The BlueSwan Basement of Absurd & Ignorant Posts VIII

[GeneralMacArthur]

Hillary supporters essentially elected Trump by knowingly supporting an unelectable candidate whose policies caused millions to die.

In a way they are closet racists or atleast responsible for most of Trump's policies. At the very least they should apologize for enabling murder & racism.

Shadows is one of the most absurd and ignorant posters still posting on this forum and this may be one of the worst she's ever done.

[GeneralMacArthur]

How deranged Atlas is?? Sam Seder is a podcast host & NBC contributor & not a Sanders surrogate.

So people expect Sanders to get hammered through garbage, vile posts, misinformation & smears & this should he played in NBC (is NBC the Fox??) & no1 should respond.

Funny instead of having a thread about NBC turning into Fox (or even Infowars lite by posting conspiracy tweets from random crazy), we attack Bernie people.

Guess Atlas is trying to be new Infowars & conspiracy theory hub

[GeneralMacArthur]

Shadows' latest fanfiction about Elizabeth Warren's hard-right views in the 80s.

Can really rename this thread Grassroots Graveyard of Shadows posts tbh

The Bernie Bros ^TM will say anything to ruin Warren

Yes, because every single Sanders supporter absolutely despises Warren.

The vast majority of his supporters would be pretty happy with Warren. But keep painting us with the same brush; it worked out well three years ago.

He didn’t say Sanders supporters. He said Bernie Bros and they are absolutely grilling Warren simply for not being their God.

They like to throw stones from glass houses. If Warren had voted for the 1994 crime bill, to deregulate the derivatives market, to give gun manufacturers legal immunity, or against immigration reform, they would absolutely excorciate her over it.

Given her being a Republican then, she would have probably voted for it. She did something worse. She stood by & cheered & supported the Republican party a it slashed taxes from 70% to 28% odd, gutted all regulations, engaged in racial hostility against African Americans, gutted trade unions, appointed people like Thomas & on & on & on.

And she supported the Republican party all this while because she was worried about government taking an activist role. She was a hard right winger then.

And she still voted for 700B $ for the military to wage war all around the war. And then she hopped on the Medicare-for-all bandwagon when she was running for President. And she lied about being Native American throughout her history.

[GeneralMacArthur]

What is this garbage:

This is not a joke. I do believe 49 states could swing in Trump's direction. VT was likely a fluke and I don't think Sanders would get 7% in VT again.

Welcome to Lake Woebegone, where all the states are right-of-average.

[GeneralMacArthur]

What is this garbage:

This is not a joke. I do believe 49 states could swing in Trump's direction. VT was likely a fluke and I don't think Sanders would get 7% in VT again.

I don't know, but here's an approximation of what the result could be with these swings:

A swing map isn't (2016% - 2020%) though.  It's ((2016 state% - 2016 national%) - (2020 state% - 2020national%))

So let's say Clinton got 40% in Texas and 47% nationally.  (state - national) is -7.  If Biden gets 53% nationally and 42% in Texas, then (state - national) is -11.  So Texas would be a 4-point R swing, not a 2-point D swing.

Given that's how it works, it's impossible for every state to trend right relative to the national average, because they would pull the national average right with them.  If Biden got 0% nationally and 0% in every state, the trend map would just be the inverse of the 2016 map.

[GeneralMacArthur]

A swing map isn't (2016% - 2020%) though.  It's ((2016 state% - 2016 national%) - (2020 state% - 2020national%))

So let's say Clinton got 40% in Texas and 47% nationally.  (state - national) is -7.  If Biden gets 53% nationally and 42% in Texas, then (state - national) is -11.  So Texas would be a 4-point R swing, not a 2-point D swing.

Given that's how it works, it's impossible for every state to trend right relative to the national average, because they would pull the national average right with them.  If Biden got 0% nationally and 0% in every state, the trend map would just be the inverse of the 2016 map.

No dude, that's a trend map. A swing map is simply the margin change since the last election.

Is that so?  Maybe I'm wrong.

[GeneralMacArthur]

There's one line in that post that made ridiculous to my eye:

People who are counting on a steady 7% annual return from the stock market for their retirement portfolios and don't want Warren to f*** that up

Warren is a dangerous radical. She makes unrealistic promises. She will take the hard-earned wealth of working Americans and use for the sake of handing free stuff to the indolent and undeserving. Her entire campaign is premised on a view of the American economy that just doesn't make sense!

All of this is completely unlike the kind of thinking that says that "a steady 7% annual return on the stock market" is a reasonable assumption.

7% is the number generally recommended by financial planners.

For instance https://www.thesimpledollar.com/where-does-7-come-from-when-it-comes-to-long-term-stock-returns/

[GeneralMacArthur]

7% is the number generally recommended by financial planners.

For instance https://www.thesimpledollar.com/where-does-7-come-from-when-it-comes-to-long-term-stock-returns/

I am aware that this assumption underlies most retirement planning. We can debate whether it's a sound one in an era of diminishing population growth and declining returns on investment. We can also debate the political implications of this in a country in which ~90% of stocks are owned by ~10% of households and nearly half own none at all.

Was your posting this in the "absurd & ignorant posts" thread and sarcastically implying it was an unreasonable assumption just an attempt to "start a conversation" then?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Was your posting this in the "absurd & ignorant posts" thread and sarcastically implying it was an unreasonable assumption just an attempt to "start a conversation" then?

No, it was indeed a ridiculous post.

The best part is that I didn't even bring him in here. I was only reacting to YE's induction!

You were mocking me for saying that people expect a 7% annual return on the stock market.  I just wanted to dispute the notion that that's in any way abnormal or absurd.

I don't really care about a Warren supporter (SpeakerYe) getting upset about criticism of Warren.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I was excited to see what post I had made to earn the naming rights to this thread, and left disappointed that there wasn't one.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Y'all should rename this thread after MissScarlett, who is the actual real-live version of the caricature GeneralMacArthur you pretend exists.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I see all the Biden & anti-Bernie folks have dominated this thread over the last 48 hours.

Of course, I'm not surprised. Just damn, what a siege

The more interesting bit to me is that Bernie fans aren't defending against these posts. This leads me to believe they have accepted that no viable path forward exists for their candidate.

Or perhaps they've come to the realisation Democrats don't really care about their left wing and would gladly shove them out to make way for Kasich and Romney Republicans?

You've posted the allegation that Democrats "don't care about progressives/the left" in a whole bunch of threads in the last ten minutes.  Maybe go lie down for a bit?

You're not actually disproving anything I say, so . . .

What you're saying is not worth the time to respond to it, especially since you wouldn't listen anyway.

My point is only that you don't need to copy+paste it into every single thread

You not even trying to disprove what I'm saying proves my point.

I think this thread will keep its name for a long time.

[GeneralMacArthur]

We have to keep things really bad, otherwise it's hard to make them better.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Oh yeah, I stand by that post 100%.

I also find it funny how I didn't even call out Republicans at all, the post was entirely focused on socialists and third-party Buster types, yet it was all Trump supporters who got their panties in a bunch.  Bruh, the post ain't even about you.

[GeneralMacArthur]

First of all, my comment addressed why your local Dem mayor is likely to disappoint you.  Police unions have a lot of power.  Mayors have less power.  If a mayor goes to war with the police union, they will lose.  So they have to find some sort of middle ground between reform and appeasement.  Otherwise nothing will get done at all.  If you want police reform, it needs to come from an entity that's more powerful than the police unions, like the senate.  The only other option is to reduce the political power of police unions and reward reformers who pick fights with them, which is going to be really tricky.

Secondly, what is the point of cherry-picking isolated examples of Democrats who have not suceeded?  The Democratic Party wants police reform.  This is not up for debate.  If you give the Democrats enough power, you will get that reform.  In the same way that the existence of Strom Thurmand (D - SC) did not prevent the Civil Rights Act from being passed when the Dems had 68 votes in the Senate.  Just because Rahm Emanuel handled a BLM case abysmally doesn't mean the Democrats as a whole are lying about their desire to achieve progress on this issue.

[GeneralMacArthur]

If you don't like your Democratic mayor, primary them with a different mayor.  I fully support a primary challenge to the big fat idiot de Blasio.

But even the idiot is going to be better for police reform than Donald Trump Jr. or whatever Trump supporter Republican would replace him.  The Democratic party is the only political party interested in working on this issue.  You vote Republican you're just voting for someone who's gonna rubber-stamp Trump's agenda, as we've seen time and again.

Besides, even if de Blasio is an idiot, you need the cooperation of mayors and local officials to get change done.  Remember Obamacare?  If we have some voluntary reform program where you need buy-in from mayors and governors, you're much more likely to get it from de Blasio than from a Republican.