clever username

He won those counties because turnout was depressed, and turnout was depressed because Clinton sucked. We know the people who stayed home voted for Obama: that's how he won those counties in 08 and 12. And no, Trump's racism did not turn out more voters than Republicans usually do. Again, he got fewer votes than both McCain and Romney did.

I didn't say he ran unopposed, I said the Democrats didn't put any real effort into opposing him. His opponent was a no name with no backing by the party.

Oh, and Tariq, no, McConnell did not "win back his seat." He won't be back up for reelection until 2020. The Democrats did not bother to contest Ryan's seat with any kind of real effort. Helps to know what you're talking about if you want to understand what happened.

They did, but they did at a much lower margin than they did for Obama over either Romney or McCain. You're making the same mistake liberals always do when looking at the working class: ignoring non-voters. When the Democrats lost white workers, it wasn't because most of them started voting Republican. It's because most of them stopped voting at all. Clinton just exacerbated this trend. This is what Wong misses. This wasn't a wave of voters raising Trump into office. In fact, Trump got less votes than Romney did in 2012. This was Hillary Clinton running a tone deaf, negative campaign where she moved to the right to try and attract "moderate" Republicans who were never going to vote for her, where she refused to attack Republicans or talk about the Ryan budget was going to do to the poor, and where she ranted about Russian plots instead of telling people how she was going to improve their lives. And people stayed home. And she lost. The counties in the Rust Belt that swung the election by voting for Trump went for Barack Obama twice. Obama is not, I don't think I have to remind you, a white man. Your explanation doesn't make sense.

According to EPI, it costs $15 to manufacture an iPhone. Let's say a third of that is labor costs, which I think is generous. Line workers at Foxcon make about $2/hour. You could raise that to $50/hour and Apple would still be making $150 of profit per phone. Even if Apple raised prices to maintain it's current rate of profit (even though that's not how supply and demand works), you still wouldn't be paying thousands of dollars for a smartphone.

It is not true that iPhones would cost thousands of dollars if the workers were paid well. Come on. At least make your apologia for hyper exploiting the third world sound plausible. That's some sub-Thomas Friedman shit.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/07/you-should-be-terrified-that-people-who-like-hamilton-run-our-country

Sorry, Jake Tapper. Always get those guys confused.

I haven't listened to this; did Wolf Blitzer ask Mitt Romney about how he tortured his dog?

Oh, and just to triple post, the argument that we've been eating GMOs for decades and there have been no negative health effects is bullshit because: a ) In order to actually figure that out, we'd need to run studies, but that's impossible because without labeling you can't have a non GMO eating control group. People smoked for decades before scientists proved it was linked to cancer. and b ) There actually are huge differences between people now and people 30 years ago. I'm sure everyone saw that story about how it was easier to lose weight in the 1980s. Endocrine disruption from GMOs in the food chain could be a part of why that's so.

Also your podcast is very funny. C+ (my highest grade).

I'd suggest reading Altered Genes, Twisted Truth if you want the opposite side, Paul. It's written by a lawyer who sued the FDA over it's GMO policy, and in discovery found a bunch of documents from FDA scientists arguing that GMOs ought not be be assumed to be safe, but instead should go through extensive testing by the government. FDA administrators overruled them and gave GMOs a designation of Generally Recognized as Safe, which meant they could get around the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Safety Act. Because they're GRAS, the FDA just has to approve tests run by the biotech companies themselves, which often don't even use the crop in question, just the proteins that are assumed to be in the plant. Independent researchers who study GMOs are often attacked harshly when they report results that clash with the narrative biotech companies are trying to spin. This Democracy Now! story goes into the case of Arpad Pusztai. One thing that I really want to push back on is the idea that humans have been "genetically engineering" plants for thousands of years. That's pure sophistry. There's a huge difference between breeding plants with each other on the one hand and genetically inserting a mammal gene into a bacteria, which is in turn inserted into a plant. This goes along with the idea that scientists can target specific proteins they want to change and go in with a scalpel and make fine alterations, which massively overstates the level of control we have and understates the level of randomness. When a new GMO is bred, scientists create dozens or even hundreds of new plants, and pick out the few that seem to be exhibiting the phenotype they want. But phenotype isn't the same thing as genotype, and the only way you can find out if there are novel proteins that could have a huge effect on human health is through long term animal feeding studies. A lot of progressives buy into the line the biotech industry pitches that portrays GMOs as "Yay, Science!" I'd recommend people watch the Cosmos episode on leaded gasoline (ironic because NDT himself is a big GE booster, but he doesn't write the show) if they want a reminder of how corporations can hide behind a facade of scientific legitimacy to make a bunch of money. I think Jane Goodall had it right in the forward she wrote to Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, where she says that it's the pro-GMO lobby that's actually anti-science. TL;DR: Paul, trust your gut. It's good to be skeptical of corporations modifying the basic building blocks of life with minimal oversight. Even if you don't buy the health concerns, the whole experiment has been an ecological disaster.

I think Dan is massively overestimating the power the party establishment has, especially on the Republican side. If he was right that the party bosses could crush any insurgent candidate they didn't like, Eric Cantor would still be in the House of Representatives instead of being out of a job because a Tea Party candidate beat him despite being outspent something like 20:1. Jeb Bush is not going to be the nominee. I don't know if Trump is going to win (though I suspect Dan is being way too confident in declaring he has no chance), but he's killed Jeb's candidacy. Jeb's dead. If Republicans were smart, they'd nominate Rubio, but he's way too soft on immigration to make it out of the primaries alive. Clinton still has a good shot at winning the nomination, but to say Sanders has no chance is also an overstatement. He might not have big donors, but he almost beat Clinton in fundraising this latest quarter. Clinton has a lot of Super PACS behind her, but when one of the (Correct the Record) tried to go after Sanders, not only did the attack not stick but it caused an avalanche of small donations to flow into the Sanders campaign. I also think Dan's wrong to say the private server controversy is "nothing." Republicans are definitely pushing it for political reasons, but it is not okay for a government official to use a private email address to get around FOIA requests and Congressional subpoenas. And despite all the attention it's been getting, it also is not the worst thing Clinton did as SoS by far. She backed the right wing coup in Honduras, and then told all the refugee children who fled the violence in its aftermath to go home. She overlooked unions in Columbia being disbanded at gunpoint, and the oil magnate who was doing the disbanding was a big donor to the Clinton Foundation. She also rewarded Arab dictators (who were also donors) with even bigger weapon deals then they usually get. And even though Republicans fixate on Benghazi to an unhealthy degree, she was the main member of the Obama administration pushing for intervention in Libya, and that's turned into a massive shit show. And on domestic politics, she's been flip flopping wildly lately in order to try and stem Sanders's rise. But even though she's come around to opposing the TPP (even though she easily could have killed it if she'd opposed fast track), she still won't come out in favor of some basic progressive goals. Take Wall Street. She just released a plan that aims to "nudge" (ugh) big banks to voluntarily decrease in size. But she says she won't bring back Glass Steagle, which separates commercial banks (like your savings account) from investment banks. And she won't commit to forcibly breaking up too big to fail banks. In a very anti-Wall Street primary, those are going to hurt her.

Clearly, the future police are much more respectful of our God Given Second Amendment Rights then the police of our time.

Yeah, there's a lot of misinformation being spread about it. I've heard the "he was in college when he wrote it" thing before, which isn't true either. If Sanders was 20 in 1973 then he must have been attacked by that Star Trek salt-eating monster to explain what he looks like in 2015.

The Sanders essay was satirical. It was not good satire, but his point definitely wasn't "rape is great!" I suggest people read the full thing. It's pretty apparent when you see the whole context instead of just an excerpt from the first paragraph, which is the thing that's getting propagated in the media.

In the sentence "When I was sniping", sniping is a present participle. The past participle would be sniped, and would have the opposite meaning. Everybody knows what side of the cross-hairs Ms. Listler was on.

International Business Times just broke another story about Clinton's corruption while she was Secretary of State, this time involving Cisco Systems and China: I think this final quote perfectly encapsulates everything that I think is wrong with the Clintons:

Hours after I made that post, a new poll came out that puts Walker way behind Clinton, so my worse case scenario probably isn't going to come to be, thank God. https://law.marquette.edu/poll/2015/04/16/marquette-law-school-poll-finds-walker-job-approval-down/

I don't know a ton about Whitewater specifically, but Hillary had huge conflicts of interest while she was Secretary of State. In 2011, there was an oil strike in Columbia that the government put down with the military: It'd be really nice if we could see her State Department e-mails from the period, wouldn't it? I think your admiration of Clinton is misplaced, Matt. She's a Reaganite through and through. Sadly, I think her victory is nearly inevitable at this point. The only Republican I think might be able to beat her is Scott Walker, which just scares me more.

Monsanto shill claims you can drink a quart of glyphosate with no ill effects, then storms out when offered a glass of it.

This episode makes me really happy.

I don't think the Starving Musician logo is based off Besser. It's been the same logo since I was a kid. Source: I'm from Santa Clara.

I would fuck Eugene because, let's face it, he's the fittest of the three. I'd marry Besser because he'd best be able to provide the lifestyle I'm accustomed to. And I'd kill Jon because it would make Colton happy.

At 14:08, the proper grammar should have been "if it weren't for my mother." Rick was right the first time. If/then statements always call for the subjunctive mood. I've alerted the Grammar Gestapo.