants, another step toward rolling back health protections in the middle of a pandemic.

The final Environmental Protection Agency rule does not eliminate restrictions on the release of mercury, a heavy metal linked to brain damage. Environmental lawyers said the new method of calculating the costs and benefits of curbing mercury pollution would most likely destroy the legal underpinnings of controls on mercury and many other pollutants.

By reducing the health benefit of regulations on paper, while raising their economic costs, the new method could be used to justify loosening restrictions on any pollutant that the fossil fuel industry has deemed too costly to control.

Their differences aren't enough to matter

“The president of the United States calls the shots,” he said at his evening news briefing. “They can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States.”

Asked what provisions of the Constitution gave him the power to override the states if they wanted to remain closed, he said, “Numerous provisions,” without naming any. “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total.”

Their differences aren't enough to matter

President Donald Trump threatened Wednesday to apply a never-used provision of the US Constitution to allow himself to adjourn the US Congress and push through many of his nominees who typically require Senate confirmation. The move came days after he claimed that he has total authority over the states before backing down.

"As the entire US government works to combat the global pandemic, it is absolutely essential that key positions at relevant federal agencies are fully staffed, and we're not allowing that to take place through our Congress," Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden during his daily coronavirus briefing. "They're just not giving it to us. We have many positions that are unstaffed because we can't get approval."

Joe Biden and Donald Trump's differences aren't enough to matter.

I've never done this in 16 years of ILE membership, but I need at least a 24-hour break from this thread.

Bye, y'all.

^^^ The real goal here, I suspect: Drive away sensible people. This is as pure a demonstration of concrete-skulled trolling as I've seen in years. No demonstration of belief in anything, just pure "that thing you like sucks - CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE but don't bother because nothing matters LOL" nihilism.

tbf, i overreacted to it, even though i've seen it a million times. sorry alfred.

The set of environmental regulations (all the way to the Paris Agreement which the Trump admin has walked away from) aren't going to be sufficient to avert the severe effects of climate change, so this is not a US only problem. A Biden administration putting those back up will not, in the long run, make enough of a difference here when we need to work to stop utilising coal period. This is not posturing. I am not a blowhard, nor am I interested in driving anyone away -- and as others have said I can't vote in the US election anyway -- but I am reading (as someone who posts in this community) how people believe Biden will not bomb Brown people when he served under a president that did that, or there will be a deportation freeze and I'm like are you serious?!

Sorry, Alfred. I hope you're ok and I mean no one any harm.

to death, so let me ask: what does matter mean to you guys?

If I lived in a swing state, 99% chance I'd pull the lever for the Biden. I don't.

What 'matter' means to me is a political vision that means a better world instead of a shittier world marginally slower. Joe Biden probably can't offer that political vision because he has a 50 year career of actively making the world a worse place.

Platforms don't matter when we have your actual record - from the Iraq War to busing from Anita Hill to Tara Reade, from welfare reform to the bankruptcy bill, from the drug war to DOMA.

Senator Joe Biden made the world shittier and a President Joe Biden will continue to do so (but at a slower pace than Trump). He's going to put kids in cages (with their parents!), he's going to bomb weddings, he's going to lock up whistleblowers, he's going to bargain with Mitch McConnell at the expense of my mom's Social Security, he's going to make the CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield richer while healthcare remains as unsustainable and terrible for the average person as it is today.

Allow me to...

Is there enough of a difference to count, is the question.

― xyzzzz__

the answer is yes

24 hours, heavens to betsy! that's a year in non-pundit time

What will you do if polls show a close race in Texas, Milo?

"If I lived in a swing state, 99% chance I'd pull the lever for the Biden. I don't."

Just interested as to why you would vote for this prick if you lived in a swing state xp

but I am reading (as someone who posts in this community) how people believe Biden will not bomb Brown people

― xyzzzz,Thursday, April 16, 2020 1:20 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

hey can you please provide a citation for this absurd claim? Who itt has ever said that?

Biden might kill ya, Trump def wants to kill ya

kind of funny that david roberts is also having an annoying morning, on the same exact topic. he posted this like 2 minutes ago

Here's my policy, which I recommend: if someone in your TL says Biden is just as bad as Trump, or they're not going to vote, or they're going to vote third party ... don't argue. Don't give it the attention it seeks. Don't RT, even to bash it. Just quietly block & move on.

— David Roberts (@drvox) April 16, 2020

that's kind of what i mean though, with the frustration. it's not just an isolated dumb thing, it's a thing that loooooooooots of people believe

actually, i see roberts takes it further than i thought ("or they're going to vote third party" - i have no issue with that, as long as it doesn't matter)

that's funny I was just going to post this link to a v good Roberts piece: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/4/16/21220312/coronavirus-stimulus-renewable-energy-democrats

I swear to christ if RBG and Breyer (81 his damn self) don’t retire the very minute Biden takes the oath of office...

although if dems don’t retake the senate I don’t suppose it matters

hey can you please provide a citation for this absurd claim? Who itt has ever said that?

― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII),Thursday, 16 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink

You seemed to be listing Trump's list of foreign policy crimes as if to say Biden wouldn't be as bad. Just taking some dramatic license but my point stands.