Political Discussion

Joe Mac said:
On another note am I the only person who misses sitting down for a mid morning brew and reading the paper?
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A few years ago before I grew a full beard, I had switched to wet shaving with a straight razor, which, if you haven't done it, is possibly the most time-consuming and slowest way to do the thing. But as a morning ritual to take an intentional slow period to do it, it was a wonderful thing and I found it really made the rest of my morning calmer, better somehow. I began to understand why my grandparents would wake up early intentionally. I have since replaced it with a slow breakfast, making coffee in a french press and taking my slow ass time intentionally. I put it in my work calendar as a standing meeting in the morning. Answer emails, take 30-45 minutes for breakfast, then back to work.
 
I will say at least they didn’t formally sign away the ability to kill the filibuster just to end this impasse. I am not hopeful but if the GOP are complete obstructionist it’s still at least possible despite what Sinema or Manchin say right now that they could kill it.
 
yukbon said:
A few years ago before I grew a full beard, I had switched to wet shaving with a straight razor, which, if you haven't done it, is possibly the most time-consuming and slowest way to do the thing. But as a morning ritual to take an intentional slow period to do it, it was a wonderful thing and I found it really made the rest of my morning calmer, better somehow. I began to understand why my grandparents would wake up early intentionally. I have since replaced it with a slow breakfast, making coffee in a french press and taking my slow ass time intentionally. I put it in my work calendar as a standing meeting in the morning. Answer emails, take 30-45 minutes for breakfast, then back to work.
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Completely. I think we try to do too many things at once and we don’t properly relax and savour any of them. Plus the time out is good for our mental health.

Also it feels like a healthier way of engaging. I think the constant bombardment of internet news isn’t healthy engagement, there’s too much. I see it on this thread at times with a bombardment of stories without context or engagement just because they’re there. There is something more considered about reading the paper for an hour in the morning and watching the news at 10 as opposed to 24 hour news channels needing sensation to validate having the same 6 stories on repeat all day and the internet needing sensation to make you click on their link for advertising revenue.

Im already on board with the slow food movement, maybe I should start the slow news movement...
 
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I've been reading a lot about China and US relations. The more I read the more I understand what this guy is saying.

 
Also, what the wha?
I would be surprised but this is the Trump White House we're talking about.

Dr. Deborah Birx, who was the White House's coronavirus response coordinator under President Donald Trump, said on Sunday that Trump was fed "a parallel set of data and graphics" that she had not approved, and that the president then presented to the public.

In a CBS interview released Sunday, Birx said somebody had been creating graphics for Trump to present "that were not transparently utilized." Scott Atlas, Trump's former advisor on the coronavirus task force and a lockdown skeptic, was involved, she said.

"I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made," Birx told Margaret Brennan on CBS News' "Face The Nation.

"Someone out there or someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president.

www.businessinsider.com

Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus coordinator, said Trump was fed 'parallel data' that she hadn't approved, which he then presented to the public

Dr. Deborah Birx said Scott Atlas, an advisor to President Donald TRump, brought in the "parallel data," but she didn't know who else was involved.
www.businessinsider.com www.businessinsider.com
 
nolalady said:
Also, what the wha?
I would be surprised but this is the Trump White House we're talking about.

Dr. Deborah Birx, who was the White House's coronavirus response coordinator under President Donald Trump, said on Sunday that Trump was fed "a parallel set of data and graphics" that she had not approved, and that the president then presented to the public.

In a CBS interview released Sunday, Birx said somebody had been creating graphics for Trump to present "that were not transparently utilized." Scott Atlas, Trump's former advisor on the coronavirus task force and a lockdown skeptic, was involved, she said.

"I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made," Birx told Margaret Brennan on CBS News' "Face The Nation.

"Someone out there or someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president.

www.businessinsider.com

Deborah Birx, the former White House coronavirus coordinator, said Trump was fed 'parallel data' that she hadn't approved, which he then presented to the public

Dr. Deborah Birx said Scott Atlas, an advisor to President Donald TRump, brought in the "parallel data," but she didn't know who else was involved.
www.businessinsider.com www.businessinsider.com
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knowingly misleading the public as a government official, especially in cases where the public is more likely to die by following directives should be a federal offense.
 
ayayrawn said:
Expect nothing and still be continually disappointed every day.

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How far left would you think it would be possible to pass legislation while staying in power to ensure that it does not immediately get overturned?

I just don’t think the population of America has the viewpoint that left leaning policies will work. The business of the left should be convincing the population of their policies and organizing communities. There has been a long history of attack on these policies. The left is only beginning to fight back.
 
Dtknuckles said:
How far left would you think it would be possible to pass legislation while staying in power to ensure that it does not immediately get overturned?

I just don’t think the population of America has the viewpoint that left leaning policies will work. The business of the left should be convincing the population of their policies and organizing communities. There has been a long history of attack on these policies. The left is only beginning to fight back.
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Let republicans overturn it and see where that gets them. As is, it's a limp-wrist, woefully inadequate policy that sets up the potential newly elected republican president to reap all the public benefits for it.
 
ayayrawn said:
Expect nothing and still be continually disappointed every day.

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Inflation, cost of living expenses, etc. $15 will be too low by 2025. Should be $25/hour tbh by 2025.

Here's a bill that was introduced 2 years ago, didn't pass

www.epi.org

Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024 would lift pay for nearly 40 million workers

In 2018, the federal minimum wage of $7.25 was worth 14.8 percent less than when it was last raised in 2009, after adjusting for inflation, and 28.6 percent below its peak value in 1968, when the minimum wage was the equivalent of $10.15 in 2018 dollars. On January 16, 2019, Sen. Bernie Sanders...
www.epi.org www.epi.org

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Dtknuckles said:
I just don’t think the population of America has the viewpoint that left leaning policies will work. The business of the left should be convincing the population of their policies and organizing communities. There has been a long history of attack on these policies. The left is only beginning to fight back.
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So.much.to.say.brain.exploding....
Long story short, from what I have read about the US economy and people in the 20th century, we started as a nation who understood that socialist policies were not only good but needed for economic recovery after the inequality of the Guilded Age. But there was a huge attack on socialist policies in the 1970's during another recession. That's when our astounding elite minds decided that letting corporations take over to end government wasteful spending (there was also the restructuring of welfare benefits to try to get "welfare moms" of the welfare rosters--I have so much to say about these racist, sexist laws and the family court structure that led to all of it, but that is for another day). Slowly as investors and financiers were seeing amazing profit potential by cutting government programs and letting them be run by contractors from for profit companies, we started getting fed the line that the government was wasteful; worker protections just got in the way of doing business; and everything could be done easier and cheaper if it's done in a for profit contractor system where people don't have to be provided with insurance or retirement--just don't look too hard at the work produced. It took a lot of popular media brainwashing for us, the American people, to embrace these tenets as truth, but with the red scare in the 50's and 60's, it wasn't too hard to equate socialism with communism--and communism was, of course, the devil.

Now we are here, where neoliberal policies of unrestricted corporate monopolies are actually eroding our democracy--because the only people that get heard are campaign donors. Most of our top economist still believe in some aspects of trickle down economics even though it's been thoroughly debunked. Business as usual is now unsustainable because the only way to increase profits for shareholders is to pay workers less and replace parts and pieces with cheaper materials or try to make a process quicker by automation or just plain cutting corners. We've painted ourselves into a corner that we can't get out of. Many public retirement pensions rely on the stock market making consistent returns and our economy is inevitably tied to the stock market regardless of how decoupled it looks right now. Karl Marx and Adam Smith both warned that financiers/rentiers (people who make money off of rents and interest instead of production) were great servants but horrible masters. They both warn against this class having power as it creates a stew of corruption. This is who is in charge and because of creative accounting and insane financial "products", they have created this environment where the stock market does not reflect the actual economy, and inequality is running rampant. This isn't the first time in this country that inequality has been bad, and it's certainly not the first time in history. There is always a realignment. There is always a rebalancing. It can be peaceful or it can be violent. I'm hoping for the peaceful solution where we pass a lot of laws that protects workers and rebalances the stock market to something that again looks like it's mimicking the economy--but this will require us to tax billionaires a whole bunch which we in the US don't like. We enjoy the myth of the self made man that gained wealth from his own two hands--this is a myth that keeps most of the US against socialist policies. We don't understand that behind every self made man is usually a bunch of inherited cash, and that we, as regular people have no real path to wealth anymore thanks to the belief that we shouldn't hassle billionaires because they "earned" their money, instead of the truth that they exploited people like you and me to make those billions.

ETA: If you want to read about how billionaires are eroding democracy, here's a good article: The Political Immortality of Billionaires
 
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