The GOP infighting has escalated in the wake of the House's months-long tantrum led by the far-right extremists who seemed to truly believe that they could hold their breath until they turned blue and they would eventually get everything they wanted.
Which they would have gotten almost everything they wanted except for the approval of Don Poorleone.
... And despite all the drama, the Biden White House ended up getting most of what it wanted without having to give up much of anything in return, at least in part because the Republicans wouldn't take yes for an answer when concessions were offered.
I'm glad the Democrats have gotten bored of not governing that they actually got the resolve to come together and do something rather than cave to Republican obstruction.
The TikTok ban is a bad thing? Israel for sure is, but considering the current situation in congress, getting the Ukraine funding passes along with other legislature is amazing.
TikTok is used by 140 million people. Who have had no evidence of wrong doing presented and whom see influencers and official accounts already on a PR offensive. It was absolutely a poison pill amendment by the GOP. I agree Ukraine funding is awesome but the domestic cost will be high. They better get Trump by the balls in that trial.
I have to disagree, I actually haven't seen any evidence presented showing the Chinese government is meddling through TikTok, at least not to any higher degree than the US government meddles in US-operated social media.
A Tiktok ban comes off as red scare-style overreaction that risks losing the support of a lot of young Americans who already see the US federal government as a surveillance state. This certainly does not do anything to quell those sentiments.
I'm not aware of any either. But we know that TikTok is still partially owned by the Chinese government, unlike Facebook or other social medias. Why would we put ourselves into a situation where an adversary has their software installed into millions of devices in the US, with the ability to influence what those same users see and hear, as well as having the ability to extract information through the application? Not to mention, China wouldn't allow the same in their country (hell they don't allow any companies to operate there without partial China ownership and influence). We know that the US government doesn't trust Chinese hardware (Huawei) within the country, why would Chinese software be any different?
Honestly, I feel the whole world is treating China way too nice when you consider how much they screw over everybody else in trade. China wants to be able to freely access other countries markets, while completely limiting and discouraging any other country's companies from accessing theirs. If China wants to play that game, then they should be getting an equivalent response: No free trade, no easy access to our markets.
Are you seriously saying that a government having partial ownership of a company exerts an equivalent amount of influence as a government that has no ownership of a company?
Naive to think stock ownership is the only leash, let alone the shortest one. Regulations, subsidies, contracts - the government has a whole arsenal and near limitless resources to keep companies working within the US's interest, especially when those interests are related to national security. Entire departments within 3 letter agencies are dedicated to public messaging.
Only a western liberal can mistake abstract ownership of a thing for absolute control of it. What is threatening about TikTok isn't China's control over it, but the US's absence of control.
Regulations, subsidies, contracts - the government has a whole arsenal and near limitless resources to keep companies working within the US’s interest...
What is threatening about TikTok isn’t China’s control over it, but the US’s absence of control.
This feels like double speak... The US can both control a company with near limitless resources, but also the US has no control over.. a company. All of that applies to Facebook as well. Again the main difference being, China has part ownership of tiktok and therefore direct influence that the US doesn't have on many companies. The US doesn't have the kinds of control levers that a more authoritarian government like China has. Facebook, a large company can fight the US in courts to protect themselves. TikTok can not do the same with China.
Edit- you should insert a line break after your quoted text, that way the whole comment isn't presented as a part of a block quote
Except my point isn't to defend tiktok or china, it's to condemn all privately owned social media (including US companies), because without the user being in control over their content presentation pretty much any social media company can abuse their influence at the whim of their host government.
My point remains the same: the US has as much influence over domestic social media companies as China has over TikTok, and all privately controlled social media (or at least social media that is not within the user's control) aught to be banned, not just private social media that's owned by a foreign adversary.
Are you suggesting their should be a publicly owned social media instead? I don't quite see people being very happy about all privately owned social medias being banned working out well in the US.
I think what we do agree with is that currently, social medias are too influential with little oversight. Just seems like you feel that there isn't enough oversight over a private company to ever fix the issue.
Yeah, it’s kind of a distraction. Sure, it’s probably bad that the Chinese government has a source for so much personal data for so many people, but it’s also bad that Facebook does, and many more. The real problem is the lack of privacy rights, controls, remedies, regardless of whom collects it
Even back 30 years ago, I knew someone who wanted to build a dating app. Even back then, he didn’t care about income from the users. Even that long ago, the market for detailed personal data was the profit center
it's both: it's personal data AND a platform to feed targeted content. The US enjoys being able to deliver content/suppress content on US-based social media, but I imagine they don't have as much (or any) ability to control content on TikTok.
I just think the tik tok ban is pointless, they can buy our data from Facebook anyway. I don't disagree with it per se, I just think it's a waste of time.
They could buy data from Facebook, except that Facebook has limitation on what data they provide, not to mention Facebook doesn't have an incentive to negatively affect the US (doesn't mean their incentive to extract profit doesn't lead to them damaging the US in other ways ) unlike companies that are owned by China. Facebook doesn't want to end up banned in the US, nor considered a political ally to another country, and especially not China. With TikTok, China can directly influence what kind of information they extract, and what kind of information comes out from the app. Through Facebook there's significantly more hurdles.
Yeah I'm not so sure. It's a pretty popular platform. Going after something popular during the election season isn't generally considered a good thing. There's a lot wrong with it too but that alone has left a pretty sour taste in hundred million Americans.
IMO the ban is very much a broken clock (is right twice a day) sorta situation. I would have prefered the reason being that its mentally toxic, lowering peoples attention span, and promoting misinfromation. On social media it should be a given that you are being spied on, by the private sector, public sector or both. I feel like they just got their congressional panties in a knot because it was China doing the spying instead of some US based alphabet soup agency.
Let me guess, you're just as hard on the other candidate for US President...? Hoo Boy, you're going to freak when you learn what their position on Palestine is!
See, I’m almost convinced that it isn’t even Biden. Like, Biden is not a strong leader at all…and I think that’s been a great thing (at least for domestic policy).
It feels like he’s gotten out of the way of the competent people who actually “run the show” in all the myriad departments of government and just let them do their thing.
Based on what, exactly? Biden is a very experienced politician. And the Republicans have taken their mask off and shown there’s absolutely no point in trying to compromise with them. They only negotiate in bad faith and will reneg on every deal if/when they can.
It took the Dems far too long to accept that you have to fight fire with fire, but they got there.
Obama had a Dem party still valuing bipartisanship and healthy differences of opinions within the party.
Biden has a Dem party that falls in line because they have accepted that they have zero margin for civil discourse, because the Republicans will run away with the country if there’s even the slightest bit of slack.
And so Biden and his administration aren’t pulling their punches. There is no bipartisanship to be had. Only wins where you can take them.
It feels like he’s gotten out of the way of the competent people
Literally the definition of a strong leader, knowing when to step in and when to let the people you hired do their jobs is the hall mark of a good leader
I would argue that what you've described is a good leader.
To me a strong leader is someone who gets out front of their team and acts as a strong face for their team. That means that the team is getting all the accolades and recognition for their good work, that is keenly running damage control for their mistakes, and that is talking up their team at all points.
I feel Biden is failing as that strong leader.
Unless you're chronically online, you probably aren't aware of the recent actions of the NLRB nor of some of the other wins the people Biden appointed over the term of his presidency. He's not out there blasting some of the absolute W's his team has gotten, and I think that's showing in the lackluster polling Biden is getting atm.
The implication of what I've said that I want to be clear on: a strong leader isn't necessarily a good leader, nor is a good leader necessarily a strong leader.
The downvotes I'm getting says the wider community disagrees with this assessment, and in my mind that is what it is. I feel that not recognizing this distinction makes one more inclined to overlook how their voting peers can be swayed towards strong but bad leaders (e.g. Trump) and will thusly make said person less able to influence their voting peers to change their vote.
Au contraire Mon ami, I think the community has mistaken what I mean (probably my fault, I didn't think my original comment through very thoroughly and accept responsibility if I communicated it poorly).
I mean to imy that Biden has made good choices in his appointments, but that his ability to speak and his general lack of charisma are the reason he's not trumping Trump (pun intended) in the polling for the upcoming election.
I would define Trump as a strong, but bad, leader due to his charisma and ability to take ownership for his people's actions (even if he takes "liberties" in defining who "his people" are). In my workplace, I would want someone who speaks highly of the actions of me and my team.
I don't see that from Biden.
As such, I would not describe Biden as a strong leader, but with the caveat that "Good" and "strong" exist on independent axes of the "leadership chart".
the reason he’s not trumping Trump (pun intended) in the polling for the upcoming election
Honestly, don't even bother with polls this far out. At best, we're still 6 months away from the election and much can change in that time period. And that doesn't even get into how bad polling has been in the last handful of elections, and how badly MAGA politicians have been performing compared to their polling.
I would define Trump as a strong, but bad, leader due to his charisma and ability to take ownership for his people’s actions
LOL Trump taking ownership of other peoples' actions? Can you elaborate, because I can't think of any time he's taken any bad heat for another person. Hell, he wont even take criticism for his own actions. At best you can make the argument that he steals credit and assigns blame, which is what a bad leader does.
I would not describe Biden as a strong leader
Well yeah, if you describe a bad leader as strong, of course a good leader is going to be weak by your definition.
Most underrated President of all time. My expectations weren't high, but I have to admit, he's absolutely blown me away with how effective he's been.
Given the shit he was handed from the previous admin, with a divided Congress, etc. he's absolutely crushing it. Imagine what he could do with a Congress behind him and a supreme Court that wasn't broken.
That's great, but he needs to now self-promote and market himself, or we'll be stuck with another Trump term (and possibly the end of democracy in America).
We have a democratic republic, a form of representative government. While there is unfortunately a sometimes insurmountable amount of outsized power wielded by the ultrawealthy, we still can make change happen when the opportunity arises. That goes away if the flawed democracy we have goes away.
Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. A flawed democracy is better than no democracy.
We don't have a democracy. The fact that nearly all of the primaries were cancelled this year and the dnc just decided to pick a winner is evidence that we don't. we have a captilaist oligarchy in which no one reaches the high office unless the rich think it's ok.
We don't have a democracy. The fact that nearly all of the primaries were cancelled this year and the dnc just decided to pick a winner is evidence that we don't. we have a captilaist oligarchy in which no one reaches the high office unless the rich think it's ok.
All this tells me is that you don’t understand what I said. You’re saying that because the systems in place can be used to limit the choices we have in frustrating ways, we don’t have choices.
But we still do have choices. It’s very rare that they’re the best ones, but they’re still choices. A choice between a genocide-supporting fascist and a genocide-supporting non-fascist is still a choice between a fascist and a non-fascist. That choice sucks, but it’s a choice worth making.
Cool back peddle bro, I'm sure "voting" third party is exactly what you meant. Too bad voting nonviable candidates is completely pointless at this time and would only serve to give the rightwing more electoral power.
I'm tired of the rah-rah articles about Biden's polling numbers slightly up all the time. I read about disunity in the GOP and when it got to the "now let's pump you up for Biden" section I tuned out.
Cool story. It's an election year. And for the first time ever, one of the candidates might be in federal prison during their own inauguration! So yeah, you might read some election-year news. Despite how "over it" you are. Sorry...
