why are super red states dystopian holes?

[baseline bum]

The left had the oval office and both the house and senate. They didn't do any of that.

LOL Machin = the left
LOL Biden = the left

[DMC]

Not if I'm the one hiring.

If you're acting on your belief of inclusion then sure, but then would you really need to advertise your absolute whitest of whites moral superiority if you actually didn't see yourself as a morally superior white person?

[Adam Lambert]

The left had the oval office and both the house and senate. They didn't do any of that.

No, the Democrats had control of those chambers.

[DMC]

LOL Machin = the left

Red state/blue state doesn't care about how your elected leaders vote in the house and senate.

[Adam Lambert]

If you're acting on your belief of inclusion then sure, but then would you really need to advertise your absolute whitest of whites moral superiority if you actually didn't see yourself as a morally superior white person?

I mean I do see myself as morally superior to somebody who won't grant an interview to an otherwise qualified candidate named Kaneesha. That's not a high bar IMO but it's still an all-to-common bar.

Like I said, "caring" is the absolute lowest entry point, but it's still an entry point. You can't even start the policy debates without it.

[DMC]

No, the Democrats had control of those chambers.

It's your party. Now you're even trying to divide the democratic party in a red state/blue state thread. So maybe it should be red state/blue state/really really blue state.

, the dems have no responsibility for anything. You'll just keep moving issues around like a s game since your side was never actually in control.

[Adam Lambert]

It's your party. Now you're even trying to divide the democratic party in a red state/blue state thread. So maybe it should be red state/blue state/really really blue state.

, the dems have no responsibility for anything. You'll just keep moving issues around like a s game since your side was never actually in control.

I brought up specific policies, you pretended to believe those must be mainstream Democrat policies.

I didn't participate in the first 5 pages of the thread. This is where the discussion has evolved now. I'm sorry if it has gotten too nuanced for you.

[Extra Stout]

Universal Pre-K is not free. UBI is not free. Investing in public schools is not free. Those ideas have a multi-racial benefit but are typically resisted in large part to the black welfare queen caricature, for example. Where caring comes in is focusing on those who might genuinely benefit instead of those who might take advantage for reasons we don't like. Caring is a necessary starting point.

Resources like that perhaps could help (without getting into the ideology of whether or not each one works or not), if those resources are coupled with local people personally invested in the outcomes of other local people. What does not work is advocating for a big spending package, then patting oneself on the back for being a good person, and washing one’s hands of where the money actually goes or what good it does.

[ChumpDumper]

Yes.

Oh.

[DMC]

I brought up specific policies, you pretended to believe those must be mainstream Democrat policies.

I didn't participate in the first 5 pages of the thread. This is where the discussion has evolved now. I'm sorry if it has gotten too nuanced for you.

You had the con. I don't care how mainstream these are, your solution is obviously "we need more democratic control" based on the thread le alone here (that you've not disagreed with). It's red or blue. You certainly don't make such distinctions regarding the right.

[Adam Lambert]

Resources like that perhaps could help (without getting into the ideology of whether or not each one works or not), if those resources are coupled with local people personally invested in the outcomes of other local people. What does not work is advocating for a big spending package, then patting oneself on the back for being a good person, and washing one’s hands of where the money actually goes or what good it does.

I agree. But it takes people caring to even get to the resource phase.

[Extra Stout]

I mean I do see myself as morally superior to somebody who won't grant an interview to an otherwise qualified candidate named Kaneesha. That's not a high bar IMO but it's still an all-to-common bar.

Like I said, "caring" is the absolute lowest entry point, but it's still an entry point. You can't even start the policy debates without it.

Yes, it’s a very low bar, and when you fix your eyes on that very low bar, within the United States, in order to feel morally superior, it means you aren’t looking around at the other countries that have been clobbering you over the past 25 years in the metrics you claim to care about, even in the parts of the country where your ideological fellow travelers are in total control.

But that’s OK. You have a ready scapegoat. And they really are pretty terrible. It turns out that Cons ution they claimed to revere is just so much toilet paper to them when their herrenvolk democracy is taken away. But the rest of the world sees you as being just a little higher than the low bar they set. Which makes sense, since that was where you were aiming to begin with.

[Thread]

Yes, it’s a very low bar, and when you fix your eyes on that very low bar, within the United States, in order to feel morally superior, it means you aren’t looking around at the other countries that have been clobbering you over the past 25 years in the metrics you claim to care about, even in the parts of the country where your ideological fellow travelers are in total control.

But that’s OK. You have a ready scapegoat. And they really are pretty terrible. It turns out that Cons ution they claimed to revere is just so much toilet paper to them when their herrenvolk democracy is taken away. But the rest of the world sees you as being just a little higher than the low bar they set. Which makes sense, since that was where you were aiming to begin with.

In other words...Adam has a clean in' clock now.

[DMC]

Elevated IMR for Blacks persists regardless of income levels, access to health care, etc. The only thing that appears to help is having Black babies delivered by Black doctors and cared for by Black nurses.

This same issue exists for Indigenous Americans, but not for Mestizo Hispanics or Asians.

I think the root cause is that white people, in general, simply don’t have empathy for nonwhites. It’s a primal, tribal, lizard-brain issue.

Mestizo Hispanics appear to benefit from hybrid vigor — they also have very high life expectancy relative to socioeconomic status.

I doubt Asians have a hard time finding empathetic Asian doctors to deliver their children.

Preterm births are higher for blacks (and indigenous Americans) than for whites by a significant margin. Some of this is likely related to lacking prenatal care by physicians and by the parent. Some could be lifestyle, some could be genetic. Lower birth weights among black infants is also a contributing factor. Like you said, this is true regardless of income or region in the US. My question though to you would be whether or not non-white doctors (Hispanic, Indian, Asian) would care more for a black infant than would a white doctor. I cannot recall the last time I was seen by a white doctor.

[Adam Lambert]

Yes, it’s a very low bar, and when you fix your eyes on that very low bar, within the United States, in order to feel morally superior, it means you aren’t looking around at the other countries that have been clobbering you over the past 25 years in the metrics you claim to care about, even in the parts of the country where your ideological fellow travelers are in total control.

But that’s OK. You have a ready scapegoat. And they really are pretty terrible. It turns out that Cons ution they claimed to revere is just so much toilet paper to them when their herrenvolk democracy is taken away. But the rest of the world sees you as being just a little higher than the low bar they set. Which makes sense, since that was where you were aiming to begin with.

And those countries are effective because they don't have that scapegoat comprising 40% of the population. Their mainstream "conservative" parties are to the left of the US Democrats.

I'd love if enough people cared enough to hold the Democratic party accountable for ensuring those big spending packages are actually effective. As it is, they can get the votes just by clearing the bar. We get the parties we deserve.

[RandomGuy]

And those countries are effective because they don't have that scapegoat comprising 40% of the population. Their mainstream "conservative" parties are to the left of the US Democrats.

I'd love if enough people cared enough to hold the Democratic party accountable for ensuring those big spending packages are actually effective. As it is, they can get the votes just by clearing the bar. We get the parties we deserve.

Pretty much agreed.

Our 50-50 dynamic is hobbles us in that regard. Even if 70% of the population is for something, the 30% that isn't... controls 50% of the power.

So you get wildly unpopular abortion bans favored by that minority, and pure paralysis that limits the ability of Democrats to pass anything, because anything that can be passed with enough centrist support has been so watered down as to be effectively gutted.

Add in the pure corruptive influence of money after Citizens United that makes the US into essentially a plutarchy, it should come as no surprise that anything that truly benefits the non-wealthy is a very very low legislative priority.

[RandomGuy]

Yes, you people Care So Much, and have such Good Intentions, which is why liberal enclaves like Austin, Portland, etc. have solved all racial inequality since 1965, rather than making inequality worse through gentrification, NIMBYism, policy fads, etc.

There’s a part of me that thinks that a place like Minneapolis deserves it. The self-righteous cat lady progressives pay lip service to solving racial problems, Black people believe them and vote in progressives, then either nothing changes or it gets worse, and so Black people start to think maybe the whole system has to be burnt down.

You come on here and start smug threads like this, which are all about how superior you and your kind are to the other kind of white people, in Oklahoma. The kind who can’t maintain roads or whatever.

Valid Criticisms for the most part.

Still, it is a stupid "both sides" argument. Lazy cynicism that underlies the fact that Republican knee-jerk policy solutions literally do nothing, and purposefully so.

Even hypocritical sops offer better than ... nothing.

I think that the stark fact that so many of hte states that I looked at are below national averages in three seperate categories of well-being, would seem to prove that out.

Whatever Democrats are or should be or Republicans are or should be... the fact remains:

States in which Republicans run the legislative process... tend to do worse for their citizens in general.

[Adam Lambert]

For a country so dependent on state and local governments for policy and the administration of public resources, we spend little to no time discussing state and local politics. This is a bipartisan problem. The countries that are lapping us have strong federal governments. They're also smaller, so they avoid a lot of the hurdles inherent to the US and its large and multicultural population.

[DMC]

Valid Criticisms for the most part.

Still, it is a stupid "both sides" argument. Lazy cynicism that underlies the fact that Republican knee-jerk policy solutions literally do nothing, and purposefully so.

Even hypocritical sops offer better than ... nothing.

I think that the stark fact that so many of hte states that I looked at are below national averages in three seperate categories of well-being, would seem to prove that out.

Whatever Democrats are or should be or Republicans are or should be... the fact remains:

States in which Republicans run the legislative process... tend to do worse for their citizens in general.

You cherry picked data sets to back up your "hypothesis", ignoring newer data for confirmation bias supporting older samples. You'd not make a good scientist. You also picked three metrics that you personally chose as proof.
Had you picked metrics that are accepted as defining for what you're going for, that'd be different. You can't be both the standard and the variable.

[DMC]

For a country so dependent on state and local governments for policy and the administration of public resources, we spend little to no time discussing state and local politics. This is a bipartisan problem. The countries that are lapping us have strong federal governments. They're also smaller, so they avoid a lot of the hurdles inherent to the US and its large and multicultural population.

It's another case of wanting everything. We won't sacrifice our military might, we want to win all the Olympic games, we want to be the 1st in inventions, R&D, medicine, space exploration, etc...
Countries are lapping us in things we don't focus on because they don't touch things we are focused on, because they aren't concerned with being better at everything globally. They also aren't trying to police the world while not being able to police their own neighborhoods.

[Winehole23]

(As far as policing our neighborhoods go, throwing money at the police doesn't seem to be doing the trick[the US spends more money on police than anyone], maybe we should start throwing more money at the determinants of the problem like poverty, jobs and access to capital and ins utions.)

[DMC]

(As far as policing our neighborhoods go, throwing money at the police doesn't seem to be doing the trick[the US spends more money on police than anyone], maybe we should start throwing more money at the determinants of the problem like poverty, jobs and access to capital and ins utions.)

You have the con. Get after it.

[Winehole23]

You have the con. Get after it.

lame

You sound like the pious Marxist who continually interrupts telling other people to stop talking and organize. I get what you mean, but it's a boring rhetorical gambit, it seldom leads to anything but useless bickering.

We're discussing stuff on a bulletin board, there isn't anything for me to get after besides the conversation at the moment.

I think you should keep talking about me, it makes you look smart.

[DMC]

lame

You sound like the pious Marxist who continually interrupts telling other people to stop talking and organize. I get what you mean, but it's a boring rhetorical gambit, it seldom leads to anything but useless bickering.

We're discussing stuff on a bulletin board, there isn't anything for me to get after besides the conversation at the moment.

I think you should keep talking about me, it makes you look smart.

You're free to throw money at whatever you want, ergo you have the control. Get after it. I know you want a group movement where you get to spectate and yell from the stands, but that's proven to not change the outcomes of games. Plus, you responded to me. You know my opinion already on idle ing.

[DMC]

The thread backfired on RG..