wait... did you... he didnt... wait what?

What? Maybe RV has some good stories, opinions. How many 2+2ers took sociology during ww2?

Are you reading it as he was studying sociology back during WW2?

They've been effectively coopted by real estate investors and other investment opportunities made in hotel conference rooms to be another selling pitch for whatever factory or real estate development they have going. I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing but it just looks ugly hocking citizenship for Kushner Villas or whatever.

Yes?

You think RV life is like 90 years old ?

pretty sure he just meant that he learned those things about WW2 in his sociology classes

I take it he's...not? lol

i cant believe youre making me doubt if a poster on 2p2 is over 90 years old right now.

I gotta go sleep it off...

I agree with all of this. I just see these things as concepts of a social democracy, not as concepts of socialism. We are much too informed on here to think awful things about socialism; however, the uninformed, low information, not interested in learning more voter will think of socialism as the corrupt, central government run policy that completely eliminates all parts of capitalism. I'm afraid the message will still be socialism vs capitalism, not unchecked capitalism vs the fully checked-maximum safety net-integrated social policy capitalism we call democratic socialism, the latter being the policy that we should strive for. Hopefully I am wrong about that in this day and age of social media and the interwebs, but I worry about the messaging.

I've never looked at that. That is quite amazing. Those voters were rewarded handily with the new deal. I just don't get how nearly half the country doesn't agree with policies championed by FDR and Bernie. We have seen the new deal in action for god's sake. It's too the point that we will have to start thinking some of them do fully understand the policies, they just want to see everyone suffer that isn't filthy rich.

It made me want to donate to Emily's list in her honor. Unfortunately, she won her last few elections 60-40. Doubt she's a target.

Until the mid 20th century, the Democrats were the party of the south and the Republicans were the party of the north. But then Democrats started taking more liberal positions on social and racial things and Republicans went the opposite direction (especially with Nixon). The parties were also less ideologically rigid than they are now.

To be fair he either luckboxed himself into a situation that has benefited him financially, or he is just lying about being financially successful.

His comprehension of so many things indicate it's very unlikely he built success on his wits and foresight. This statement everyone is jumping on is a perfect example.

I realize I am old diving catching up but obviously he thought it would look like the masterful plan the republicans had been presenting and honing for nine years since they effed up parts of an actual healthcare plan that helped millions in spite of them.

That everyone who supported the republicans in bashing the ACA did not start protesting them almost as soon as the election was over when it was obvious in nine years they hadn't spent nine minutes creating an alternative just proves that they will take an eggplant in the backside.

I don't know if this is accurate but I do know in the past omitting things from health insurers could lead to anything and everything being denied in the future. There have been instances of people paying years of deductibles then being denied having things covered for not disclosing something relatively minor in the past.

Remember this whole mess is pushing all of the power back into the hands of the insurance companies. This is probably going to be the worst part.

Actually Dan and Avwal couldn't be more wrong here simplicitus. We have the means to capably treat most illnesses and diseases in this country even for older people. You can't put this into the context of the current broken system where costs are absolutely out of control. There is so much room to overhaul the systems involved and what things cost that this would not even be a significant issue given the resources and wealth of the United States.

Advocating for things like lifetime caps is crazy. The reality is we have ALL the pieces to provide extraordinary cradle-to-grave healthcare for every American if we wanted to do so and it would likely cost only fractionally more than what we spend in total on healthcare now.

On top of that there is no good reason why healthcare shouldn't be the single biggest expense of the federal government by a significant amount. People want to talk about tax breaks driving the economy but what would really drive the economy would be having flipping healthy people.

It's an argument based entirely in ignorance where people are ignoring all of that stuff is already being paid for in an underfunded and horribly inefficient system.

"Oh noes end of life and terminal illness costs" would not impinge on the ability of a total healthcare plan reform. We have the resources and capability to actually take care of it all. There are no horrible questions to be made. The only decisions that would be necessary would be based solely on suffering and quality of life.

Flat out people claiming this would be a real financial dilemma in a working system are wrong.

LMAO. I'm 41. I took a sociology class about 10 years ago. We discussed the social movement of classes and genders after WW2.

Some people say there was a quid pro quo, that it was a payoff for things he let people get away with when he was in power

Giving a paid speech seems like an extremely dumb way to pay off an alleged debt like that. Just leaving a bag of cash in his trunk would make more sense.

The dumb part about the speech stuff is if you look at the extensive world of corporate speaking the figures are absolutely in line given the credentials.

not saying you subscribe to it (idk), but that is such a dumb theory

Yes, but we don't want progressive politicians cozying up to the people in the extensive world of corporate speaking arrangements. You want progressive politicians fighting for increases in minimum wage for example, not fighting at the margins of banking regulation to make those regulation moderately less favourable to bankers. The more time progressive politicians spend with bankers the more out of touch they get with the people they are supposed to be helping and advocating for.

The idea behind the criticism isn't that there was a "quid pro quo" and a specific "payoff for things he let people get away with."

It's more that powerful corporations and monied interests would leave gobtons of money at the doorsteps of retiring politicians and other powerful people as a signal to those currently in power and still with the authority to regulate them that they can expect handsome financial rewards for favorable policies and regulations and executive priorities.

Any liberals still apologizing for Obama by trotting out "quid pro quo" is either:

1) ignorant of the real argument (fine, no great sin, but go educate yourself)
or
2) willfully repeating strawmen and not engaging in the actual argument

In addition, some other irrelevancies:

1) it goes without saying Obama is a million times better than Trump and the GOP are largely soulless and morally bankrupt. Not the point.
2) related, many of the people criticizing Obama for this are simply concern trolls with no credibility.
3) the current market rates for speaking gigs or whatever is also not particularly relevant, although the fact that $400k contains within it a lot of purchasing power for a vast majority of normal people and is something like 10x what the average American can expert to earn for a decade of labor is maybe not

The most important things to consider:

1) the incentives that these kinds of transactions create in a system with lots of actors are what we should study, and not necessarily in how they motivate Barack Obama from this point forward or even how they motivated Barack Obama in the past; the monied elites surely don't expect to bat 1.000 when they drop bags of money all over the system, it just has to work sometimes on some people, and it doesn't have to work to get them literally everything they want, just some of what they want, or avoiding some of the bottom range of potential outcomes for them. You guys are poker players, think strategically; not every bet you make it to win every dollar on the table or win every pot.
2) the ethic that political office should not be turned into a commodity either directly or by proxy is not some radical moral claim

I'll lastly leave my own moral editorial here and that we put ourselves behind some kind of hypothetical situation where we are former Presidents and then say things like "if someone wanted to pay me $400K to speak to them for a little while, I would be more than happy to do so" and "well, these are just the market rates for corporate speaking fees, so this is fine" -- it's all of the assumptions underlying THOSE claims that find us in our current highly degraded political cultural. I'm not suggesting we're all Trumps here but "shut your brain down, moral calculation inputs are simply a combination of market rates and making sure you're not doing business dealings with only the Klan and neo-nazis and everything else, you go get that money!" is ultimately one of the causative factors the great undoing of our democratic norms and national moral character.

This is but a minor incident, but in a world where elements of the left simply look the other way on this or leap up to defend it, you have put yourselves in a place with almost nothing coherent and credible to say to voters. In a world of Republicans who transparently want to pillage the collective national stores and hand it over to the mega wealthy, Democrats who embrace all of the underlying assumptions of Republicans but simply beg for buffering the degradation of humanity while feeding from the trough -- it's not surprising that in the wake of the resulting social isolation, despondency over current macro economic forces and erosion of good governance, the appeals of racist idiot know-nothing nationalists sounds good-enough. At least they're coherent.

We can tell a different ****ing story but not while cheering on this kind of behavior. The masses are stupid and angry but not that stupid.

Congress people are the nut low. We hire them cuz they are suppose to know a thing or two. Smartest people in the room and all that. These folks in charge now feels like hiring a carpet guy who takes a dump in my living room, smears it around and leaves.

good post Dvaut