Obama's Two Mistakes That Lost the Country

[arkirk]

Cooperation can be a "fitness" that is favored by evolution. If those who cooperate do better than those who instill "every man for himself".

Cooperation is subordinate to other behaviors. Is this necessary? We con't know. There are species built on cooperation that seem to be pretty well regulated and fixed (ants). There I see two major problems. Communication is chemical Social systems are limited to isolates since inbreeding is the variety attendant form of reproduction (sharing three quarters of ancestor genes). High probability of variety extinction on both counts.

Among species that are individuals, but social, breeding is by pairing passing through individual competitiveness above other tendencies it seems to me.

But we are really getting pretty far afield here. I don't think any of this relates to Obama's two mistakes. Rather I probably unintentionally hijacked out of interest in explaining acculturation as the main form for political advancement of cooperation.

I don't think that makes any sense at all considering that we have systems that can extinct the entire human species. That means our petty little competitions must play second fiddle to the more important issues that require COOPERATION and while I cannot enforce it on others, it remains COOPERATION OR ELSE.

We seem to have a whole lot of us here that talk about freedom as if we still were living as nomads in a vast wilderness. We have plastered the planet from end to end with our pollution and everywhere there are unintended consequences. The cooperation we need today is to decrease the flood of unintended and on considered consequences our entire race must face and deal with. This is based on understanding, not some chemical pheromone. A mechanistic form of cooperation such as bees and ants is not intellectual cooperation....what we need today.

 

[untermensche]

Cooperation can be a "fitness" that is favored by evolution. If those who cooperate do better than those who instill "every man for himself".

Cooperation is subordinate to other behaviors. Is this necessary? We con't know. There are species built on cooperation that seem to be pretty well regulated and fixed (ants). There I see two major problems. Communication is chemical Social systems are limited to isolates since inbreeding is the variety attendant form of reproduction (sharing three quarters of ancestor genes). High probability of variety extinction on both counts.

Among species that are individuals, but social, breeding is by pairing passing through individual competitiveness above other tendencies it seems to me.

But we are really getting pretty far afield here. I don't think any of this relates to Obama's two mistakes. Rather I probably unintentionally hijacked out of interest in explaining acculturation as the main form for political advancement of cooperation.

Cooperation is just a strategy that has had success so those with that tendency will begin to dominate.

It takes about 7 generations to breed the "wild", actually a heightened fear response that serves them well in the wild but not very good in captivity, out of some foxes.

 

[fromderinside]

It takes about 7 generations to breed the "wild", actually a heightened fear response that serves them well in the wild but not very good in captivity, out of some foxes.

Yeah. All you have to do is keep those that act wild from breeding, usually by killing them as soon as they act up. I'm sure we're going to use that approach for cooperation among humans. Letting one tendency compete with another almost never is entirely successful. But still one tendency eventually does predominate if is is successful enough long enough, say a several hundred generations, to where one predominates so much that contrary modes are discouraged, eliminated, in the usual ways (see comment on foxes).

My contention is that cooperation is derivative to other driven behaviors and it may just remain because it doesn't significantly diminish effectiveness of other adaptations with which it is associated. Girls tend to be more succoring than boys and girls are more likely to be fed to wolves than are boys in society. that is not a good omen for the idea of cooperation in social species. Yet girls remain more succoring because they need to to bring forth confident boys. Now that's a thing we can work with. Believe me its going to take much longer than even my several hundred generations.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

But we are really getting pretty far afield here. I don't think any of this relates to Obama's two mistakes.

Someone said it earlier; his first and biggest mistake was thinking he could work with the GOP despite the fact that the jowly turtle man and Boner both specifically stated that their main goal was to foil Obama at every single turn so that he could not get re-elected. It was one of the most naked statements of purposeful obstructionism ever made in U.S. politics. They never bothered to pretend they were going to try and work with him.

And instead of taking advantage of the majorities he had in Congress, Obama believed he could work with those jackals. He should have ramrodded everything he could through Congress as fast as he could. Bush/Cheney did whatever the fuck they wanted and Obama should have taken that strategy from them. But he didn't and by doing so lost a lot of opportunities.

 

[fromderinside]

But we are really getting pretty far afield here. I don't think any of this relates to Obama's two mistakes.

Someone said it earlier; his first and biggest mistake was thinking he could work with the GOP despite the fact that the jowly turtle man and Boner both specifically stated that their main goal was to foil Obama at every single turn so that he could not get re-elected. It was one of the most naked statements of purposeful obstructionism ever made in U.S. politics. They never bothered to pretend they were going to try and work with him.

And instead of taking advantage of the majorities he had in Congress, Obama believed he could work with those jackals. He should have ramrodded everything he could through Congress as fast as he could. Bush/Cheney did whatever the fuck they wanted and Obama should have taken that strategy from them. But he didn't and by doing so lost a lot of opportunities.

Democrats by not bringing a bill before summer break as Obama pleaded in 2009 put themselves at the mercy of lobbyists and a unified Republican smear campaign. The only Obama problem there was the blue dog democrats by stalling had poison pilled the bill. After the Republicans united against it it was a pissing contest. Rather than spending August showing off how people were going to benefit by the new law democrats were accosted by a poisonous campaign against various components of the as yet unpassed bill, which eventually cost them the house.

 

[zorq]

Even if the Dems had finished health care reform in early 2009 I think they still would have lost those seats in 2010. I think it is still about the economy. After two years of the worst economy since the great Depression, the bottom of the trough hit in the middle of 2009.

The Republicans, ever trying to pin the economy's woes on Obama, actually were getting traction with the public. I remember people were constantly complaining about Obama bailing out the banks and not fixing the damage to the economy. I think the people saying this were mostly willfully ignorant as to just how much damage had been done, but those were the talking points and they were pervasive. When your life has been sucking for two years and one party has been in charge throughout, some of the blame is bound to be thrown that way especially when there are so many people in the media saying the same thing.

As James Carvil once said "It's the economy, stupid."
2008 was a big win for the Dems because Bush was in charge when the economy fell, but 2010 was going to be a loss for the Dems no matter what they did because the economy couldn't be built up again quickly enough.

 

[untermensche]

It takes about 7 generations to breed the "wild", actually a heightened fear response that serves them well in the wild but not very good in captivity, out of some foxes.

Yeah. All you have to do is keep those that act wild from breeding, usually by killing them as soon as they act up.

You don't have to kill any foxes, and the humans that died leaving mostly cooperative humans left are already dead.

My contention is that cooperation is derivative to other driven behaviors and it may just remain because it doesn't significantly diminish effectiveness of other adaptations with which it is associated.

I am saying it is clearly a superior strategy for survival.

Having a hospital is better for survival than atomized individual effort.

Girls tend to be more succoring than boys and girls are more likely to be fed to wolves than are boys in society.

Girls are most harmed by human wolves. And it is due to strength, not proclivities.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Worst mistake - using economic indicators that only benefit Wall Street to say the economy has improved on Main Street. Like it or not, the Democrats are running against the economy in 2016.

 

[untermensche]

Worst mistake - using economic indicators that only benefit Wall Street to say the economy has improved on Main Street. Like it or not, the Democrats are running against the economy in 2016.

You first sentence describes "Reaganomics".

The Republicans are running on fear.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I was describing Obama. For better or worse, the Democrats are running against the economy they say is so great. The greatness isn't felt by the average person, and even less so by minorities and the young.