A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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The Filibuster Represents All of American Politics in a Nutshell
Our ongoing argument over the filibuster represents the entire American political system in a nutshell. Just as the fear of our political opposites is generally greater than our confidence in our allies, both major parties are reluctant to get rid of the filibuster because their fear of what the other side could do with a majority vote is greater than their excitement about what their own side could do with it. (Got that? This is a surprisingly difficult concept to summarize plainly. But it's true of both liberals and conservatives, at this point in time at least.)
One way to think of this is that it's a straightforward consequence of what behavioral economics tells us about decisionmaking under uncertainty, namely that we hate losses about twice as much as we value comparable gains. If that's the case, then one side or the other will finally kill the filibuster not when the risk of backfiring goes away (it never will) but when the betting odds suggest that the relative gain to their own side seems to be roughly twice as big as the gain to the other side.
It will never be Republicans who come to this conclusion, since the filibuster is fundamentally a conservative rule that helps to preserve the status quo. It will happen only when enough Democrats finally decide that they don't have much to lose.
And when will that happen? On the one hand, Mitch McConnell is helping things along by making it explicit that Republicans will use the filibuster on everything, which makes it clearer every year just how much Democrats are losing because of it. On the other hand, the structural advantage that Republicans have in Congress makes a Democratic sweep (House, Senate, Presidency) unlikely, and that's the only time the filibuster matters.
That's the basic calculus. My own view is twofold. First, I've always objected to the filibuster on the simple grounds that legislatures should decide most things by majority vote. In fact, I'm not sure the filibuster is even constitutional. Second, I have zero doubt that liberals would gain far more than they'd lose from ditching it. This might or might not be true in the first few years after its demise, but it would certainly be true in the long run.
Why am I so confident? I suppose it's because I'm a true believer in social democracy. With the filibuster gone, Democrats would slowly but surely enact social democratic reforms and people would like it. This would make Democrats more popular and we'd then get more Democrats and more social democracy. Rinse and repeat.
Might I be wrong? Sure. But it's what I believe.
https://jabberwocking.com/the-filibuster-represents-all-of-american-po
litics-in-a-nutshell/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Rote a new How Stupid Are We article about the rite wing Youtube propaganda spredrz.
https://howstupidarewe.blog/2021/06/24/liarz/
A quick read, partly kuz Wordpress suks. Basic text functionz work like a 1990z low flow toilet!
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
The real pandemic solution: http://uvpk.net/
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Careful JO.
I see pictures of a Jew a gay man and a half-asian that you're calling liarz there.
And at least one of those other guys has a half-asian lawyer himself.
P.S. I love your love of frustration with how stupid everybody else is. I know that feeling very well.
It's hilarious that we both share that but come from two totally different points of view politically.
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Give me liberty or just come shoot me in my house. I'm so over this ridiculous reality.
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Actor Comedian Terrence K Williams
'Joe Biden Can't Even Put Together a Full Sentence'
https://rumble.com/vj09y5-joe-biden-cant-even-put-together-a-full-sent
ence.html
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Economics in a Post-Truth Nation
If a tree falls in a forest but nobody is there to hear it, did it make a sound? If we have a rapidly expanding economy but much of the electorate refuses to acknowledge it, is the country experiencing a boom?
Despite some growing pains, the U.S. economy is clearly on a vaccine-and-stimulus-fueled tear, with just about every measure indicating rapid recovery from the pandemic slump.
Yes, supply bottlenecks have caused some inflation, although recent data seems to validate the view that this inflation is transitory: Lumber prices have fallen sharply, industrial metals have also come down, and used car prices seem to have peaked. Yes, some employers seem to be having trouble hiring enough workers to keep up with surging demand, but this will almost surely be a temporary problem.
Overall, we’re clearly in a much better place economically than we were just a few months ago. Yet according to the long-running University of Michigan survey of consumers, on average self-identified Republicans assess the economic situation much less positively now than they did before the 2020 elections.
Why be surprised to see the post-truth state of mind extend to the economy, too?
But the state of the economy is right out there in the open. People, you might think, can judge it by their own experience or that of their friends and families.
And just to be clear, the Michigan number I’m referring to is the current economic conditions index rather than the index of consumer expectations. That is, it’s supposed to be about how things are now, not about what people think will happen. So this isn’t a matter of Republicans believing that Bidenomics will destroy prosperity in the future; it’s about them believing, in the teeth of lived experience, that it already has.
But hasn’t partisanship always colored perceptions of the economy? And doesn’t it happen on both sides? Well, yes — but not to this degree.
If you look back at Michigan surveys from a dozen years ago, you don’t see anything like today’s partisan polarization. In June 2009, Democrats and Republicans had similar views about current conditions.
We appear to have become a country in which a large chunk of the electorate won’t even judge a president by short-run performance, because those voters’ perceptions of the economy are driven by partisanship unrelated to reality.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20210625021632/https://www.nytimes.com/202
1/06/24/opinion/economy-truth-republicans.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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$10.00 for a 2x4. $3.30 for a gallon of gas.
That's why.
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And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.
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I can vouch for this vid
The Liarz Club Yootoobrz I rote about are all over CRT like a cheap shirt.
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
The real pandemic solution: http://uvpk.net/
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Quote:When hurricanes hit Texas, wood and gasoline prices skyrocket. The rich sellers, not the minimum wage employees working for the rich and parroting what the rich told them, say it is only because of the hurricane. The truth is that the rich sellers can arbitrarily and capriciously raise their prices when buyers are stupid enough to believe that it is the hurricane, not the seller, raising prices for gullible buyers who don't have the commonsense to know that the guy who controls supply raised the prices, not the hurricane. I know that Trumptards believe the Invisible Hand and Supply/Demand set prices, but those are fairy tales told by rich people to poor people who cannot understand, for psychological reasons or just general stupidity, how markets actually work.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
$10.00 for a 2x4. $3.30 for a gallon of gas.
That's why.
Regulators examine Texas energy market after natural gas prices soared 10,000%
www.cnn.com/2021/02/23/investing/texas-natural-gas-investigation-cftc/
index.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
I can vouch for this vid
The Liarz Club Yootoobrz I rote about are all over CRT like a cheap shirt.
CRT is racism in action.
I don't know how you can't look at a thumbnail of that dude and not want to punch him, JO. He's got the most punchable face in America, even beating out Seth Meyer.
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And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:When hurricanes hit Texas, wood and gasoline prices skyrocket. The rich sellers, not the minimum wage employees working for the rich and parroting what the rich told them, say it is only because of the hurricane. The truth is that the rich sellers can arbitrarily and capriciously raise their prices when buyers are stupid enough to believe that it is the hurricane, not the seller, raising prices for gullible buyers who don't have the commonsense to know that the guy who controls supply raised the prices, not the hurricane. I know that Trumptards believe the Invisible Hand and Supply/Demand set prices, but those are fairy tales told by rich people to poor people who cannot understand, for psychological reasons or just general stupidity, how markets actually work.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
$10.00 for a 2x4. $3.30 for a gallon of gas.
That's why.
So your argument is that nobody wanted to make money while Trump was President and they waited until Biden* got elected*?
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And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.
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