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Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?

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DWill

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Re: Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?

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Care to explain what you intended by posting this fake photo? Better yet, defend posting it.
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Re: Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?

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Image

That is an artist's depiction of how Elizabeth Warren has been presenting herself to others for...well, all her adult life. In 1986 she applied to the State Bar of Texas for a law license, and on the form she indicated that she is an American Indian:

Image

To put her mean ol' conservative critics in their place, she underwent a DNA test, and damned if she didn't turn out to have Indian blood:

web.archive.org/web/20181015162140/http ... t_2018.pdf

Some folks named Sven in Oslo have about the same amount of genetic connection to native Americans, but Liz proved her point.

Warren, it is alleged, has advanced herself through life by claiming to be Indian, but her defenders use cutting-edge technology to defend her:

Image
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Re: Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?

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KindaSkolarly wrote: Warren, it is alleged, has advanced herself through life by claiming to be Indian,
Yeah, I bet she got the Affirmative Action appointment to teach at Harvard Law. I mean, anybody could do that, but she just happened to have Native blood.
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Re: Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?

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As Mr. Marks indicates, KS has blown open the ultimate conspiracy, how Native Americans secretly control the world! Jump on that train bound for glory! :roll:

"Some folks named Sven in Oslo have about the same amount of genetic connection to native Americans..."

Very strange, the document you posted shows the opposite of what you summarize. Another example of your info processing problems.

"..but Liz proved her point."

Yes, part of her family lore is they had some Native American ancestry and she proved that is true.
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Re: Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?

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facts.elizabethwarren.com/wp-content/up ... t_2018.pdf

That's Elizabeth Warren's DNA analysis. She claimed she was part Cherokee and she would prove it, by golly.

Let's see... The report says:

"Conclusion. While the vast majority of the individual’s ancestry is European, the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor in the individual’s pedigree, likely in the range of 6-10 generations ago."

So, 6-10 generations ago, Warren MIGHT have had a Native American in her family. The results aren't conclusive on that, but "strongly support" the possibility of it.

6 generations ago... Parents = 2 ancestors, grandparents = 4, etc. 6 generations ago, one of Warren's 64 grandsires MIGHT have been Native American. Go back 10 generations, and one of her 1000+ ancestors MIGHT have been Native American.

She's a politician and they all lie, but I have to admire the sheer brazenness of this particular prevarication. I mean, she took a DNA test to show the magnitude of her lie.
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Re: Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?

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I was looking at this photo that KS posted - it isn't Elizabeth Warren at all. It's Andy Warhol at Mardi Gras. Whoever sold you that shot KS is taking you for a fool. I hope you didn't part with too much cash.
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Re: Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?

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KindaSkolarly wrote:facts.elizabethwarren.com/wp-content/up ... t_2018.pdf

That's Elizabeth Warren's DNA analysis. She claimed she was part Cherokee and she would prove it, by golly.

Let's see... The report says:

"Conclusion. While the vast majority of the individual’s ancestry is European, the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor in the individual’s pedigree, likely in the range of 6-10 generations ago."
This was a major debacle and has hurt Elizabeth Warren's credibility, but to her credit, she has apologized—both for claiming Native American ancestry and for taking a DNA test. I can understand why she came to identify with having Cherokee ancestry, but the DNA results don't really support the factuality of her claims. The political fallout is undeniable. If Warren becomes a contender for the Democrat nomination, and I hope she does, I expect we'll continue to hear Donald Trump's kindergarten level of gloats and taunts of "Pocohontas". So here we have an accomplished politician and policy wonk on one side, a gibbering idiot on the other, but politics is politics. Hopefully the presidential race won't be decided by this disenfranchised and generally ignorant bloc that put Trump into office in the first place. I think our system of democracy depends on a return to honesty and integrity, values which Trump does not even understand, let alone represent.

And my other point, those who focus on Warren's mistakes, while ignoring the continued trainwreck of the Trump presidency, only reveal themselves to hypocrites and fools. Sorry, there's no nice way to say it.
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Re: Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?

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geo wrote: So here we have an accomplished politician and policy wonk on one side, a gibbering idiot on the other, but politics is politics. Hopefully the presidential race won't be decided by this disenfranchised and generally ignorant bloc that put Trump into office in the first place. I think our system of democracy depends on a return to honesty and integrity, values which Trump does not even understand, let alone represent.
I have recognized for some time that we all have an inner Trump. Do we recognize that we have an inner Elizabeth Warren as well?

My inner Trump is a crafty fellow, lurking in the weeds until some opportunity comes along to show that I am, in fact, The Greatest Ever, by humiliating some schmuck who just rolls along trusting people. He explains all the ways in which dangers face people, or at least all the ways that I have The Answer for, and by showing people that I am fighting for them, I will get these people to give me their support, their adulation, and naturally, some position from which I can realize massive financial gains, all in their name (but in a bank account with my name on it, or more likely, the name of a corporation registered in the Bahamas and traceable through four or five layers of other corporations to some foundation or trust with my name on it.) Let's face it, life is a struggle that goes to the strong, and the way to achieve strength these days is a good performance of strength for the cameras and a relentless fight for the positions of power, most effective when I combine the two by assuring people that I am a fighter, but for them.

The inner contradiction, that I am asking intelligent adults to conclude that they like my selfishness and ruthlessness because I am, for the moment, on their side (sort of like having the protection of the schoolyard bully by agreeing to serve as henchman, which is way better than having some other bully pick on me) is at the heart of every dictatorship and domination system. It might be a good idea to ask ourselves what leads people to climb onto that hayride. I suspect it is a matter of projecting their own drive to manipulate and exploit others, a fearful prospect, onto the general state of the world. It seems that the more people feel powerless and abused, the more they feel themselves to be victims, the more willing they are to see life as a zero-sum game and close their eyes to the other aspects of life, which require cooperation and accommodation.

My inner Liz is, instead, in denial about her own ambition. By relentlessly seeking the actual benefit of others, she seeks an inner picture of a benevolent and deserving self which will, surely, be rewarded by an appreciative public. The note of naivete is deliberately introduced by acting as though only twisted corporate scammers would ever take advantage of anyone else. She knows that to be able to pursue these noble goals she must stoop to appealing to human emotions, but that's okay because she will look after the implementation of the plan and justify their trust with deliverables, and they can't be expected to burden themselves with understanding the world because life is hard and they have to work their fingers to the bone to have a roof over their head and bread on the table. I worry very much that this might repeat the problems of Obama's time in office, which, due to the combination of exalted ideals with Leading while Black and a run of stored up economic trouble, caused a poisonous counter-reaction. It seems to me that Warren is about purity of motives and wonkish analytical effectiveness in the same way that Obama was, and that when combined with Leading while Female, is likely to cause the same kind of poisonous reaction.

I don't think I understand how effective leaders, among whom I count FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, and perhaps Carter, Reagan and Clinton, manage to combine an inner sense of personal effectiveness, a feeling that they are the right person for enunciating effective principles and then putting them in practice, with a genuine commitment to the public good. My first approximation is a guess that the feedback process between good policy and winning politics, in which effective choices are shored up by rhetoric that appeals rationally to the public good, requires that both Trumpian determination and Warrenish determination be combined in a way that can be made sense of.

I have my doubts that any of the current Democratic candidates has a strong gut sense of that need for connecting the public good to people's self-interest, but I like the instincts of Buttigieg, Seth Moulton and Jay Inslee. Moulton is too young and projects misplaced self-assurance, but he and mayor Pete will be forces on the political scene over the next 20 years.
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Re: Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?

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It is difficult to think of an American President who could be considered worse than Trump, but there are several candidates, apart from the obvious Nixon. Reagan - who voted against the Civil Rights Bill twice and then against the instigating of MLK Day; Truman who defended the use of nuclear weapons against civilians to his dying day, went along with McCarthyism and fought against worker's rights; Johnson, who connived with Kissinger to bomb Cambodia. FDR had four terms as President and that brought on the 22nd Amendment; his wartime Presidency looks good until the carve-up of Yalta. These are matters of open public record, not deep investigation.
The picture is no less clean in Europe or anywhere else - in the UK we have a leadership election between a known and proven liar and a known and proven idiot: one of them will also become Prime Minister (albeit for a very short period of time). What everybody hopes is for an honest, decent, balanced and compassionate person to suddenly appear and become the leader they crave - the politics of personality triumphing over the true politics of policy.
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Re: Is anyone else completely torn about who they want to be the next US President?

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vizitelly wrote:It is difficult to think of an American President who could be considered worse than Trump, but there are several candidates, apart from the obvious Nixon. Reagan - who voted against the Civil Rights Bill twice and then against the instigating of MLK Day; Truman who defended the use of nuclear weapons against civilians to his dying day, went along with McCarthyism and fought against worker's rights; Johnson, who connived with Kissinger to bomb Cambodia. FDR had four terms as President and that brought on the 22nd Amendment; his wartime Presidency looks good until the carve-up of Yalta. These are matters of open public record, not deep investigation.
Probably you and I are looking at different aspects as criteria for leadership. While I agree with most of the criticisms you make [Cambodia bombing seems to have been Nixon, but Johnson has the Tonkin Gulf resolution and the poorly conducted Vietnam War on his record; I don't think Truman went along with McCarthyism in any meaningful sense] my goal was not to list leaders who were flawless or whose decisions I always agreed with, but to exemplify those who could combine public interest policies with their own decision-making in a way that allowed them to actually shape people's sense of what the public interest is, going into the future. In that sense, though you might loathe Margaret Thatcher's policies as I do, you still have to be able to see that she shaped public opinion and the political landscape down to the present day.

Some would argue that Nixon belongs in that category. He accepted environmental reform, recast international power politics, and upset the political landscape with his Southern Strategy. But the Southern Strategy was a short-sighted option that has led to untold political harm and his international initiatives don't strike me as having meaninfully altered international relationships but only recognized changes that had happened already, and his environmental record is hardly admirable. And then there's the harm he did to SE Asia and to American democracy.
vizitelly wrote:The picture is no less clean in Europe or anywhere else - in the UK we have a leadership election between a known and proven liar and a known and proven idiot: one of them will also become Prime Minister (albeit for a very short period of time). What everybody hopes is for an honest, decent, balanced and compassionate person to suddenly appear and become the leader they crave - the politics of personality triumphing over the true politics of policy.
Yes, I agree that looking to individuals is not helpful or hopeful, but I do think it is a matter to be factored in when choosing the leadership candidates. I would love to hear more about what you think Johnson will do to the Tory party. A big rush for the exits, with a surge for the Lib Dems? Doesn't sound entirely likely, but then I don't know British politics well. Maybe a Scottish exit vote? With a Catalonia rerun?
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