Well unfortunately we live in a democracy, so what the majority of people want doesn’t matter.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a USA to invade the USA and spread some of that sweet sweet democracy I am always hearing about?
PSL candidates are on the ballot in my Republican state for the first time this year - via another (local) party.
Hmm I'll have to read up on her, I don't recognize the name. But again, without RCV or some other method, none of these candidates stand an honest chance of being elected. We're stuck with two-party for now, and all the shit it brings.
So aside from armed revolution, what other options do we have for improving things?
Bush and Reagan were able to successfully pressure Israel despite both supporting the occupation.
Biden is a lifelong Zionist ideologue.
Biden has been putting some pressure on them as well, although it's still too little. Maybe if he wins we'll see him make real policy changes, but yeah it's not very likely.
Putting pressure on them how? From what I can tell, they're getting all the material support they always have
I heard something in June about him trying to set up a cease-fire to arrange a truce, but it seemed like a low-effort attempt that never went anywhere. That's probably the best we'll get out of him, unfortunately.
they've pulled that several times and they were never serious attempts. the key sticking point is always that Hamas wants a permanent ceasefire and Israel insists that it gets the prerogative to start shooting again when they feel like it. he's never put any real pressure on Israel to agree to anything less; the weapons and money flow unconditionally.
Beyond words that are "leaked" to the press, what exact pressure has Biden put on Israel?
If we could get some kind of ranked-choice voting in place then a 3rd-party candidate would have a legitimate chance here. Unfortunately there's too much FUD about RCV making your vote "not count". I'm in Colorado and it looks like we have a real chance of implementing something in the next few years, so I'm crossing my fingers...
Head for the extreme northwest and northeast corners of the country; Alaska and Maine both use RCV, including for presidential elections. It's not 50 states of RCV but it's a start!
Don't forget to mention that 50% of the people from the same poll also think Trump should drop out.
I would be interested in seeing a more detailed break-down of this poll. From the numbers given, 33% are non-Democrats. This could mean that up to half of that "67% of Americans" saying Biden should drop out are actually people whose opinion in this poll doesn't really matter. What I really want to see is how many Democrats think Biden should drop out, versus how many Republicans think Trump should drop out. (It would also be interesting to see the breakdown for both candidates from independents.)
If we're stuck in a two-party system and people consistently vote for democrats despite not being democrats themselves simply because they think it's the "lesser evil" of effectively two options, why should these people's opinion about which democratic candidate is available not matter?
My point was that Republican voter's opinions on the Democratic candidate (and vice-versa) shouldn't matter because there's almost no chance they would vote for that candidate anyway. Now if 67% of Democratic voters (the ones who would actually be voting for Biden) are saying he should drop out, then yeah that's significant. Since the article combined all the poll results together it makes it impossible to tell how many people who vote Dem think Biden should drop out, or how many Rep voters think Trump should drop out.
And realistically, you know when this poll was being taken that every single Trump supporter was going to say that Biden should drop out, so that will quickly skew the results. Since those people were never going to cast a vote for Biden anyway, why bother including their opinions here -- except that it makes for a more dramatic headline?
Because this story is blanketing every corner of the internet, I'm going to start posting the following in case anyone's interested in what Biden's actually accomplished outside of the last few weeks. For science.
Politico | 30 Things Joe Biden Did as President You Might Have Missed - 02/02/2024
The Whitehouse | The Biden-Harris Record
Bloomberg | What Has Biden Accomplished? Look at These 10 Metrics, Not the Polls - 03/07/24
Joe Biden | The Biden-Harris Administration’s Historic Accomplishments
Factcheck | Biden’s Numbers, January 2024 Update - 01/25/24
Newsweek | Joe Biden's 7 Biggest Achievements During His First Year as President - 01/20/22
Washington Monthly | Introduction: Who Got More Done? - 04/07/24
Washington Monthly | Trump vs. Biden: Who Got More Done for Families and Workers? - 04/07/24Politifact | Latest Fact-Checks Of Joe Biden
Politifact | Latest Fact-Checks Of Donald TrumpPolitifact | Biden Promise Tracker
Politifact | Trump-O-MeterDoes any of that include his genocide of Palestine?
Renewable power is the No. 2 source of electricity in the U.S. — and climbing
Why the fuck isn't it number one yet? We've known about climate change for decades now. What's the holdup? Why is he still opening up more land and sea reserves for drilling? He and the rest of the ghouls in DC still serve oil execs and are never going to make any meaningful actions towards climate change.
Preventing discriminatory mortgage lending
While the update hasn’t taken effect yet
So, nothing.
Forcing Chinese companies to open their books
More warmongering with China. Fuck off.
Preventing another Jan. 6
Uh huh
Building armies of drones to counter China
Shut the fuck up
Biden scraps Trump’s paint scheme for Air Force One
I'm supposed to give a shit about the color of his plane???
Biden recommends loosening federal restrictions on marijuana
"Recommends" He didn't do shit. It's not an accomplishment unless he actually does something. And he's only moving it to Schedule III, not actually legalizing it, so even if it goes through it's still a half assed solution. Legalize it or fuck off.
A penalty for college programs that trap students in debt
None of my student loan debt has been cancelled.
Biden moves to bring microchip production home
Seriously half this article is diaper pissing about China.
Preventing a cobalt crisis in Congo
More CIA intervention, cool.
Countering China with a new alliance between Japan and South Korea
CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA CHINA
Union-busting gets riskier
Remind me again who busted the rail strike.
The U.S. is producing more oil than anytime in history
Imagine bragging about about fighting climate change then saying this shit.
Strengthening military ties to Asian allies
China again
Seriously half of his """"accomplishments"""" are just "China bad". What a garbage ass list, no wonder he's going to lose.
Also he's still doing a genocide so he can go fuck himself.
There's two kinds of energy: renewable and non-renewable. So all they're saying is Biden has taken renewables from number 2 to number 2
Why the fuck isn’t it number one yet? We’ve known about climate change for decades now. What’s the holdup? Why is he still opening up more land and sea reserves for drilling? He and the rest of the ghouls in DC still serve oil execs and are never going to make any meaningful actions towards climate change.
Because building out additional renewable capacity is becoming increasingly harder. If you look at the countries that presently generate all or most of their electricity from renewables, they generally have some mix of these characteristics:
- Extremely low per capita electricity use, e.g. Global South
- Mostly renewables are hydro and geothermal
- The countries are small enough to just trade with neighbors when needed
The US has largely developed its hydro and geothermal sources, so the options going forward are wind and solar. This is presently a growing mix. Unfortunately, because those are unpredictable, storage is needed. Grid level batteries are not a mature technology, but there is plenty of investment going into the technology. It'll take some time to build out more wind and solar, and unfortunately Republicans are there the whole way to undermine any meaningful climate action.
Also of note in the US has been the shift from coal, with its higher emissions, to the still bad natural gas. Also less mercury and radioactive material.
China added more solar panels in 2023 than US did in its entire history. If China can expand their renewable infrastructure to such an extent I'm having a hard time believing the US can't do the same thing.
It'll take some time to build out more wind and solar, and unfortunately Republicans are there the whole way to undermine any meaningful climate action.
The U.S. is producing more oil than anytime in history right now under Biden. Republicans aren't the only ones undermining meaningful climate action, this is a fully bipartisan effort.
Both parties serve the same capital interests. Let's be clear, if they wanted to they absolutely could drastically reduce the amount of oil being drilled and pump billions of dollars into renewable energy research so that the US is no longer reliant on carbon-emitting energies; they just don't want to.
China may have added a lot of solar panels, but solar and wind only form a tiny portion of the energy mix. The vast majority is coal. Yes, the US should be doing more to push renewables, but China isn't in a much better position presently.
The US is bragging about how much oil it's drilling, while China is installing more solar than anyone else, ever. Cope harder.
I'm using China as a demonstration, that moving over to a renewable first or renewable only energy mix isn't just a wave your magic wand thing. Solar only makes up a few percentage points of China's energy mix. Same with wind.
No shit, which is why they're rapidly expanding their renewable energy infrastructure. How much of their energy do you think is going to come from solar 10 years from now? 20? Meanwhile half of US politicians refuse to even acknowledge the existence of climate change.
The last few weeks isn't what concerns me. The next 4 years are what concerns me.
He reminds me of my grandparents about 4 years before their respective deaths.
Seriously. My dad is 84 and Biden makes him look 20 years younger lol
Exactly.
I don't think Biden has lost control of his mental faculties. I think he is struggling with the power of speech. I think he has a hard time quickly and concisely articulating his thoughts. I would bet that he is still a decent (but slow) writer.
But you can't do the job of president by email. You must be able to communicate, quickly, accurately, and under pressure.
I don't know when my grandparents (all four of them) actually transitioned from difficulty speaking to significant cognitive decline, and that's the problem with Biden. At some point, he will simply be following his caregiver's prompting rather than actually making a conscious decision, and we won't know exactly when that has happened.
Trump, on the other hand, is more like my SO's grandmother. She could form full, complete, mostly angry sentences, but they were lacking coherent direction or intention. She could communicate smugness and anger all the way to the end, but rationality began to disappear years before she passed. Everyone knew she was senile except herself.
Trump is well into his own cognitive decline. He's been able to mask it pretty well because he's always been an insufferable, narcissistic prick, but his smug anger has largely become autonomic reflex rather than conscious intent.
Biden has always been an insufferable narcissistic prick as well though.
The idea that's being pushed about him being "a decent man" is pure nonsense. He was a lying sack of shit his entire career, and his brain literally leaking out of his ears isn't going to fix that.
You're right, and by God... I'm worried. We need someone who can get in that seat and do the duties of the president. Imagine Biden's not in his right state of mind and weapons shipments to Nazis in Ukraine need to be approved, or a railroad workers' strike needs to be put down, or Israel needs more bombs to drop on Palestinian villages. Who is going to pull through? Who's going to get up and say, "put those migrants in concentration camps and close the border, escalate tensions with China even if we sabotage renewable energy transition, and tonight I'll make a speech where I lie through my teeth without stuttering or losing my train of thought"?
Well, this may be controversial, but, in my opinion the torch needs to be handed down to the next generation of CIA directors' children, Star Trek: The Next Generation. These youngsters might just have both the patriotism and cognitive abilities to keep the child killing machine well-oiled. Slava Amerkani!
