Political Discussion

AnthonyI said:
I'm starting to feel like we're looking for a 4 year band aid at this point just to put the Trump years behind us....hopefully.
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Yes, that's what the baby boomers want and the democratic party leadership.

However, I really think we need change. We need to solve issues now. Not defer for possibly 16 years.

Twentytwo said:
I agree, but I think if we don't get Biden as the democratic nominee then we get Trump for four more years. To be honest, I think if Pete Buttigieg wasn't gay, he might have a chance. America the great, land of the homophobic, sexist and racist.
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But we also have polls that say if there was an election today, between Bernie and Trump that Bernie would come out on top. We don't know what will happen. After all, Trump did win in 2016. We shouldn't write him or Elizabeth off as unelectable.

One of the things that scares me the most is it seems like the Republican Party wants to run against Biden. I feel like they think they can beat him in any election. Biden doesn't energize the base. He is just the safe status quo candidate.

Climate change much be addressed in the next 10 years or it will be too late. Which is going to take someone willing to shake things up because the Republicans still wont even acknowledge that climate change exist / is real and are in favor of short term polices that bring in high profits for corporations and shareholders.

Medicare for all is not extremist left views. It's what the rest of the developed world already has. We are not taking peoples health insurance away. We are giving them something better with no deductibles or co-pays. Yes we will pay more in taxes, but we wont have to pay premiums. If we compare the two side by side we will actually be saving money. Our healthcare system is seriously broken and prices are going out of control.

Student loan debt is a major issue that needs to be addressed. It's crippling. I graduated college/university in 2008 with 55K in student loan debt. My payoff value is actually 78K today. I have lost ground rather than making a dent in my student loan debt. How did this happen? The recession hit right after I graduated from college. I could not get a job in my field. (Well I got one that lasted 6 months before the small company I worked for folded). But for the most part I ended up in retail management for 4 years after graduating until the economy got better making only about 30k a year working 55+ hours a week. I used up my 2 years of deferment because I could not afford to pay student loans and rent. Interest just kept piling on. Then I was laid off for a year in 2015 and could not afford to make payments then either with just a random temp job here, freelance job there while on the job hunt.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
Yes, that's what the baby boomers want and the democratic party leadership.

However, I really think we need change. We need to solve issues now. Not defer for possibly 16 years.
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Completely agree and I'm a boomer, but its becoming the writing on the wall, too many in office and the public have become fixated at just getting Trump out of office, regardless of the cost.
 
Booker going on and on about splitting the Dems. Come on man its supposed to be a debate not a sing along. It's gotta be Thunderdome if they are gonna get past Trump.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Of course he's got the biggest target painted on his back in the debates because of his perceived status as frontrunner, but I still thought he did a fairly weak job of fending off attacks from Harris, Booker, Gillibrand, and de Blasio (????) last night. Ending a good number of his responses with "well anyway," in a "you know what I mean" sense when the moderators were cutting him off, might be his natural reaction, but it made it appear as if he couldn't conclude his thoughts. And then he capped that performance with a catastrophic goof in his closing statement. Mixing up directing people to a url with telling them how to text his campaign, especially coming last in line after several candidates had successfully done the same thing, made him look old and lost.

It makes me sad, because I generally like Biden and I appreciate the service that he did give to America, especially as a VP people could relate to in the Obama years. I don't want to see this primary tear him down to the point that he looks pathetic. But I think that's the direction we're headed.
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I was listening to a Rep strategist and he said Biden won't be the candidate for this very reason. He always does something to fuck things up.
On a one on one basis he's good with people, both my father and step mother have met him.

I wasn't paying much attention during the Obama years, 2 jobs and grad school, but from what I'm hearing there are some people looking back and it wasn't as rosy as was thought.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Totally. But it was also a product of its time, y'know? I'm on the side of acknowledging that were deep flaws in the Obama administration for various policies and for various reasons, but that Obama and Biden were still personally good, admirable men who were doing the best they could.

Is there plenty for today's candidates to criticize about how the policies of the Obama admin aren't a good enough status quo to return to? Absolutely. But I still don't want to watch Biden invite his fellow party leaders to dismantle a reasonably good legacy to his face, on stage, just because CNN and MSNBC's horse race optics require it.
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As far as dismantling a legacy, I refer you to Mcain. That guy couldn't find a war he didn't want to be involved in. He's got a lot of blood on his hands. Yet when he died everybody spoke about him as if he was some admirable guy. Don't worry Biden will get the same treatment when he dies.
 
I've been watching parks and Rec over the summer. It's funny enough to put me to sleep every night, but there are times when the sycophantic treatment of politicians makes my skin crawl.
 
ayayrawn said:
Baffled as to how anyone can watch this and think Joe Biden is still the best bet to take on Trump
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The people who think Biden has the best chance to beat Trump know that many voters aren’t as engaged as we and those who watch the debates are. Biden has name recognition and is forever linked to the Obama administration. I’d prefer Warren if I had my choice, but my primary goal is to get that fucker out of office. As my shirt says.....
 

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Sonicpharmacist said:
The people who think Biden has the best chance to beat Trump know that many voters aren’t as engaged as we and those who watch the debates are. Biden has name recognition and is forever linked to the Obama administration. I’d prefer Warren if I had my choice, but my primary goal is to get that fucker out of office. As my shirt says.....
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Exactly, I’ll take a fucking doorknob at this point as long as we get the shitstain out of office.
 
Settling for a terrible candidate under the "at least it's not Trump" pretense is a strategy doomed to fail. It failed in 2016, and it will fail again in 2020.

Watching people immediately settle for a center-right candidate who can't debate for shit and stands for nothing, instead of actually vetting the best candidates out of a primary like the way it's supposed to work is depressing. I know literally no one my age even remotely enthused about the possibility of Biden as a candidate. He's polling better than Trump now solely because people know his name, but I guarantee, that once, god forbid, he wins the nomination, and people realized he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing/his platform is nothing but "I'm not trump", those numbers will plummet. We will be absolutely fucked.
 
ayayrawn said:
Settling for a terrible candidate under the "at least it's not Trump" pretense is a strategy doomed to fail. It failed in 2016, and it will fail again in 2020.

Watching people immediately settle for a center-right candidate who can't debate for shit and stands for nothing, instead of actually vetting the best candidates out of a primary like the way it's supposed to work is depressing. I know literally no one my age even remotely enthused about the possibility of Biden as a candidate. He's polling better than Trump now solely because people know his name, but I guarantee, that once, god forbid, he wins the nomination, and people realized he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing/his platform is nothing but "I'm not trump", those numbers will plummet. We will be absolutely fucked.
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“It failed in 2016”.....with Russia’s help, and HRC won the popular vote. Look at the 2018 midterms. We fucking killed it, because we are pissed and unified. The same will happen in 2020 as in the midterms. Biden doesn’t carry the baggage HRC did. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want Biden as the nominee, but IF he is, I predict DJT will lose bigly.
 
The Equifax settlement is turning in to a huge joke and also shows the economy is not as strong as you would think.

The settlement was for a total of $300 Million, of that $300, Million, only $31 was earmarked by a federal judge for cash payouts. These cash payers were intended for people who have paid for their own credit monitoring services, reimbursements for freezing credit and time spent disputing fraud. The remaining balance of the $300 Million is intended to give consumers free credit monitoring services for 10 years. Claiming the cash option was supposed to give you $125.

If you chose the cash option or are not eligible for the free credit monitoring for 10 years.

Then something happened that they did not anticipate. Nearly everyone chose the cash option. 147 Million people are part of this settlement. The $125 is not first come first serve, it will be split between everyone who claims it. So as it's looking right now, it's looking like most people will get a payout in the range of $1 to $5, a far cry short of the $125.

In response to this they will be setting up a program trying to get people to switch from the cash payout to the free credit monitoring.


The fact that everyone is choosing cash shows are economy is not a strong as we would like to think. That $125 can mean a lot for 50% of americans who are living paycheck to paycheck.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
The Equifax settlement is turning in to a huge joke and also shows the economy is not as strong as you would think.

The settlement was for a total of $300 Million, of that $300, Million, only $31 was earmarked by a federal judge for cash payouts. These cash payers were intended for people who have paid for their own credit monitoring services, reimbursements for freezing credit and time spent disputing fraud. The remaining balance of the $300 Million is intended to give consumers free credit monitoring services for 10 years. Claiming the cash option was supposed to give you $125.

If you chose the cash option or are not eligible for the free credit monitoring for 10 years.

Then something happened that they did not anticipate. Nearly everyone chose the cash option. 147 Million people are part of this settlement. The $125 is not first come first serve, it will be split between everyone who claims it. So as it's looking right now, it's looking like most people will get a payout in the range of $1 to $5, a far cry short of the $125.

In response to this they will be setting up a program trying to get people to switch from the cash payout to the free credit monitoring.


The fact that everyone is choosing cash shows are economy is not a strong as we would like to think. That $125 can mean a lot for 50% of americans who are living paycheck to paycheck.
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Also credit monitoring sucks. It only covers a specific aspect of what can be done with your information. That’s not the same as identity theft protection. It may not be an indicator of the economy per se but that the alt to 125 isn’t that great. Heck I was part of the OPM data spill a few years back and I get full identity protection from that - worth much more than 125 or credit monitoring
 
For the most part many employers consider every employee as replaceable. Especially in food service and retail positions.

I overheard a conversation on the train. A woman was talking about her daughter who is the reliable person she knows being fired from 2 jobs last month for no fault of her own.

Like many Americans, she has to work 3 jobs to be able to afford rent and live in an apartment with her fiance who also works 2 jobs. This women's daughter is currently having her residency/fellowship at a hospital in Boston, then takes the commuter rail back home where she then works a part time retail position and part time waitressing position.

However, the MBTA commuter rail has been extremely unreliable recently. Lots of mechanical issues, delays and cancelations resulting in this women's daughter ending up getting to work late at least once a week per job last month under circumstances she had no control over.

This past Wednesday trains were delayed up to 90 minutes due to having to crawl at 15 miles per hour for 20 miles and stop at every single and wait for permission to proceed after a lightning strike took out the signal system. That was the last straw. Even though she called and let her boss know what's up, when she arrived at work she was let go for not being reliable and being late to work 5 times in the past month.

Taking the train is still more reliable in terms of commute time than driving where you can often sit in gridlock for 2 hours. When the Trains are running on time it's only a half hour commute home.

She tried to get more buffer time by starting shifts later but her boss was like these are the hours of the shift. If these don't work for you I'd suggest that you find a different job.

There was no sympathy or understand about being late due to commuter rail having issues.

Thankfully those were only extra jobs, but extra jobs she needed to make rent.

Do the cost of living being so high around here it's very common for people to be working 2 to 3 jobs. And it can be near impossible balancing them all. Employers wanting open availability for part time employees and not wanting to work around set schedules.


I can understand wanting reliable employees. But if you have a hard worker, and someone who is reliable and shit happens like the MBTA's poor performance last month it should be 1, 2, three strikes and your fired for being late because that's what the police says.
 
debianlinux said:
Good guys with guns follow the rules which make sure no good guys with guns will be found in exactly the places the mass shooters keep appearing. Coincidence?
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I find it hard to believe that with Texas’s lax gun laws nobody in the Walmart was carrying at the time. It took 6 minutes for someone to arrive. It doesn’t matter anyway, not like two mass shootings will change a damn thing.
 
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