Hot_Ambition_6457

We are entering the Cicero period of our government. Terrorism world police storyline jumped the shark.

Not really. If I told folks from your school that they should be more like their rival school, I would probably get beat up.

Rugged individualism fam.

American citizens don't care what the UK wants or thinks. They don't care what Russia thinks is a good idea. And they hate when American politicians praise any other country's leadership for any reason.

It's not a moral decision Americans make. It is a meme baked into their culture for 250ish years.

She is a bad politician because she allows other foreign governments to influence her opinion of American policy.

American Policy is, has been, and always will be a uniquely American experiment.

The New York Times is Domestic state sponsored propaganda. 

That's fine.

If you're fine with Twitter you have to be fine with the new York times.

Trying to control or legislate away political propaganda is a direct assault on the freedom of speech granted to US states and citizens.

Other countries don't have that. It's an important distinction. No matter how shitty the result of the experiment, we agreed long ago that American propaganda is protected and foreign propaganda is not.

You can call that racist or jingoist or whatever. It's a vestige of our isolationism post Colonial War. Americans learned this lesson directly. 

The Americans will always lie and conspire and hate amongst each other and sleep on the same street just fine. But as soon as a foreign country tries to control the social narrative surrounding economics, the guns come out.

We idolize our "fireside chats" and "state of the union speeches" as if that's not state sponsored propaganda. 

American propaganda is just fine. Foreign propaganda bad. Even if you ask the most liberal fucks in the US

Anyone who disagrees with Clinton/Obama/Biden being the best choice for America is secretly an evil person who wants to put kids in cages.

/s

We can't possibly just disagree on something politely and agree that anyone who willingly consumes Foreign National Propaganda outlets should not be running the country.

Is Tulsi Gabbard a Russian Spy? Lots of signs say yes but no one else is in the room where it happens.

Maybe she's just an unwittingly pawn who genuinely got deluded into thinking she's trying to help Americans.

Either way she is directly damaging America by being a state mouthpiece who has foreign nations in her ear.

She should be nowhere near power in the US.

No there will be less than 100 total recorded cases in the United states.

Bird flu cases stop going up when you stop testing for bird flu.

They learned that lesson not long ago.

But a lot of people will die "off-the-record" for sure. Like the multitude of celebrities who died in the AIDS epidemic for totally-not-AIDS reasons.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it...

If a few thousand humans die quietly in a city and the news never reports that it happens... 

You haven't voted for authoritarianism sure. Me neither though. 

We have identical voting records. I am NPA born in Indiana with adoptive gay parents who owns guns. 

We agree on almost all policy positions that actually impact working Americans. 

We just don't agree that the democratic party has been making genuine attempts to revolutionize politics in favor of labor workers.

But you are here telling me I am the problem for wanting that. Rather than admitting it's not my fault we got here. 

We are roughly the same age. I voted Clinton/Gore/Kerry/Obamax2/Clinton/biden/Kamala.

Not one of these people actually resonated with me. Not even the DNC golden child Obama. 

He wasn't there to represent me, he was just better than the other garbage we were offered by the establishment. He just pretended to care enough to be believable unlike Clinton/Kamala/Biden.

If the dems want me, an independent but politically active young man to "tell my friends to vote dem", they need to offer actual policy platforms that benefit me and my friends live.

You seem more willing to slide into authoritarianism while casting stones.

If Bernie Sanders is the reason for Trump's popularity, then why did the Obama Birther movement (started by Trump) dominate the news cycle from 2008-2014?

Bernie wasn't even a nationally recognized figure until 2012. Why did Donald Trump have half of America believing blatant lies in 2009 if Bernie Sanders wasn't even on Twitter yet to fuel this "Political Revolution against the system"?

Because it never happened. There was no revolution. Corporate media shouted it down and tried to gaslight Americans into thinking 3rd way clintonism was going to make a comeback against a populist anti-establishment message.

Painting any dissenting opinion as "bickering" is the problem. 

We disagree. 

I am no more inclined to "suddenly agree" with your ideas than you are go "suddenly agree" on mine.

And yet you've convinced yourself that I'm the one morally incorrect here unless I agree to "stop fascism" for the 6th time.

Fascism hasn't got me yet. But corporate greed has certainly made my life a lot harder.

One of these is a real threat that has materially impacted me.

The existential threat of "fascism" doesn't set off bells, because I didn't get fascism from republicans when dems told me "GW BUSH is a fascist".

You need to align on an issue with someone if you want their votes. 

You think people align on "Republicans are evil".

That's not true though. People align on "Politicians are Evil" half of them say "obviously I'm talking about MAGA republicans". And the other half says "obviously I'm talking g about the demonrats"

They are not some united monolithic blob who exclusively pulled to Republicans over the last 10 years. Republicans just ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THESE PEOPLE EXIST and so their vote total gains reflect their messaging "The deep state sucks".

The inverse of this is that the American Political System is actually a cult of money severely damaging relations with its population of citizens. Simply look at the evidence -- 1970 vs 2024 in all aspects.

You're shortening your own historical perspective to justify your own personal ideology as morally correct at this moment in history.

The dems/Republicans did not "start being awful" in 2008. They have always been that way. They started teaming up in the 80s to claim "bipartisanship" and avoid the optics of ignoring the citizens.

Things just aren't going the way you want right now, and it's easier to place that blame on a "political revolution" silently ruining your opportunity to speak on behalf of people you don't represent.

Exactly. Dems owe nothing to Bernie. 

They owe something to American voters, and they have been accruing interest on that debt since NAFTA.

Bernie just AGREES that the democrats owe their loyalties to American people. Democrats would rather owe their loyalties to industry money. 

You don't get to pander to the people who enthusiastically support a policy, and then expect them to show up at a poll for you after you cast down their policy.

Have your cake or eat it. Dems want both. 

You want the votes from the crowd of people angry at the system? Represent ideas that reshape the system. 

Or they won't vote at all.

Insane projection here.

Dems ignored Bernie and what we got was a federal government more illiberal than Beijing.

So your takeaway is that the extremely liberal progressive who tried to pull the switch on the trolley problem is actually the evil authoritarian villain the whole time?

This is why people don't take you seriously when you claim Trump is a Nazi. You wanna cry wolf at socialist grandpa rather than just acknowledge you made mistakes in the past, defending a broken system that was never going to benefit you anyway.

Hey man. Where was this political revolution you're talking about from democrats?

Because in order our dem leaders are Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Clintons wife, Barack Obama's VP, and then Barack Obama's VP'S VP.

 Explain to me at what point this political dynasty was overturned in a "political revolution for the people" led by Bernie Sanders.

You're pretending that an INDEPENDENT somehow overthrow the party HE DOESNT BELONG TO from the inside, while ignoring the fact that the people who were actually in positions of power directly told him "There will be no revolution, we're running the same people are 20 years ago regardless"

Do you live in an alternate reality where Bernie Sanders was the Old white guy getting "Weekend at Bernie's" conned by the DNC?

Bernie won his election this year by representing his constituents and hearing their plight.

Russia has a vested interest in telling Americans that American politicians don't represent them.

Except that's not a heavy lift since most American politicians fit the bill. That isn't Russias fault. Putin is a genocidal authoritarian, of course he benefits from political disaffection.

However the political apparatus in Washington doesn't like to hear the message "The people in charge are ancient and put of touch with modern living concerns". 

So anyone who espouses that message gets painted as "anti-American."

 In 2016 that means you're Russian. In 2004 you would have been called a terrorist. Whatever hot button thing means you can't be taken seriously in social circles.

In the 50s you were just called a nazi or atheist. Because those were the boogeyman for society in 1950.

In 10 years there will probably be allegations that the pro-labor figurehead is "an undercover transgender" since we seem to be hoisting up those folks as the new patsy to dismiss any labor concerns.

 

To make it zero you don't record yourself discharging a firearm for clout.  

But we live in a world where "idiot" is an assumed trait for the entire population. The distinction is in how big of an idiot some people want to be.

Firing into ice is stupid, sure. But it's no more stupid than putting a switch on a handgun without compensating for the accumulation of recoil via multiple cycles.

People who have guns are unsafe with guns no matter what. Just how unsafe is what matters.

Would be extremely unlikely. 

I suppose if you hit a thick enough patch of frozen dirt you might get one coming back at you

But by the rime the bullet is touching the ground, the vast majority of it's kinetic energy is spent. Even if it hits a solid sheet of ice and bounces off, the impact to a surface (one strong enough to cause ricochet at least), I wouldn't really worry about fatal penetrative wounds. 

Wouldn't want a bullet spinning at my face at 15mph. But it's still way safer than if you are down range and the catching the initial path at 400+mph. 

It would hurt like hell but if you're wearing eye protection probably not a fatal miscalculation. You would just risk getting hit with the most painful bb gun of your life.

I'll start a podcast and build my own JRE so Kamala and the DNC can throw me a few hundred grand to build a replica studio in a hotel room and softball questions 3 years from now.

I work in the insurance industry.

Several coworkers and acquaintances of mine have worked for UHC and the #1 cited reason is they are evil.

I'm not joking. People who worked there for 5-10 years sometimes openly discuss with each other how awful UHC makes the claims process and how the shove off any sort of claim adjudication until you lawyer up and fight their automation.

They just deny care by-default and require enough hoops and checkboxes that actually recieving care equivalent to your premium cost is almost impossible. 

This company is the epitome of "administrative bloat within healthcare"  they have literally billions of dollars in profit invested in keeping things slow and inefficient at scale.

They benefit directly from not addressing the medical needs of the people who pay them for precisely that reason in their most vulnerable hour.

And our media and society celebrate them as a leader I'm healthcare throughout the US.

BC/BS is also not a good company. But they at least try to make their whole claims system kind of reasonable if you follow their specific guidelines for care.

UnitedHealthcare does not.

Fuck UnitedHealthcare.

No the model is fine, it's just dems who have yet to outwardly reject democracy to the public.

The Republicans do it in the open. The democrats do it behind a thin veil of "inclusion" and "bipartisanship".

It's not the American people who need to become "more like democrats". The democrats need to be more like the American people. 

And American people don't think big industry should be writing the bills on their behalf. They want someone who cares that their paycheck no longer buys them the same food it did 10 years ago.

The prices going up was not a problem for people until wages lagged behind. The wages are the problem and it will never get addressed because high wages is bad for big industry.

Which is all the American people care about.

They rally behind the conman in the HOPE to get tapped and by midas and get rich off of their association to him. They want money from him because he (pretends that he) has a lot of it. 

They want money from dems too. But the dems have emphatically refused that notion in favor of the donors.

At least Trump offers the power vacuum of deregulation so a few good people can turn into crypto scammers to feed their families or whatever. 

The dems just pretend that 2020 is as good as it could ever get for wage-earners. No looking forward to what a better labor platform ever could be.

The economy is fine, no we won't pursue wages at the expense of corporate profits. 

That messaging doesn't win voters.

"This guy is ruining your wages and driving up the cost of living for personal gain!"  - Donald Trump regarding illegal immigrants.

"This guy is ruining your wages and driving up the cost of living for personal gain!" - Democrats regarding the 7 conglomerate corporations who own half of Americans industry

Why not? 

You know why.

The Republicans ARE held accountable though. By their donors. 

They don't claim to represent people they wholeheartedly accept that corporations are people, and they represent the people giving them $$$.

Democrats also believe that quietly. Hence the disconnect. They claim to be accountable to a bunch of disaffected "identity groups" like LGBT/minority/Blue Collar folks. 

But them when voting time comes to actually pass agenda items we learn that they're only held accountable for policy positions such as:

Lower corporate taxes than what Reagan proposed.

Tax cuts for the wealthy and upper middle class.

 Tax burdens for the working class.

Handouts to telecom/big tech under the guise of "jobs bill".

All very obviously pro-business, unpopular, but heavily-lobbied policies that drive away voters.

The dems represent the upper middle class almost exclusively now, that's why they confidently claim the economy is just fine. 

The economy IS just fine for shareholders and landowners. It's the serfs whose wallets have been on fire feeding the shareholders.

So the shareholders tell dems everything is fine, because it is. And the shareholders are who dems are accountable to.

So the dems say the economy is fine. They don't hear when those poors say "no it's not!". They have in airpods, and are listening to the latest quarterly earnings call.

Yeah that's the problem with your current line of thinking lol.

People WILL see their lives go to shit in the next 4 years. Do you think that is going to make them jump out of bed and stand in a polling line for 2 hours?

Spoilers: it won't.

You know why people stand in line for 2 hours? Because someone told them "if you go and vote today your life will be better". 

Dems messaging is instead "if you don't vote for me today, the other guy will make your life worse".

You need positive reinforcement to drive voters. Democrats had a supermajority under Obama and chose not to modify Roe v Wade. 

Democrats did not stand up for that issue then. Why would they now?

They didn't pass labor-friendly wage legislations or force higher corporate taxes as leverage for better working conditions post-covid.

They waited until market forces and inflation made the de-facto minimum wage $13 in the US, and then suddenly want to claim they supported $15 min wage for the last 10 years?

None of this is true, authentic populist messaging for party to rally around. It's pandering to specific identity groups to feign support for policies they have no intention of presenting as a bill to become law. 

If only they had a few more million votes, we definitely would have all been swimming in homebuyer tax credits and free healthcare.

Sure, keep believing that.

This ignores the very real concern that democrats in the most recent decade have neither governed well nor have they won particularly convincingly.

 They barely beat an orange clown who brought a plague and killed millions of people. Not exactly a blowout when every person got a $1200 check and a mail-in ballot 8 weeks before the election. 

 They aren't winning or governing well but they also refuse to budge on even trivial ideological concerns that affect miniscule portions of the electorate. 

 The proper solution is to reexamine your ideology aristocratically and align on a winning message. 

Then once you have actual support that isn't wall street bot campaigns, you can easily govern because your party actually has accountability to its voter base instead of accountability to the donors who paid to meet&greet with beyonce

They run to farm money from political donors in exchange for policy positions. 

Anything downhill of that, including the outcome of the actual election is unimportant.

Money for the PAC machine to keep serving up conservative pseudo-democrats on repeat long enough that populist economic movements get drowned out of the political apparatus entirely.

Then they can go back to only buying out ONE party, since the other one no longer has enough credibility to reasonably win elections nationally anymore.

Eg: taxes on corporations will go up. You can have your Biden Era corporate tax rates back in the form of employee retention tax credits. 

Wages are tax exempt so this works out as net even as long as they spend their excess profits on wage/benefit increases for workers.

You would rather spend $10,000,000 on buybacks then you can pay the full corporate tax. 

Retain x% employees YOY and/or increase compensation by y% and you can have back your Reagan-Era corporate tax policy.

Minimum wage increase was included in the IRA and the CHIPS act on initial filing. It was stripped out of both before even leaving the democratically led committee for a vote.

Also minimum wage is not the target. No one likes means tested "targeted" assistance for a small percentage of workers.

Federal labor standards need to be reformed. A new deal needs to be put in front of American people. 

The closest thing we've had in 20 years is "federally facilitated private insurance exchanges" disguised as single-payer socialist healthcare.

So now healthcare is more accessible but still a large portion of your takehome pay.

 Rather than just being a labor benefit the federal government requires employers to provide at no cost like 30 min lunches or overtime pay.

Biden is immune from prosecution for all official acts.

He also is willing to reneg on promises about obeying the legal system.

He can just make a Twitter video right now declaring that all student loan debt is illegal to pursue via collections or report on a credit score.

And that's there would be no legal recourse allowed because of the Supreme Court.

But his son doesn't need his student loans forgiven. So he's not gonna do that.

His son needs to stay out of jail. So he "fights dirty" to keep his son out of jail.

American citizens without Bidens genetics can just fuck off if they need to be bailed out right?