silence7

@silence7@slrpnk.net

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Don’t Think of It as a Contest Between Biden and Trump (www.nytimes.com)

Personality certainly matters. But it might be more useful, in terms of the actual stakes of a contest, to think about the presidential election as a race between competing coalitions of Americans. Different groups, and different communities, who want very different — sometimes mutually incompatible — things for the country....

silence7,

The Democrats of the 1930s and 1940s were racist, but FDR started work to help people who were marginalized economically. The modern coalition wants both that and support for those whose economic marginalization is a result of racism

silence7,

It does, but not enough to pass legislation.

silence7,

Neither Manchin nor Sinema was on board, and without them, there was no majority in the Senate to pass anything

silence7,

We don’t always get that - that’s how we got a child tax credit for a few years. It’s that enough Americans have been stampeded into “hate the other person, they have darker skin, a different religion, etc” that we don’t elect people who do want to benefit the general public instead of billionaires. Change how we vote, and policy can and will change to match.

silence7,

He did kill it — something like 48/50 Senate Democrats wanted to keep it, and every Republican wanted to get rid of it. That’s a reason to elect more and better Democrats, not to reject them entirely.

silence7,

Not always — when there are more and better Democrats we can actually change policy on this.

silence7,

There are very real differences between the parties, on a pretty wide variety of issues. Who is elected has consequences in terms of policy that we have to live with.

That’s a very big deal.

silence7,

That’s why I talk about electing both more and better. They don’t have to be Manchins; you can see this at the state level with the kinds of policy changes you get in places like Michigan when Democrats start to hold a supermajority.

silence7,

The Democrats don’t work in perfect lockstep; they’re a coalition, and as such, you often see pieces of the coalition who disagree with each other.

The Republican party tends to operate as a patronage machine, where they all go along with what the patrons dictate.

silence7,

Examples include Sen. Sanders. It’s not hard.

Ukraine, Stalled on the Battlefield, Targets Russia’s Oil Industry | Ukrainian drone strikes have been able to hit refineries deep in Russian territory, indicating a new vulnerability. (www.nytimes.com)

Mr. Ernst and Mr. Krutikhin noted that, unlike in other oil infrastructure such as pipelines, a lot of complex machinery and sophisticated engineering goes into refineries, and they can take several months to fix. Some analysts say the repairs could take longer than usual because sanctions prohibit Western sales of certain...

silence7,

Key difference: a major failure at the nuclear reactor is can kill people across a large area.

Taking out refineries is going to raise the cost of gas, and lower the value of oil, resulting in both a cut to drilling and to burning, which is a net benefit for people.

silence7,

Prevent crude oil from being refined, and it’s not useful, so people don’t burn it. The quantities passed through the refinery are far greater than the amount present at it on any given day, so one less refinery means a whole lot less consumption.

silence7,

Burning an oil well directly burns oil which people would otherwise burned, while raising prices and encouraging additional extraction. I’ll also note that Saddam Hussein had people light the oil wells on fire before the US moved in.

An attack on a refinery prevents oil from being burned, and can’t burn oil that’s not there. I’d prefer to see them shut down in a planned matter, but this is better than keeping them going.

Different things are different. Deal with it.

silence7,

An attack on the midstream is fundamentally different from burning oil at the well in terms of how it affects how much carbon goes into the atmosphere; it results in oil not being extracted and burned.

Judge Denies One of Trump’s Efforts to Derail Documents Case (www.nytimes.com)

The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of mishandling classified documents on Thursday rejected one of his motions seeking to have the case dismissed, the first time she has denied a legal attack on the indictment....

Kamala Harris Will Visit Abortion Clinic, in Historic First (www.nytimes.com)

The appearance at a health center will be the latest leg in a nationwide tour by Ms. Harris, who has emerged as the most outspoken defender of abortion rights in the administration. While White House officials say they have largely reached the limits of their power to protect abortion rights, the issue has emerged as a linchpin...

silence7,

First time a President or Vice President has openly visited an abortion clinic. It makes a very clear statement about her (and the Democrats) political position, and is an important part of politicking.

silence7,

It is not. There is a history of the Democrats including people who are anti-abortion within their tent.

silence7,

The Washington Post maintains a tracker for you

silence7,

He convinced a lot of people to vote for him. That’s about it

silence7,

Companies have been allowed to treat pay as a business expense. Executive pay is pay, so they treat it as a cost of doing business.

silence7,

An actual majority in both houses plus the President’s signature is all it takes to actually change tax rates for the wealthy — you can do it under reconciliation. The problem for Democrats is that there have long been a few who are bought off, so it takes more than a bare majority to do it.

silence7,

Two different sessions — the CHIPS act passed in 2022. At the beginning of 2023, control of Congress shifted to the Republicans, and their new leadership doesn’t want to do things would improve the country. Individual Republicans may say something else, but their party position is simply set against it, and the consequential vote they cast was the one for Speaker.

silence7,

For the Amazon, there’s one big trick: don’t cut it down, and restore areas which have already been cut down. Then it stays a lot moister, and you don’t lose the entire thing.

silence7,

Kbin has a bug where it does completely random images for Washington Post links.

silence7,

Lemmy and the Washington Post interact badly, so people on some instances get completely random images from other posts.

silence7,

That kind of local land use decision on locally-owned land is up to local government, not the President.

We don’t live in a dictatorship — at least so long as Democrats are running things.

There’s a world of difference between how Trump governs and how Biden does.

The reality is that it’s clear who the two parties nominees will be, and the choice is between the two of them, whether or not some random other person could do better. Given that choice, I’ll choose Biden as the better of the two every time.

silence7,

Biden wasn’t running for election in 2016, so I don’t expect that he made any campaign promises that year. He has over time put money into a “moonshot goal” of addressing cancer. In part due to this, US cancer death rates have been falling for decades:

  • Government paid for research into causes and treatments
  • Government efforts to discourage smoking (a major cause)
  • Government efforts to encourage vaccination against HPV (a major cause of cervical cancer)
  • Government restrictions on pollution (a cause of a variety of forms of cancer)
  • Government improving access to health care so people can get screening and treatment
silence7,

I agree that more is needed. There are a bunch of regulatory changes which can go into place after the election, but it would really help if Congress was on board. And that means more and better Democrats there.

silence7,

And it is quite likely to work; only a tiny fraction of people click a link, let alone try to figure out if the site is legit.

silence7,

Major search engines in the west cooperate with US intelligence agencies to limit the spread of stuff like this.

silence7,

Yes. They had industrial policy to encourage investment in it. Nobody else did

silence7,

Profit over people, particularly if you think that the construction and farm workers who are outdoors have darker skin.

silence7,

Sure, but there aren’t any other rules, so what you get is employers putting people in danger:

Florida employers would be required to follow general rules set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which has not yet issued standards for dangerously high temperatures, NBC News noted.

Which is the whole point of this.

silence7,

One easy option would be: we have a minimum standard, and people can choose something stricter if local conditions warrant.

silence7,

It’s a nickname for the New York Times.

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