Those are the three branches of the U.S. government, but in this context, they mean the three institutions required to pass legislation; a bill must go through both the House and the Senate and then be signed by the President to become a law. If Democrats had taken one of those institutions, they could have slowed the Republicans' agenda..
The Pelosi interview is honestly batshit insane. She doesn't see the election as a rejection of the party, thinks the Democrats are doing well, Kamala Harris did everything right, Sanders is wrong, and then she made some backhanded comments about how Biden should have dropped out earlier. I know some of that is spin she that she has to say, but it's still deeply out of touch.
I am so God damn sick of reading articles from pundits who think they can just numbers-and-statistics away people's financial experience. Listen to this shit:
America has recovered more quickly and more completely than almost any comparable country. As The Economist put it, “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” Real wages have risen fastest for those at the bottom of the income scale. Today, inflation is at 2.4%, compared with the 9.1% peak in June 2022. The fight against rising prices has essentially been won.
But few in the electorate seem aware...
Wow, the electorate sounds like a bunch of dipshits. But just for the hell of it, let's check their source for the wages of the bottom income scale. According to the Economic Policy Institute, real wages grew 13.2% between 2019 and 2023. Now, inflation was 19.2% during that period, but "real wage," means, "wage adjusted for inflation," so I guess the author is right. The lowest income earners got a raise during the Biden years. Guess the poor are a bunch of dipshits.
But which of Biden's policies led to these increases in wages? Well, the Economic Policy Institute says:
Between 2019 and 2023, state-level minimum wage increases along with a tight labor market have translated into faster real wage growth for low-wage workers, particularly faster growth in states (and D.C.) that increased their minimum wage during this period.
So, it sounds like the wages went up because of a competitive labor market (which the Fed intentionally killed to combat inflation) and minimum wage increases at the state level, and that states that increased their minimum wages saw more of that growth than others. So, you could make an argument that Biden deserves little credit for this increase, but let's not even worry about that. Let's see look at the minimum wage by state.
The EPI has a handy Minimum Wage Tracker that color-codes states by their state minimum wage against the federal minimum wage. A quick glance shows you the states with the highest minimum wage are mostly states that went to Harris. But what's really interesting is that, of the 7 key battleground states that Harris lost, 4 of them (Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) have the same minimum wage as the federal minimum of $7.25, a starvation wage that hasn't been raised since 2009. So it's not unreasonable to assume that in more than half the key states Harris needed win saw the smallest share of that 13.2%, but did see prices increase by 19.2%.
Now, I'm not an economist, and I don't have hours to research this shit, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing a lot of nuance regarding cost of living and non-minimum wage increases in these states. But that's not the point. The point is that I've already spent more time and energy examining why people might not feel good about the economy than the sneering chud that wrote this article. And I'll end this tirade with one last quote from the EPI report he cited:
Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.
I'm really sorry to hear that. Would it help if I showed you a graph that shows the stock market is actually doing great?
I will give Biden credit for trying. I expect him to pull an Obama and pivot to centrist policy the second he got into office, but he really tried to pass all the progressive things he ran it. He was just incredibly ineffective at it and basically wound up with a pretty standard (though very large) infrastructure bill that he wanted everyone to pretend was a huge progressive victory.
...OK, I'm fairly sure I understood...most of that. Thanks for the alternative perspective. I've generally only heard the negatives from people who've had their pensions replaced by 401Ks, so I guess it's good to know what people see as the positives.
The article doesn't mention that Armed Militias were actively hunting FEMA responders in North Carolina after hurricane Helene because of right-wing conspiracy theories. It's entirely possible that the context was, "avoid people with Trump signs, they might shoot you."
Exactly. Democrats think that if they just tell people positive metrics enough times, these feelings will go away. They won't. You have to look at them and say, "You're right, things still suck for you. Things got better for a lot of people, but people like you didn't see much of that because of [X] and [Y]. Here's how we're going to fix it." Otherwise, they're going to listen to anyone who tells them their problem is real, even a racist xenophobe that blames migrants for everything.
Yeah, and here's the trick no one talks about; since the 80s, businesses (with the help of the government) started killing off pensions in favor of 401Ks. That effectively meant the middle and lower class, who are by far minority holders in the stock market, still need it to perform well, otherwise their retirement savings will be wiped out. So they've basically created a system where an entire generation is incentivized to allow the 1% to be as opportunistic and greedy as they like, because the crumbs they're going to retire on are directly tied to the success of the wealthiest Americans.
I once heard some comedian or podcaster say something to the effect of, "The media keeps telling people that the economy is doing well because of the stock market, but for most of us you could replace the words, "stock market," with, "rich people's feelings graph," and it would mean about the same thing." I think that a lot. Also, I didn't know John Stewart had a podcast for the Daily Show, thanks for the heads up on that!
Why did you bother mentioning the 19.2% inflation statistic if we're talking about real wages?
Mostly so I could point out in the second to last paragraph that if you weren't on the receiving end of that 13% wage increase (as I strongly suspect is the case for many people in GA, PA, WI and NC), then you took a 20% price increase to the face.
I think the Biden administration did its best to push through the progressive platform that he ran on, and I think that they probably don't get enough credit for that. I think Biden should have been more aggressive with Congress, especially in calling for the abolition of the filibuster early on, but I appreciate how much he did (or tried to do) through executive action. He was especially good on student loans, I honestly expected him to give up on that, but he didn't.
However, I think both Harris and Biden lost sight of the left-wing populist message that won them the White House in 2020. Harris especially pivoted towards a centrist, "economic opportunity," platform instead of a, "here's how government will help you," message. I think small business tax credits and first-time homebuyer's assistance are pretty out of touch when you're trying to win over people who can't afford groceries. She had some policies that were more targeted at the working class, but they were not the centerpiece of the campaign like these middle-class focused proposals.
That being said, yeah, most of my rage here is being directed at the author of this piece. Glad you liked, "sneering chud," I'm a little proud of that one.
Oh, haha, that's much more reassuring. I assumed it was someone affiliated in the channel, and I was like, "Uh-oh, how long before this guy launches into an antisemitic conspiracy theory about lizard people?"
Huh, I didn't think about how the 401K is transferable, but it makes sense that it's a plus; it's how everyone wishes health insurance worked. But does it matter if you move companies if your next employer offers a similar pension? Wouldn't that mean you just had two smaller monthly payments vs. one larger one? And weren't pensions protected from bankruptcy by Employee Retirement Income Security Act? I thought it was because of that Act that companies justified phasing out their pensions for 401Ks.
Sorry for all the questions. Pensions are sort of an artifact of a lost time for folks my age, but most folks that I know that are my parents' age seem to prefer the stability of their pensions to 401Ks.
I would support this if I had any faith in the Democrats to get their shit together and actually appoint someone before Trump takes over. Honestly, I wouldn't put it past them to replace her with Bill Barr in another attempt to win over never-Trumpers.
Democrats are broadly better, but they've created a lot of the conditions that are killing the working class now. Bill Clinton was the one who passed NAFTA, which was the biggest blow to manufacturing jobs in American history. Obama had a similar trade deal, the TPP, which most likely would have been equally devastating had Trump not killed it (which probably had more to do with his obsession with tearing down the achievements of the first black President than helping workers, but I doubt that mattered to the TPP's opponents).
Even when Democrats aren't directly the result of harm, their solutions are no longer the grand, ambitious plans from their New Deal glory days. Take Obama's promises to create a foreclosure prevention fund, which got whittled down to HAMP, a mostly impotent refinance scheme that seems to have been designed more for banks than borrowers (despite large Democratic majorities). I'm sure it was better than whatever the Republicans would have come up with, but I doubt that mattered to people who were two months behind on an underwater mortgage.
Biden and Harris started with a strong vision, but they couldn't get it through Congress and instead pivoted to telling people that actually, they were doing great, and the economy was good again. That will always be a losing message with people who aren't doing well. The Democrats need to double down on a progressive message that does not compromise, with bold plans like a $20 minimum wage indexed to inflation, Medicare for All, and UBI. If they keep tinkering around the margins and giving people statistics when they say they're doing poorly financially they will never be relevant again.
To some extent, yes, but it wasn't the forefront of her campaign. She talked about greedflation and had a plan for price-capping groceries, but they should have been attacking this point from 2022, not the tail end of the campaign. She was far more focused on middle-class issues and an, "opportunity economy," than the dire financial conditions of the working class.
I think you're right about Trump. I think he was a shit-show last time because he didn't expect to (or, in my opinion, want to) win, and now he has an apparatus that is set up to enable him. I'm very afraid of what a competent fascist movement looks like.
Communication is certainly a problem for Democrats; Trump was able to talk for 3 hours on Rogan, while Harris went on Call Her Daddy for less than s full episode and told a well rehearsed anecdote I'd heard twice before. They're too obsessed with legacy media and polish to sound authentic. But the platform has to come first. If they fix every problem with this campaign's communication in 2028 but run another middle-class opportunity platform with Mark Cuban, they will lose.
Huh. I'm generally wary of any group that has an Eye of Providence in their logo or uses the term, "New World Order," but that was cathartic to watch.
I mean, realistically, they'd adopt leftist talking points and then abandon them after they won, like they did in 2008.
You ever feel like you live in some sort of Murphy's Law parallel universe, where the worst possible outcome of every major event happens?
If Nintendo weren't such pricks about their IP, they would be a perfect company. They don't chase short-lived trends, they don't make live-service slop or loot boxes, their DLC is usually great (without feeling necessary), they constantly experiment and innovate, and most of their hardware is incredibly durable and reliable (joycon drift being the big exception). But if you make a fan game or host a tournament using one of their games, even if it's been out of print for 20 years, even if you're not monetizing it, they will come after you. It's the one thing I really hate about them.
Yeah, these ads almost write themselves. Show clips of right-wingers describing Biden as old and senile, then splice in clips of Trump rambling incoherently. The entire Trump campaign has been built around attacking Biden, so there will probably be a lot of tangential benefits of switching to Harris.
In my experience, 100% of executives don't actually know what their workforce does day-to-day, so it doesn't really surprise me that they think they can lay people off because they started using ChatGPT to write their emails.
The bot is crap. This is how it rates Raw Story, a clickbait factory that churns out shallow articles with dramatic, misleading headlines. It just produces slop for liberal Boomers to fill up their Facebook feed, but based on the bot's reply, you'd think it was the Gaurdian.
From where I was sitting, it seemed like Harris beat the ever-loving-shit out him. He took every piece of bait she laid out. I'm not the target though, so I hope undecideds saw what I saw.
I really don't understand why they're simultaneously arguing that they need access to copyrighted works in order to train their AI while also dropping their non-profit status. If they were at least ostensibly a non-profit, they could pretend that their work was for the betterment of humanity or whatever, but now they're basically saying, "exempt us from this law so we can maximize our earnings." ...and, honestly, our corrupt legislators wouldn't have a problem with that were it not for the fact that bigger corporations with more lobbying power will fight against it.
This article is fucking absurd. It holds up the primary as a paragon if the democratic process, even though Biden was the only candidate to have universal ballot access, and ignores the fact that two-thirds of Democratic didn't want him to run. It compares the Drop-Biden advocates to the January 6th protesters, even though they're advocating for a contested convention, which is the same process that was used until 1970. And to top it all off, it's written by Stuart Stevens, AKA Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign strategist. Why should the Democrats be taking advice from a Republican strategist, especially one that's already botched a presidential campaign?
I mean, leaving .world is a pretty fair response. That community is full of insufferable idiots, but an admin overrode their moderating decisions, and then the admin team made up rules to retroactively justify their decision. That's pretty egregious.
Really sad that the last time we hear Kevin Conroy as Batman is gonna be in this train wreck.
I think you mean, "Drag queens caught partying with GOP candidate who called them pedophiles."
Oh, that's easy; we don't! Every four years, the fabric of our society frays and tears a little more, while our politicians either exploit our divisions or attempt to repair them without making any changes to the material conditions or systemic problems that create these fractures, because fixing these underlying issues would upset the handful of billionaires that actually control our government! But there's a new Fast & Furious movie every two or three years, so it balances out.
Because conservatism is no longer a set of political beliefs. In the modern conservative movement (basically starting in the 80s, liberals and conservatives were much different before that) conservatives had social beliefs, like preserving cultural norms, promoting religion, and maintaining the nuclear family, as well as fiscal beliefs, like limited government, individual liberty, fiscal responsibility, free markets, and a whole lot of other bullshit that basically boiled down to, "we don't want to pay taxes."
Now, conservatism is really only about establishing an in-group and othering their opponents. Oppositions to trans rights may seem like an attempt to preserve cultural norms, but it's real goal is to create outrage and panic over trans, "groomers." Objections go CRT and DEI serve a similar role in othering people of color. "Wokeness," is just a meaningless catch-all for, "enemies." Similarly, fiscal policy is meaningless, and can be picked up and discarded whenever convenient; corporations can be deregulated and given tax breaks in service of the free market, but subsidized or bailed out whenever needed.
This is because modern conservatism isn't a political ideology, it's a fascist movement. I mean that literally, and while the meaning fascism is notoriously hard to pin down, I use Umberto Eco's 14 properties of fascism. And, to bring this back around to your original question, fascists hate liberals because hating a group is very important to a fascist movement. The modern conservative hate for liberals is especially clear in Eco's 4th, 5th, and 7th properties of fascism (disagreement as treason, fear of differences, and obsession with plots, respectively).
So, tl;dr: the one-sided hate that conservatives have for liberals is because conservatism is no longer a coherent political ideology, it's a fascist movement.
On a similar note, I get irate when people call the Business Plot a conspiracy theory. It's just a conspiracy. We know it happened.
I'm on the left, but I'm far from a communist, much less an authoritarian one, and I 100% use lib or liberal as an insult. I think to most people younger than 50, Liberal refers to a certain type of Democratic voter. They'll hang a BLM sign in their window but support NIMBY policies that keep people of color out of their neighborhoods. They'll talk a good game about labor rights and unions, but still go to Starbucks and throw a shit-fit if their order is wrong. They cared very deeply about Iraq and Guantanamo when Bush was President, but stopped bringing it up once Obama was in office.
The Third Way Democrats of the 90s basically turned American Liberals into Neo-Liberals. I will still support them when I have to, since they hold all the levers of power over the only ostensibly progressive party in America, and not siding with them at this point basically ensures the rise of fascism, but I have no love for Liberals.
Ah, well, you know those Trump supporters, always being swayed by facts and evidence.
Man, I hope this changes some minds, but it might be too little too late. She's had a lot of opportunities to turn things around with the Arab community, and she's flat out ignored all of them. I'm really worried this will be her version of Hillary's, "I don't need to campaign in the Rust Belt," decision.
We need to worry about motivation, not polls. Very few people will change their minds about the candidates, but many of them will change their minds about voting. Some percentage of likely voters will always stay home. That percentage is going to be much lower for people whose candidate survived an assassination attempt.
God, we're so fucked. SCOTUS is turning the Presidency into an autocracy, Biden refusing to get out of the way for a capable candidate...that judge sentencing Trump to jail time in the Stormy Daniels case is basically the only thing that can save us from a right-wing theocracy at this point.
Going to try to give you a clear, concise summary, since a lot of these answers are either too specific or blatantly unhelpful.
First, alcohol has been used by humans since before recorded history. It was probably the first drug we ever used, and barley was even used as a currency in ancient Mesopotamia. Alcohol is ingrained in almost every human society, and banning it is always difficult. The United States actually made alcohol illegal between 1920 and 1933, and it was an unmitigated disaster.
Second, Marijuana wasn't always illegal in the United States. To give you a very oversimplified summary, the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst ran a racist, xenophobic campaign to vilify Marijuana in the early '30s. He saw hemp crops as a threat to his holdings in the lumber and paper industry, so he had his newspapers run exaggerated or false stories about crime and violence related to Marijuana use, usually center around Mexicans or black Americans. The movie Reefer Madness is a great example of this kind of propaganda. Marijuana was eventually made illegal in 1937, and as the War on Drugs ramped up over the decades, enforcement and penalties for Marijuana crimes only got worse.
Anyway, there's a ton more that could be said about Prohibition, pre-Hurst Marijuana use, and the War on Drugs, but those are the broad strokes. Hope that helps.
Yup. Call your Senators and tell them you have no faith in the party leadership, and that Chuck Shcumer cannot continue as Senate Minority Leader. If they're up for reelection in the next two years, tell them you're happy to support a primary challenger if it's the only way to get change.