Cenk Uygur running for Pres

I think the requirement for being naturally born, plus the requirement for being at least 35 years old, de facto ensures that someone will have lived in America, and be experienced in living in America, for quite a long time. I’m fine with that.

And we no longer have Frank Sinatra to protect us! Good point.

See, now you get it.

We insist our presidential traitors must be natural born American citizens.

Cenk Uygur was maybe five when his family brought him to America. He knows his way around a hot dog, and has forgotten more about football than I’ll ever know. So what? Arnold has a funny accent, is that what’s troubling you Bunky?

I’m not sure what most of that means, other than that you have a complicated emotional attachment to this thread, but had you asked me whether I would be fine with a minimum residency status, as the child of immigrants and the parent of immigrant adoptees, I would’ve been perfectly fine with it.

This thread is like my child! Of course I want the best for it; God willing, it could even become President someday. Or win the Superbowl. How dare you.

If you don’t see any downsides, you’re not qualified to discuss the policy change - at the very least, you should be thinking about worst-case scenarios and how to prevent them. The time to realize that a hostile foreign government could put someone in office is not after the US has been annexed to China by President Xi. The fact that Cenk’s been here since pre-school doesn’t mean every potential candidate has.

You should also note that of the 8 countries where this is possible, all instances where it happened have been foreign-born natives - people with parents from the country and in the country but born elsewhere.

Gosh. That’s not paranoid at all. Well somebody else will have to reply to that. You’ve made an airtight case, except of course for the un-American objection but better we ditch a bit of our ideals, which will never be missed, otherwise President Stalin (secretly naturalized as a US citizen in 1905, before he had the mustache - you didn’t know that was possible, did you? Prove it isn’t!).

Cenk is opposed to Affirmative Action

But that’s not all, politics fans:

Archive one: Thread by @saladshooter9 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App

Archive two: https://archive.ph/VeuGP

He’s a misogynist, saying things like:

women put off by his desire to quit a steady job in law “whores” and say that women are “poorly designed creatures who do not want to have sex nearly as often as needed for the human race to get along peaceably and fruitfully”.

He also denies the Armenian Genocide, and the name of his show, The Young Turks, is also the name of the group that perpetrated that genocide. I mean, imagine a German who “has questions” about the Holocaust just coincidentally hosting a show named SS-Totenkopfverbände. Everyone seems weirdly cool with this, probably because awareness of the Armenian Genocide hovers around nil and nonexistent.

Can I take a guess - you never heard of Cenk Uygur before this thread, Googled him, found a lot of dirt and made a tidy package designed to make us gasp.

Yes he did write letters to his college newspapers denying the Turks committed genocide. That’s bad. He has disavowed that stance but if some can’t accept that his views have changed that’s understandable.

He often comes off like a frat boy on his show when talking about women. Maybe he tries to mitigate some of his more objectionable remarks by saying “it’s a joke! Come on! We’re just having fun here”, but I dislike that aspect of the TYT bull sessions (ladies invited, and Ana and the other regulars laugh it off but it’s pretty cringe worthy) and if this bothers anyone I can’t say you’re wrong.

I already wrote about the English-language idiom “young Turks” and the mods want us to drop it, so I will.

Cenk is a complex person. I don’t like everything he stands for. But I appreciate him and his passion and ability to articulate why issues matter, why politicians like Joe Biden are not always beholden to the concerns of the people who supported them, and what we should be doing about it. I’ve already said he’s an imperfect messenger, but right wing? That’s pretty steep. I’m curious how the presidential run plays out. That’s why I started this thread.

My prediction? It goes nowhere.

Noted.

So seriously, what’s his plan? Is he going to enter the primary race nationwide as a candidate? What’s his plan?

Cenk says in that tweet that he’s opposed to AA because it attaches a stigma (he uses the word “stereotype”) to minorities, but thinks the more urgent thing to abolish is legacy admissions.

I disagree with him on this only slightly – the long-term plan should be to phase out AA, but I do not believe that the US is at the point where it should eliminate it entirely today.

It seems that in trying to find actual policy positions that Cenk holds that are supposedly abhorrent, we really need to scrape the barrel.
I don’t need to agree with Cenk on everything to think he’d be a good candidate, but the fact is, I do agree on the vast majority of things.

None of that is relevant. None of that disproves anything I posted.

The name of the show hasn’t changed. You get why that’s a big deal, right?

I mean, he isn’t even a Progressive, really. He posted this:

Right-wingers, you hate me (I’m not overly fond of you either). But you want to fight big pharma, and so do I (for different reason). You want election reform, I want election reform. One day we should stop bickering about social issues and fight our corporate overlords together.

He’s willing to make common cause with MAGA proto-Fascists to take down “corporate overlords” which is Officially Not a codeword for Jews. He’s a Populist at best. But maybe that was before they staged their coup oh wait it’s from November 13, 2021.

Best case, he’s a grifter trying to sell books and advertising on his show. Worst case, he’s a slightly Progressive-flavored Trump who will be just as bad for the country.

Archive one: Cenk Uygur on Twitter: "Right-wingers, you hate me (I'm not overly fond of you either). But you want to fight big pharma, and so do I (for different reason). You want election reform, I want election reform. One day we should stop bickering about social issues and fight our corporate overlords together."

Archive two: https://archive.ph/VTvXa

Can it go to where it already is?

Spoken like someone that wants to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s running mate!

Cenk acknowledged the Armenian genocide years ago and the only time it’s been mentioned on the show is in condemning it.
I would change the name of the show if I were him though.

So you implicitly seem to be asserting here, that any effort to find common ground with Republicans means someone is not a “true” progressive. That’s bananas.

Especially when the things you are quoting him on are progressive positions – he’s trying to sell progressive ideas to Republican voters. Because, it turns out, when you take away a lot of the tribalism that you seem to want, most people do support progressive positions.

Brilliant, so now we cannot even push back against corporate corruption and the corporate-oriented US political system without being accused of being anti-semite.

Since when do Republicans want to fight big pharma? Not the corporate profit side, certainly. Is it the vaccine side of things?

Something something FAUCI something CHINA something something something FREEDOM.