A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
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Quote:Facts count. Beliefs? Opinions? Those are like assholes, almost everyone has them and most stink.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What a tool. Do you really expect us to believe that you're "pro-worker"? My god, you're stupider than a Texas Republican.
Here are some ugly facts about Americans, particularly so-called "Democrats", facts explaining how American politics got so wacko.
An actual test by political scientist Ryan Enos of what seeing more diversity in our everyday surroundings does to our political opinions:
I sent Spanish speakers to randomly selected train stations in towns around Boston to simply catch the train and ride like any other passenger. I focused on stations in white suburbs. The intent was to create the impression, by subtle manipulation, that the Latino population in these segregated towns was increasing.
Before and after sending these Spanish speakers to the train platforms, I surveyed passengers on the platforms about their attitudes about immigration. After being exposed to the Spanish speakers on their metro lines for just three days, attitudes on these questions moved sharply rightward: The mostly liberal Democratic passengers had come to endorse immigration policies — including deportation of children of undocumented immigrants — similar to those endorsed by Trump in his campaign.
Experimental exposure to reminders that America is diversifying pushes whites toward more conservative policy opinions and more support of the Republican Party. What happens when it is not an experiment?
Enos goes on to note that his findings match what we saw in 2016: The biggest gains Donald Trump made over Mitt Romney’s performance “were in the places where the Latino population had grown most quickly. ... For example, Luzerne County, adjacent to Scranton, Pennsylvania, had experienced an almost 600 percent growth in its Latino population between 2000 and 2014, and, after decades of voting Democrat in presidential elections, gave Trump 12 percentage points more votes than it had given to Romney in 2012.”
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/30/17505406/trump-obama-race-po
litics-immigration
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Do you have a topical reply?
THUGGER admits it's not about RUSSIA !!! and is, in fact, a witch hunt. "Trump better be innocent of any wrong doing, anywhere, anytime."
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SECOND, you have spent your entire posting time here grabbing anything that came into reach ... opinions, speculation, lies, distortions, irrelevancies, cartoons, and maybe even a few facts here and there ... grabbing them with both hands as fast as you possibly can and and furiously flinging them against a wall just to see what sticks.
Now, at THIS point I have no idea what sort of mental malfunction or ethical lapse causes you to do that, but as a result you don't care whether you're posting truth or fiction; you don't care about Americans or American workers or anything to do with America. Because you don't care whether you post truth or not, almost everything you post is just so much shit, and it sure isn't worth wading thru.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:Signym, why not accuse me of being from Satan? Why not go all the way to crazy town? I know you want to. Signym, I understand how your little mind works because I have seen it before. Back 50 years ago, I use to see the same stubborn rejection of all evidence about the theory of evolution. The Kingdom Hall I went to was very certain that Evolution was False. Any data that made it into the newspapers was from Satan. Years have passed and my mother's religion got less strident and more subtle, but it still teaches that Evolution is False and God Created All Life.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, you have spent your entire posting time here grabbing anything that came into reach ... opinions, speculation, lies, distortions, irrelevancies, cartoons, and maybe even a few facts here and there ... grabbing them with both hands as fast as you possibly can and and furiously flinging them against a wall just to see what sticks.
Now, at THIS point I have no idea what sort of mental malfunction or ethical lapse causes you to do that, but as a result you don't care whether you're posting truth or fiction; you don't care about Americans or American workers or anything to do with America. Because you don't care whether you post truth or not, almost everything you post is just so much shit, and it sure isn't worth wading thru.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
www.jw.org/en/publications/books/origin-of-life-5-questions/evolution-
or-creation-student-dilemma/
Now for a Fact that Signym will either outright reject or twist into meaninglessness:
In their forthcoming book, political scientists J. Sides, M. Tesler, and L. Vavreck analyze reams of data and show that racial resentment activated economic anxiety, rather than the other way around:
Before Obama’s presidency, how Americans felt about black people did not much affect their perceptions of the economy. But when the exact same people were re-interviewed in July 2012, racial resentment was a powerful predictor of economic perceptions: the greater someone’s level of racial resentment, the worse they believed the economy was doing.
This is unnerving data, as we tend to imagine the economy as a rare subject on which objective facts, rather than group conflicts, drive opinions. Sadly, no. Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck analyzed polling on economic sentiment and found that “Republicans in the highest income quintile, those making more than $100,000 per year, were actually slightly less satisfied than Democrats in the lowest income quintile, those making less than $20,000 per year.”
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/30/17505406/trump-obama-race-po
litics-immigration
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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In his 2012 campaign, Obama won merely 39 percent of the white vote — a smaller share than loser Michael Dukakis had commanded in 1988. White voters who felt they were losing a historical hold on power were reacting against Obama. For the bulk of American history, you couldn’t win the presidency without winning a majority of the white vote — usually an overwhelming majority. The election of an African-American president leading a multiracial coalition made the transition stark and threatening. There’s a reason why, when the Russians wanted to sow division in the American election, they focused their social media trolling on America’s racial divisions.
This is the crucial context for Trump’s rise, and it’s why Trump is not an invader in the Republican Party. In a field of Republicans who were trying to change the party to appeal to a rising Hispanic electorate, Trump was alone in speaking to Republican voters who didn’t want the party to remake itself, who wanted to be told that a Mexico wall could be built and things could go back to the way they were. Trump met the party where it was rather than trying to change it. He was hunting where the ducks were.
Generations of scholars have taken African-American and Hispanic and Asian identity seriously but assumed there was no such thing as white identity. The conventional wisdom was that “because of their numerical majority and political dominance, whites do not, by and large, possess their own sense of racial identification, and they do not feel consciously compelled to protect some sense of group interest.”
Political scientist Ashley Jardina proved in a series of experiments that this was wrong. White political identity is “conditional.” It emerges in some periods and is absent in others. The periods it emerges in are periods like this one.
“When the dominant status of whites relative to racial and ethnic minorities is secure and unchallenged, white identity likely remains dormant,” Jardina writes. “When whites perceive their group’s dominant status is threatened or their group is unfairly disadvantaged, however, their racial identity may become salient and politically relevant.”
You’ll notice the language Jardina uses is careful and probabilistic. “Racial identity may become salient,” not will become salient. Jardina took pains to emphasize that none of this is inevitable. “There are a lot of incentives for elites across the political spectrum to try and stoke identity in the first place,” Jardina said. “Donald Trump has done a great job on this.” Then she added, a bit ruefully, “My dissertation reads sort of like a playbook [for Trump’s campaign].”
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/30/17505406/trump-obama-race-po
litics-immigration
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Trump administration is considering a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans through a change that would not need approval from Congress, officials said, a move that would follow a package of tax cuts last year that also benefited the super-rich.
The Treasury Department is studying whether to allow investment income, known as capital gains, to be adjusted for inflation in a way that shields more of it from taxation. Most capital gains are paid by wealthier Americans, who disproportionately hold large portfolios of investments.
But the use of executive power on such a significant change to the tax law would be highly unusual and could be vulnerable to a legal challenge.
More at www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-tax-cut-superrich-bill
ions-us-president-wealthy-washington-a8470736.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:Because that would be baseless and stupid, and UNLIKE YOU I actually try to post my own view of the world as consistent with reality as I can be.
SECOND, you have spent your entire posting time here grabbing anything that came into reach ... opinions, speculation, lies, distortions, irrelevancies, cartoons, and maybe even a few facts here and there ... grabbing them with both hands as fast as you possibly can and and furiously flinging them against a wall just to see what sticks.
Now, at THIS point I have no idea what sort of mental malfunction or ethical lapse causes you to do that, but as a result you don't care whether you're posting truth or fiction; you don't care about Americans or American workers or anything to do with America. Because you don't care whether you post truth or not, almost everything you post is just so much shit, and it sure isn't worth wading thru.- SIGNY
Signym, why not accuse me of being from Satan? - SECOND
You, OTOH, are are the lookout for ANYthing negative about Trump, and you splatter the board with SECONDHAND opinion, speculation, and accusation about things as diverse as Trump's haircolor, hand size, appetite for burgers, "RUSSIAN!!!" connections etc, all the while pretending to "care" about American women, American workers, American security etc when your own posts* demonstrate that you don't give a rat's ass about anybody but yourself. I don't know why you have such a hard-on for Trump but it has completely warped your mind.
*BTW, I think the reason why you rarely post your own opinions is because every time you do, you get in trouble. That deep deep hatred and disdain that you feel for anyone who isn't as "rich" and "successful" as you just comes oozing out. You've expanded your circle of hate from Texas Republicans to include all Republicans, anyone who voted for Trump, anyone who criticizes your warped POV, to anyone who isn't in the top 1%. If you want, I can find those quotes of yours, but I have one all set up - in red- below.
Quote:It is a book, not a "fact". Just like Piketty's book Capital is a book, not a "fact". The mere fact that someone wrote a book doesn't mean that we should automatically accept its contents, right?
Now for a Fact that Signym will either outright reject or twist into meaninglessness:
In their forthcoming book, political scientists J. Sides, M. Tesler, and L. Vavreck analyze reams of data and show that racial resentment activated economic anxiety, rather than the other way around:
Quote:Seriously??? In the field of economics as currently practiced, objective facts are rarely to be found.
This is unnerving data, as we tend to imagine the economy as a rare subject on which objective facts, rather than group conflicts, drive opinions.
Quote:So, the authors assume that Republicans=racists, Democrats=non-racists, and THEN go on to link economic dissatisfaction with (presumed) racism?
“Republicans in the highest income quintile, those making more than $100,000 per year, were actually slightly less satisfied than Democrats in the lowest income quintile, those making less than $20,000 per year.”
Do the authors go on to ask WHY the respondents were dissatisfied? Were they dissatisfied with their PERSONAL situation, or were they dissatisfied with Obama's policy direction? It's like those questions that I get from the DNC about whether I agree or not with their policies. It's possible that I agree with the general direction but that I think they don't go far enough. Now, does that mean I agree, or disagree? How does that fit into the "strongly satisfied to strongly dissatisfied" or "strongly agree to strongly disagree" format? And what conclusions can I possibly draw from polls which ask such equivocal questions?
It's a stupid article about a stupid book, as far as I can tell. Just like most of your
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Quote:One chart that shows how much worse income inequality is in America than Europe
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It's a stupid article about a stupid book, as far as I can tell. Just like most of your stupid secondhand posts which seek to MAKE A POINT instead of analyzing events.
You've made such a mission of posting such stupid, biased, baseless articles that at this point you discredit anything that you post.
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
The income share of the poorest half of Americans is declining while the richest have grabbed more. In Europe, it’s not happening. Different political choices equals different results.
www.vox.com/2018/7/29/17627134/income-inequality-chart
Here is another article that fails to analyze to Signym's satisfaction. Signym has very high expectations that nobody can satisfy. If the article had done what Signym wants, it would say that GOP policy was the cause. But then Signym would accuse all the different writers of all the different sources of being biased against the GOP sponsored policies going back 40 years. Signym would point out that when even one Democrat votes for a GOP policy the entire policy must be the Democrats' fault as much as the GOP's. Signym has a knack to make every issue as clear as mud.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Patriotic Millionaires is a group of about 200 wealthy Americans who advocate for less income inequality and against the concentration of wealth. It’s a bipartisan group, but it’s opposed to a central Republican idea: that benefits for the wealthy will eventually “trickle down” to the rest. That’s the thinking behind the 2017 tax cut bill, which reduced the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent and disproportionately benefits businesses and the wealthy.
The group first came together in 2010 to oppose the extension of Bush-era tax cuts for millionaires. Since then, it’s expanded its focus beyond taxes to also include issues such as the minimum wage and campaign finance reform.
The candidates it backs have to be running against an incumbent who voted for the Republican tax cuts, and they’ve got to be able to talk about taxes in a way that doesn’t put voters to sleep.
“It’s like situational narcolepsy; the minute you start talking about the tax code, you’ve lost your audience,” said Erica Payne, a progressive strategist and president of the Patriotic Millionaires, the group making the endorsements. “We’re looking for people who recognize the grand-scale theft that just happened and are looking to be aggressive fighters against that.”
The group is bipartisan and would therefore theoretically be willing to back a Republican who voted against the tax bill — there are 12 such Republicans. I also asked if they were willing to back a democratic socialist candidate, to which Payne, the group’s president, replied that they will consider endorsing any candidate who is running against one of the lawmakers who voted to support the bill. “This tax bill is such a complete abomination that anybody who voted for it should be hurled from office,” she said.
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/31/17634016/patriotic-millionai
res-2018-tax-cuts
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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So, let's see SECOND ...
The share of elite income rose sharply under Calvin Coolidge, R (1823-1929)
Fell drastically under Herbert Hoover, R (1929-1933) at the start of the Great Depression
Rose under FDR, D (1933-1938)
And fell unevenly to a minimum (1938-1979) through the following Presidents
FDR, D (1933-1945)
Truman, D (1945-1853)
Eisenhower, R (1953-1961)
JFK, D (1961-1963)
Johnson, D (1963, 1969)
Nixon, R (1969-1974)
Ford, R (1975-1977)
After that, it began to rise sharply (1979) under
Carter, D ( 1977-1981)
Stabilized (1986-1994) under
Reagan. R (1981-1989)
HW Bush (1989-1993)
Rose SHARPLY (1994-2001) under
Bill Clinton, D (1993-2001)
Fell again (2001-2002) under
GWB, R
Before rising to an all-time high (about 2007) under
GWB, R
And crashing (2008), still under
GWB, R (2001-2009)
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME