I don’t get what “obstructionist” Senators have to do with anything. They won’t be anymore willing to work with HRC that’s clear. Bernie wouldn’t be any less successful at “consolidating gains” of the past 8 years.
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It was funny. I thought it actually reinforced a lot of points Sanders supporters make about the problems faced by Americans trying to engage the political process.
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Did Obama get nothing done?
He was more centrist than people liked to imagine he was, and was further corrupted (compromised) by taking money from the rich.
So I’d like to see the President that reaches over and works across the aisle that doesn’t have their apron strings tied to their rich supporters.
If what we had was a failed Obama, I’ll be pleased with a failed Sanders.
Clinton? They’ll never work with her, never. But the same anti-establishment groups, as well as honest conservatives (They exist) who are true to their values, will recognize themselves in Sanders.
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Well at least she has a sense of humor.
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There is the Daily show. And the nightly show? And a few others still. Weekend Update at times.
Not what the landscape was when her old boss was around. I think she is amazing.
i like your cynicism. it not only dismisses real world problems as mere complaining, it also dismisses the real work people are doing to improve things.
personally, i think tearing down the system is terrible idea. without a stable structure underlying things, revolution almost always falls back into the same power structures as before, just with different faces at the fore – it’s got the same root as “revolve” for a reason.
what’s needed is focused change. that we have a politician with actual support talking about the limited set of things needed to be done: it gives me hope.
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Samantha Bee and John Oliver are the absolute top. They surpassed what John Steward and Stephen Colbert did.
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Hey… I don’t think you like my cynicism at all! I am not dismissing the problems, nor the people. Just saying I am not sure if there is enough people out there working to improve things, vs people just muttering things suck. Like me. I acknowledge the problems, but I can barely keep my head above water, much less make something else better.
Poor choice of words. I too don’t think we need to tear it down. I am not one of those nuts just wishing for a new civil war.
I would agree on that, but again, we have widely varying opinions on what that change should be. And even when we do have a surge of votes to swing some power in congress one way or the other, the focus tends to fizzle too quickly.
I gave up hope for Lent…
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It would help if the people who vote the President in would show up to the midterms to give them the opportunity to enact more of their manifestos.
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Nah, you know what, those people are all great. I liked that bit, I liked those people. It sure wasn’t an endorsement of Clinton. I mean, “I can’t support Bernie because I can’t have my heart broken again” is saying what about Hilary? I can vote for her because she’s not raising my expectations at all.
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That’s just government in action though and in a perverse way the sign of a healthy democracy, sure, people on the left might pick the president on one instance but that doesnt mean that everybody elses concerns should go unaddressed.
(This next part is not directed at you @Mister44)
It makes a weird sort of sense for people to vote for Ms Clinton because they believe she has a better chance of beating Trump. (I don’t agree with this and more specifically I don’t believe pepole should vote out of fear but I get it). What doesn’t make sense is for people to say that just because a politician will not be able to keep all his campaign promises then that means its not in your best interest to vote for someone who best represents you.
In the future, pundits will likely point to Sanders as the next logical step after Obama.
Because advance polling doesn’t even count as evidence? See, for example, Dukakis.
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it goes in cycles for me. i don’t know if it was by design or accident, but the fact americans have so little security and so little free time definitely hurts activism and volunteerism.
i kind of think it’s no wonder some countries like france have such large and loud protests: they’ve got plenty of vacation hours handy.
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Eh - but we do have free time. More free time than ever before, they say. We squander it. I squander the fuck out of it.
A vote for anyone is a vote for the GOP holding the country hostage, so why not vote for somebody who will put forth the effort to stop it? The whole point of their tactic is that the same shit get pushed through no matter who gets the vote. Obama and Hillary are IMO fairly conservative Democrats, so they gets flak even for policies the GOP typically favors (when they are the ones doing it). If you need to vote for a Democrat-in-name-only to get anything done, then it is an uphill fight to overcome the status quo in any case.
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Well, the question itself is rather dumb. Why does it matter what a new president accomplishes on day 1? Day 2 or 23 is not good enough?
Lucky you. But you’re wrong if by “we” you mean U.S. Americans:
American workers do work longer hours than we did a generation ago, according to some analyses, and hundreds more per year than our counterparts in France or Germany—the equivalent of six to eight extra weeks a year. We top the Eurozone nations in productivity by 18 percentage points. “Every month the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] releases its worker-productivity numbers, which measure output per labor hour worked,” says Celeste Monforton, a former Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) staffer. Montforton, now at the George Washington University School of Public Health, points out that the numbers “go up every month. And that’s because businesses are not hiring new workers; they’re just expecting the old workers to work more, and spitting them out after they get injured.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/work-speedups-have-consequences-boss-never-imagined/
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I guess I am thinking less about work hours, and more about how we don’t spend time hand washing dishes, going over that same spot on the rug with a shitty vacuum, cut grass with scythe, wash clothes with a bin and wringer, walk to work, etc.
Our modern conveniences have freed up a lot of time. Of course some of us have become slaves to them to a degree, such as checking email at 9pm. But then again they also allow us to do things like screw off on BB instead of working.
Your point that more workers are taking on more responsibilities at some jobs is well taken. I personally work OT on a regular basis, but I still have a lot of free time I completely squander. I just did my taxes and wonder how the hell I am so poor but on paper I am not doing so bad. I think I need to address 1) making sure my time is better spent and 2) making sure my money is better spent.
A lot of people I know are working so much that their free time is mostly recovery time. They’re not squandering it doing seemingly nothing; they’re mostly recovering, by doing what little they have the energy left to do.
As for spending money, well, how many guns do you have? Do you really need all of them?
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