The topic is assuming the world will still be in existence in the next five-months-short-of-four years.
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Oh, the world will still be in existence. No matter what we manage to do there’s stuff in the deep oceans that could survive the entire nuclear arsenal going off, and it won’t even rock the planet - Yellowstone going bang might have more effect.
Us - different matter. Species extinction happens all the time, and we’ve caused enough of it ourselves not really to deserve a special exemption.
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Thanks, my friend, for the clarification! I can be so imprecise at times.
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Ok. Left field, but here we go:
Joe Biden with either Cory Booker of Elizabeth Warren as VP.
?
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Won’t Drunkle Joe be too old by then?
Not that I’d be against it, but he may be too human to handle the job.
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Besides the funny memes?
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Obviously, was can only speak for myself, but:
- Joe seems to care about stuff.
- He’s got a sharp tongue.
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I think it’s more that I make a point of being literal minded.
Of course, if we all die then the world will indeed have ceased to exist as far as the human race is concerned. But the evidence suggests that one day homo sapiens will indeed be extinct - as Tennyson wrote 9 years before The Evolution etc.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone
She [nature] cries "A thousand types are gone
I care for nothing; all shall go."
Progressive educated Victorians of the era were just coming round to realise that the implications of the fossil record was that species did indeed become extinct - and that could apply to us. It must have been mind bending to get your head around the idea that a god had not designed the Earth for our benefit.
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Warren seems like the most likely front runner to me. In 2020 people are going to be looking for someone with a bit more vision than the establishment Democrats who handed the election to Trump, and (aside, perhaps, from Sanders) she’s the most outspoken party insurgent. To most people Biden would represent a return to the Clinton/Obama status quo.
(I’m still not ready to give up on the head of cabbage, though)
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I’d vote for Warren in a heart beat but losing her from the senate would be a big loss.
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Also, he’s been through a lot of personal tragedy; folks can relate to that. And he’s managed to stick around for quite some time; he was a junior senator when Nixon was still in office, which I think confers “elder statesman” status upon him.
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Oh…what’s that one Tennyson poem, “Locksley Hall”, it was Truman’s favorite poem, this secton in particular:
"For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law."
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Warren Warren 2020!
Warren Buffett POTUS, Elizabeth Warren VP.
Something for everyone…
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I’d really like it if the next POTUS was not a baby boomer. Nothing against either Warren, of course.
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Do we really need another ultra-rich person in there? He’s still going to be a representative of the ruling class, no matter how centrist his public views are.
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FDR was able to do some good. Regrettably, I have to go back almost a century to find one, so I see your point.
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Normally, I would say that you’re right; my ideal candidate would be Chomsky. That said, given how much the overton window has shifted recently, I think Buffett would be an ideal counterfoil to Trump’s supposed business acumen.
Let him run against an actual successful businessman who releases his tax records and is transparent.
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Buffet is still further left than we have had in the Oval Office since Carter, though that is more a statement about who has been in office than a statement about Buffet.
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I was a big fan of Lessig during the last election, even though I knew he’d go absolutely nowhere in the primaries. He wasn’t even allowed into the debates.
Also, there’s no way the average American would understand Lessig’s ideas for a referendum presidency to get money out of politics, and it’s way easier said than done, but it’s good food for thought.
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