u/interkin3tic

I was listening to Raging moderates and doing something else. Was Scott making a joke or did he really say the 70 year old running JP Morgan or the CEO of Walmart would be good people for the Democrats to nominate?

I think there are faster ways to destroy the Democratic party and assure that DSA is the other party but not many.

Later in that same episode he said something along the lines of you had to allow the existence of billionaires for capitalism to work. So even if I missed something about devils advocate for Dimon or he was joking, I think I might be done giving attention to Scott. We do not need to suffer the existence of billionaires, they're destroying the country.

Are there any politicians promising to slash road construction budgets? Last year they were putting fucking rocks in the middle of Broadway, now they're making the curbs prettier. LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE, THERE WEREN'T EVEN FUCKING POTHOLES IN IT! STOP SHUTTING IT DOWN FOR STUPID SHIT.

edit: Yes I'm aware bikes bikes bikes I'm evil for having to commute with a car instead of biking or riding being able to afford to live near where I work.

I'm not that familiar with the structure of the NIH before Republicans started destroying it or if that's the best structure to keep or return to.

I'm not sure what the antivaxer movement will look like once the current authoritarian anti-intellectual government leaves, I'm guessing a lot of cultists and narcissists that RFK jr appointed will try to stick around to continue promoting junk science and harming people, but they don't have lifetime appointments and can be fired with cause.

The executive movements to eliminate science funding I expect will largely be eliminated with Russ Vought leaving power.

Overall, I don't see signs of a large appetite among Republicans to eliminate the NIH and funding health science. So I think a rebuild is going to be possible.

What would you want that to look like? Simply funding it back to previous levels and hiring back anyone from the NIH who was fired before? Are there other models of funding agencies that the NIH should try instead?

For my part the only thing I can think of is I would like to see a shorter pre application process like DARPA or ARPA, more blue sky risky projects, and break the gerontocracy problem science has had for a long time.

The average age for first R01 was a huge unaddressed issue before the NIH was decimated. Political appointees being able to cancel any grant for political reasons is bad, but it was a well established problem that a lot of review panels were just funding their old friends and safe boring science no matter what the grant was actually intending to fund.

MIRA grants were, from what I've heard, an attempt to get away from paper mill labs that regularly publish boring staid incremental results, but the funding for those was undercut to the point where they weren't really effective.

Basically the next administration is going to have an ability to rebuild the NIH to be better than it was before and I would like to know what that should look like rather than it going right back to boomer scientists at Harvard getting all the money for the same things they've been puttering around on for 30 years.

Sarah has referenced Platner's posts several times, so I finally looked them up and... These really shouldn't even be labeled "controversial" for anyone with a brain.

Am I missing something?

He used some homophobic slurs, yes. In defense of a gay member of the military. That's not homophobic.

He said he was a socialist. Is Sarah offended at the implication that capitalism actually isn't blessed by Jesus? Capitalism is going really awful right about now.

He said black people weren't tipping him? That's a stereotype, sure, but is that so odious that Sarah would be reluctant to vote for him when he was evidently talking about a personal experience a decade ago?

I keep seeing references to him victim blaming for sexual assault. That seems like the worst thing he's said and he evidently said it once?

Seriously, am I missing something here? This seems like the pearl clutching when Biden had the hot mic about calling Peter Doocy an idiot. Sarah knows full well that literally, not figuratively, every single Republican in the country has said far worse things. I do not understand what the fuss is about.

Edit: there have been a few people who ponied up his actual quotes and to those people, thank you. I don't find them offensive. Mostly though dead Internet theory proves itself again. "Say what specifically Platner said that was so bad" bots and bad faith trolls have managed to turn into "Lol I don't think anyone should criticize Platner ever." Fuck off and crawl back to Twitter.

Ken Martin's incredibly incompetent defense of "we never said we would release the autopsy" with Faverau makes me think it's somehow worse for the DNC than we're expecting.

I think everyone is expecting it's a lot of "Biden should have done literally anything about the genocide in Gaza." But that ship has sailed, Israel and AIPAC are wildly unpopular amongst Democrats.

Biden being too old or people not liking Harris, I would assume the DNC would be fine with admitting that.

I'm thinking one of the conclusions of the report is someone challenging centrists like Biden (from the left, not the bland Dean guy) is how we win elections. That I COULD see the DNC saying "oh no, absolutely not."

If someone had run against Biden from the left in the 2024 primary, the centrists would have screamed they're traitors and were going to elect Trump. That happened anyway.

Centrists lose elections and need to be challenged every single time.

I'm probably not alone in thinking the lesson should be "Centrists need to be challenged because they lose elections even when they're incumbents."

Ken Martin, prove me wrong.