Because the unite the right march was explicitly about white supremacism? You think there were some “very fine people” marching around and chanting, “Jews will not replace us”?
Spoiler: there weren’t.
I’ve never seen footage of a group of Nazis marching around and thought, “I bet some of those dudes are actually pretty alright.” That’s also not something I want my presidents thinking.
Because any good people in the group would’ve noticed the swastika flags and decided to do something else that evening or ideally joined the counter protests.
I’ve been a counterprotestor before, you generally know who’s on your side and what it looks like on your walk there. You have time to see who’s with you.
It wasn’t like it was a handful of Nazis and a lot of people who just wanted lower taxes. It was a night that culminated in a large mass of men chanting that Jews will not replace them as they carried torches and many carried swastika flags. There may have been bad people on both sides, but only one side had good people, the other had too many Nazis to have any good people.
I don’t see how that justifies misquoting a person. If you’re going to criticize someone for what they said then for the very least criticize them for what they actually said rather than editorializing it and then critiquing that misrepresentation.
In their first attempt, the perpetrators painted a mural of the roadway on a wall, but Ms. Butler continued her commute through the painting, foiling their plan.
Just the other day I was on this stupid website getting attacked because I dared to say that NYT was not a particularly reliable outlet, and that they should be taken with extreme skepticism if they use anonymous sources.
I was told five months ago by a user here when debunking the NYT’s fake rape article that “I should learn a thing a thing or two about media literacy”. Because “the New York Times is highly reputable! Unlike those fake news outlets like Mondoweiss and TheGrayzone!”
The rape stories were absolutely massive in manufacturing consent for israels Genocide. Israel denied a UN forensic investigation into their fake rape accusations. We now know that those were works of fiction, mostly from ZAKA which made up the 40 beheaded babies. But then right when support for israels Genocide hit a low, Jeffrey Gettleman teamed up with two israeli ex IDF soldiers to write a massive propaganda piece.
Almost every other major Western owned supposedly credible propaganda outlet copy pasted it despite glaring problems being pointed out shortly after its release. Reuters The Guardian, Wapo, You name it and they were manufacturing consent for Genocide. There was no evidence anywhere, but it didn’t matter. Israel got enough public support to start massacring Palestinians again.
At the center of Israel’s information warfare campaign is a tactical mission to dehumanize Palestinians and to flood the public discourse with a stream of false, unsubstantiated, and unverifiable allegations.
And putting babies in ovens, something that the Zionists keep accusing Palestinians of doing over and over and over again! (You might have heard this claim now but they have been saying the same thing for decades - repeat a lie often enough and it becomes truth).
I couldn’t find the baby in the oven one, but it’s out there somewhere if you want even worse. It did happen during Zionist raids on Palestinian villages.
See this is why I actually hate that people are pushing that bullshit ground news site so hard.
People will become reliant on what it tells them about a publication which does not mean an accurate representation. But then they can parade around bragging they know what the true middle is and are so enlightened.
Plus they take a subscription fee however they have no journalists and don’t pay back to the publications they scrape from, but instead let you follow a link to their site at least to get some revenue.
The run a news link aggregator with a “bias” catcher on it that’s pre-determined by tags for an algorithm to parse. It’s just for libertarians to feel like they are winning against the news I swear.
I knew of a girl when I was in high school. She was a senior and I was a sophomore. Word began rushing through the school that she (head cheerleader) was pregnant by the quarterback on the football team. He came from a super wealthy family, and honestly we all expected an immediate marriage and a ‘premature’ baby.
What happened instead was an announcement that she had died during emergency surgery and let’s all pray. She had had a (what we called) backstreet abortion and hemorrhaged.
We all knew how to access an illegal abortion, we knew the risks, and this girl just was the unlucky one.
She was super smart, in the Latin club, debate, 4.0, just destined for success. And instead she died.
This was in 1969, and I cannot believe we as a nation are willing to go back over 2 decades in women’s healthcare.
“They” wouldn’t be letting anything go unless he won a fight.
But that also depends on how you define “fight”, and those who oppose Trump have really struggled with that in trying to defeat him.
Look: fascism is soooo effective in undermining functional democracy because it, like, breaks democracy. Like, if democracy were a rules and bureaucracy machine that did good government (ideally), fascism works by identifying and exploiting its weak points in a systematic fashion. Mass media, systemic bureaucratics, advanced administration, logistics— all of this is ripe for disruption and takeover. And, unlike democracy, which functions on strict rules and ethics and is, thusly, slow to respond to attacks, fasism (esp neo- and ur-fascism) attacks from the outside at weak points rapidly with great agility, following few rules that encumber it.
Yes, he has appealed his gag order in multiple cases on multiple occasions, because as you know he has 91 criminal charges pending and also several civil cases.
I’m sorry, social media is the problem? It’s a part of the problem sure but not THE problem. We just want to afford rent and feed our families. It’s really not a big ask.
Surely it’s not that our planet is dying, we can’t afford shit like a roof over our heads / food / kids / health coverage, our rights are dropping like flies, christofascism is fucking rampant, and the Nazis are back…
No, it’s social media! Surely that’s what’s getting everyone all fuckered up.
Perhaps it’s just so much easier these days to find out about those problems on social media.
Before social media became popular, people still complained about cost of living (not sure how it compares to the 2010s, since post-pandemic is probably worse). Health coverage has always been tough in North America. At least in Canada, we haven’t been losing rights (…yet?), and we’ve been gaining some (e.g. protections for minorities under the law). Christofascism and Nazis have been around for a while.
But with social media…
We become more aware of the rights and health coverage we’re losing, even if they don’t affect us directly (a good thing, but depressing)
We hear more about cost-of-living regardless of how it impacts us, which is more depressing. As well, we realize it’s a problem of society, not of our local stores necessarily (another good but depressing thing)
We see more of the Nazis, who generally stayed hidden before they had the veil of anonymity on social media (a bad thing)
The Nazis can more easily organize, and (inter)nation-wide, too (a very bad thing)
Not to mention how addictive social media is.
And with the algorithms, you could end up with smart people reading about the problems of the world, and then to keep them engaged, the social media platforms just feed them a bunch of depressing stuff to doomscroll through. Then you’ve got another depressed person.
It could be argued that their depression was inevitable given the state of the world, but social media can make it so much faster and easier to get sucked into “doomerism”…and harder to get out.
Cost of living is so much worse now than in 2010s. Housing and food prices have doubled, but salaries have not doubled in 10 years. I couldn’t come close to affording now the house I bought in 2012. Health care costs are actually rising lower than inflation, as is total healthcare spending. Christofascists and Nazis have been around forever, but in the early to mid 2010s we didn’t have one as President of the US who actively encouraged them to come of hiding and boldly advertise their hatred.
Social Media and 24 hours news channels bring to light the issues facing us in the world today, but people wouldn’t feel so bad if they felt a comfortable future was at least attainable. “Yeah, the world might suck but at least I should be able to afford a moderately nice house and car once I’ve paid my dues at work in 10 years.” Versus, “shit, it sucks now and will probably suck even more in 10 years.”
Yeah, that’s what I was saying. Everything went crazy during the pandemic and never got close to recovering.
I’ve seen the argument made that Trump became president in a big part due to social media. He grew his cult following thanks to Twitter while Obama was president. So the problems caused by Trump could also be tied back to social media.
[Cost of] Everything went crazy during the pandemic and never got close to recovering.
It continues to piss me off that the pandemic effectively let Trump off the hook for the economy he had already fucked up with his 2017 tax handout to the rich and 2018 trade war with China. He had already been badgering the Fed to lower interest rates to stave off a recession , before COVID showed up. In fact, the erosion of the interest rate in 2019, and therefore the capacity for quantitative easing, is yet another way Trump’s incompetent and vindictive policies made the pandemic even worse than it would’ve been otherwise.
Wouldn’t doubt that one bit. I live in Canada, and while the Conservative party is often presented as “good for the economy”, objectively, they’re no better than the Liberals here.
the Conservative party is often presented as “good for the economy”, objectively, they’re no better than the Liberals here.
I don’t know about Canada (I assume it’s the same), but here in the US the conservative is objectively worse for the economy every damn time. The Republicans have been running a “two Santa Clauses” con for decades.
Federally, the Conservatives are worse for the economy than the Liberals. The NDP (the left wing party) has never held office at the federal level.
Provincially (“state”-level), the NDP are the best, and the Liberals are worse than the Conservatives…but it does get muddied up a bit because in one province, the Liberals in name are basically the Conservatives, and the NDP fill the Liberal niche. Or something. I’m not from that province.
I do know that our Conservatives love starving the beast, and by the time the Liberals (or NDP) get back in power, there is a LOT of shit to clean up.
For example, our Conservative-run province spent millions of dollars to suppress and freeze nurse wages leading to a shortage of nurses. While spending those millions to suppress their wages, the solution to the nursing shortage has been to pay nursing agencies more than 3x the cost per nurse (middleman needs their cut!).
So we are paying money to pay nurses less, while simultaneously paying more for nurses.
It was found by the courts to be illegal to suppress the wages, and the government was ordered to back pay nurses (plus a bunch of other public sector workers). The government appealed that decision multiple times (paying court fees and such all the while), and eventually lost and had to pay out billions in backwages.
But we’re still paying extra for the nursing agencies!
The Russians will throw someone out the window or poison them in a very obvious way, the Americans will put two in their head and have it ruled a suicide.
My brother in Freedom Jesus, faking a murder to look like suicide is as American as apple pie!
Hell the most notorious pedophile in history, who definitely had video of the world’s richest men committing statutory rape and assault, killed himself in one of the most secure locations anyone could imagine, surrounded by guards and video cameras! And nobody saw a thing! HA! And we’re all like “well i guess that sordid chapter is over” hahahaha. Oh man. It literally works every. single. time.
I’m honestly waiting for the lawyers to argue that all of his federal court cases have to wait until after the election to see whether or not he has the power to cancel the trials.
and I’m waiting for this complete farce of a “justice” system that allows a literal traitor to walk free for years continue to utterly fuck up its ONE JOB.
Out of a lot of jackasses in the world, Jon Stewart continues to be clear-headed unmitigated good.
Yes, that means I have forgiven him for using trans people as the butt of his jokes for a long time, and I’m hoping he’s had enough growth to understand why those were bad. Also, to be fair, it’s been quite a while since he has done a joke like that. And if he turns on a dime and makes some uncouth remarks about trans folks, he’ll be in shit-city with me, and I’ll take back the good things I said about him. Pretty sure he won’t tho.
I did link that at the end, after a quick Google. I don’t have AppleTV and never saw The Problem with Jon Stewart, so I was unaware of this, but the fact that he defended Chappelle at first was a bad look and to my knowledge he hasn’t amended his statement on Chappelle’s defense.
Stewart didn't defend Chapelle, Stewart opposed censorship and penalties with one reason being Stewart being called antisemitic for criticizing how Israel treats Palestinians. Note this is from 2022 and I'm pretty sure Stewart still thinks Israel's actions are terrible.
During his appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, Stewart pushed back on the belief that Chappelle “normalized antisemitism” with his 15-minute commentary that involved Kanye West’s and Kyrie Irving’s recent scandals. “I don’t know if you’ve been on comment sections on most news articles, but it’s pretty fucking normal. As you know, it’s incredibly normal,” Stewart began. “But the one thing I will say is, I don’t believe that censorship and penalties are the way to end antisemitism or to not gain understanding. I don’t believe in that, and I think it’s the wrong way for us to approach it.”
Stewart, who was present at the Los Angeles comedy event where Chappelle was attacked onstage after his set in May, agreed with the comic that “it shouldn’t be this hard to talk about things,” adding, “I’m called antisemitic because I’m against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. I’m called other things from other people based on other opinions that I have…Whether it be comedy or discussion or anything else, if we don’t have the wherewithal to meet each other with what’s reality, then how do we move forward?… If we all just shut it down, then we retreat to our little corners of misinformation and it metastasizes. And the whole point of all this is to not let it metastasize and to get it out in the air and talk about it.”
Chappelle has been under fire since the release of “The Closer” earlier this month, in which he declared himself to be a “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” (TERF).
“They canceled JK Rowling — my God. Effectually, she said gender was fact, the trans community got mad as s–t, they started calling her a TERF … I’m Team TERF,” Chappelle quipped in the stand-up special.
Stewart defended Chappelle over the anti-trans jokes he made in The Closer.
Speaking with TMZ, he described Chappelle as “warm,” “wise” and “decent.”
“Look, if this spurs a conversation where people get more on the same page in terms of understanding, that’d be great, but I know his intention is never hurtful — like, he’s just not that kind of person,” Stewart said.
“And if it is [hurtful], it’s certainly unintentional … He’s really a good man.”
Stewart and Chappelle have been friends for years, and the pair performed together in Ireland back in 2018.
Stewart specifically defended Chappelle after Chappelle referred to himself as a TERF on his standup special.
Yeah it would mean a lot to me if Jon Stewart could just say “Okay, yeah, Chappelle is officially being hurtful on purpose.”
Because he fucking is. Guy basically thinks trans people should have to suffer the indignities black people did to get respect… because he doesn’t realize they fucking did already. But beyond whether they did or not already, does Chappelle really want to fucking play Oppression Olympics? Fuck me man, I thought we all deserved respect because of human rights, not because we were supposed to suffer under abuse first. That’s some real Boomer shit, “It was bad for me, so I better see it being bad for you before I respect you.”
Chapelle has completely shit the bed over thr last decade by switching from someone who had clever takes on racial issues with some shitty takes on other subjects to leaning entirely into spewing hate while crying about nonexistent cancel culture.
Yes, Chapelle wants to play oppression Olympics while excusing his hot takes because he had 'one trans friend'. I forced myself to watch most of his Closer special to see if it was as bad as people claimed and it was, so from here on out I will just assume the worst things said about him are probably true.
Isn’t it amazing that the people that cry about this the most fill stadiums for their shows? Must be fucking terrible to be “cancelled” and rolling in fucking money.
The only people that have actually been canceled by 'cancel culture' are sex offenders like Bill Cosby and Kevin Spacey. Before that people like Harvey Weinstein was canceling women for not giving him blowjobs.
Yeah, anyone who tries to milk the myth of cancel culture for publicity is a piece of shit.
I would just like to add that I think the right more aggressively pursues the parody of “cancel culture” that they claim exists on the left. They canceled the Dixie Chicks who were nearing the height of their career and said something bad about Bush and the war in Iraq and were put out to pasture. Same thing with Sinead O’Connor and her ripping up a picture of the pope…there are dozens of examples…dozens! arrested_development_dozens.gif
It’s the same thing they do with a lot of things. For instance they’ll claim the left is using “identity politics” while running on “keep black people out of the suburbs” and “keep gay people out of wedlock” as a platform.
I personally believe the idea is to associate effective tools and mechanisms with “overreach by the left” so people on the left stop using them and they can continue to be used and abused purely for right-wing causes without critique.
I mean look at how they’ll constantly associate “virtue signaling” with the left while they’re sending around Christmas cards with the whole family smiling and holding rifles.
I’m less concerned about trans jokes specifically, but I worry that Jon Stewart of now won’t be able to live up to our memories of him during the W years. Will be be sufficiently progressive for modern left viewers, or is he going to be a Bill Maher “center left” type? Will he be is sharp and cutting as he was, and be able to translate that to a world that is so more polarized and down the rabbit hole with conspiracy theories and all that junk?
Basically I’m afraid this is Michael Jordan coming out of retirement to play for the Washington Wizards.
Maybe my concerns are not well placed, I didn’t catch his newer show because I don’t feel like subscribing to Apple TV, so I don’t know where he’s at nowadays. I’m cautiously optimistic, but I’m fully prepared to be let down.
"Then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ 44 "They also will answer, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ 45 "He will reply, `I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ 46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
-Some Socialist Groomer Theater Kid
I’d bet any amount of money that most of not all of this bill’s co-sponsors profess (at least surrounding election time) to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and a striving to be more Christlike. And all of them seemingly impervious to cognitive dissonance.
I'm an atheist who believes strongly in separation of church and state, but I would dearly love for this to be appended to the law as an amendment. The place is already a theocratic nuthouse so might as well use that to do some good for a change.
I would love to hear “listen Jack, we want to get stuff done but the Republicans are blocking everything we try to pass. Give me a strong majority in the house and senate and we will pass x, y, and z. If the supreme court blocks us, we’ll look at ways we can balance the court.”
I just want to hear a plan and what we need to do to make that plan happen. You need 60 senate votes to pass universal healthcare? Say “give me 60 senate votes and we’ll pass universal healthcare”
Because it’s all tiny changes that don’t effectively help people. No big structural changes cause the billionaires managed to put a stop to that with their agents in the Senate. And so the average citizen is left to blame the person they see as the cause of it all, cause he’s the big boss obviously.
yeah in particular obama was just getting the economy going at the end of his term by slowly raising interest rates and it was trump that railed for lower interest rates to overheat the economy just before covid and is the main reason rates had to be raised at break neck pace under biden. Democrats are burdened with stabilizing the situations that republicans have intentionally destabilized. Like right now they will only allow 2 month budget extensions keeping us on the edge of shutdown constantly. That is no way to run a government.
The Democrats always have a scapegoat to explain why they just couldn’t get [insert leftist goal] done.
It’s always a lie, or rather, it’s not the truth. The Democrats are neoliberals, and there will always be that one bad democrat who prevented [insert leftist goal], because they don’t want to, but benefit from their voters believing they do.
You can keep your tinfoil hat on but the truth is that Democrats are on average a whole fuck of a lot better. Lieberman was never the type of Democrat you’re thinking of. He’s now trying to get Manchin to run under the No Labels pack so Trump can be king and we can truly see what climate change looks like if we do nothing at all to curb its effects.
I’ll just be over here telling you all “told you so” when everything you criticize Biden of becomes 10x worse under a true monster like Trump
What you’re saying has nothing to do with what I’m saying.
Yes, the Democrats are better then Trump. How does that invalidate what I said?
You can vote for them, and that might make sense. Just do it with your eyes open, because believing in them for anything other then “not being Trump” is a fools errand.
Are you seriously saying that you’d rather have shit on your plate than three day old diarrhea covered with mold spots?
Everyone knows the Shit-on-a-Plate party really seriously wants universal healthcare, if only their wasn’t that one outlier member who ruined it for everyone.
The only thing I can’t figure out is how come there’s always an outlier or two that prevent the good policies from being enacted?
It’s really weird, one gets voted out, but another one always takes their place…it’s a real mystery.
But Biden can’t do that on his own. He needs Congress, which won’t allow that. The Senate may have a blue majority, but many of those Democrats are too conservative to pass meaningful legislation to address the issues you’re pointing at.
The U.S. won’t do anything meaningful until the Democrats have an overwhelming advantage and won’t need to compromise with domestic terrorist sympathizers and Christian nationalists… and of course the Liebermans, Sinemas, Testers, and Manchins of the Senate
The IRA is a big structural change that puts us on a path where we might actually escape global armageddon. It doesn't get us there, but it puts us on the path and buys us just a little bit of time. And its entire philosophical approach builds constituencies massively, which means the longer it exists, the more it will go into a virtuous cycle. So long as Trump doesn't get in next cycle and dismantle it from within, it will be incredibly sticky.
It's almost certainly the most important bill passed in any of our lifetimes. Not just climate-wise, but legislation-wise. It's very technical and kind of boring, which makes it not as exciting, but it's still absolutely huge.
I don't give a fuck if people hate Biden for whatever reasons they have. But at least this one piece of major progress, somehow passed through an uncontrolled congress, must not be denied. If we deny it, that's probably it for our civilization. If we let the achievement be ignored, climate policy will probably be over and the ecosystem will be allowed to die. Any other issue is petty next to total collapse of the global climate and if passing this bill was ALL he could achieve -- even ignoring some of the other stuff like filling departments with the most diverse crowd ever in American history -- it would still have been a good term for a president. Better-liked presidents have achieved less.
Well thats two different things and a very broad definition. I, for example, am american and pay my taxes. Im just as much a collaborator therefore unless I stop paying my taxes or supporting the US, no? Now granted I don't want to support genocide but there are some rather severe consequences for me if I don't pay my taxes. And is that enough. I mean we are talking genocide. Should I actively fight? That would involve violence on my part. Would I be slipping into being just as bad as the genociders? The idea of pinning the israeli things on him is a step to far for me.
He did not go around congress he basically expedited the sales. This really goes back to 911. Many countries pushed back on us for iraq/afghanistan but still did the show of support. Heck they sent their own troops. He could have not done it but it would have repercussions outside of our relationship with Israel. All the same. We paid for the production of the weapons with our taxes. To me railing that biden is a genocide collaborator but then ignore the direct ways they support the genocide, like financially with taxes. Well its being a hypocrite. My support is fine because you know living my nice life is important but his support because of the complex decision making around global relationships in regards to responsibility of his position. Well thats not. Oh and lets ignore that its typical of what presidents and global leaders have done in these situations.
So you’re ignoring the vote yesterday when 72/100 senators voted to continue supporting the war? How is that bypassing Congress when Congress approved it. And I assume you think Trump will do a better job? Well maybe you’ll get what you’re wishing for and we’ll end up in a Christian dictatorship. I’m sure that’ll be soooooooo much better than what we have now.
Unfortunately our choices are Biden and Trump.
Biden is not perfect, but when compared to Trump I sure do love him. When compared to Obama or Carter? Not as much.
But we don’t get a 3rd choice in America, we get to pick whether we like Biden or Trump more, and if you don’t like Biden enough to not vote for him, you better fucking love Trump.
Is it fair that those are our choices? No.
But life isn’t fair, so you better figure out which one you hate more.
That’s irrelevant to the discussion! We were talking about why people don’t love Biden, not about voting.
You don’t have to love Biden to vote for him, and as a corollary, you don’t have to love Trump to not vote for Biden. I completely understand people who hate Biden and still choose to vote for him. They don’t believe there’s another choice and I know why they think that way. I am not commenting on how people should vote.
What I don’t understand are the freaks that love Biden. What the fuck?
Ah right, good ole "I didn't get my hands dirty, therefore I'm not culpable"
He is playing defense for the current Israeli regime, helping keep it propped up not just through aid and arms, but through diplomatic pressures as well. He's not solely responsible for Netenyahu and his cronies actions... but that doesn't mean his hands are completely clean, either.
If this works, making overdraft fees $3 is fucking huge.
Some points, directly from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:
• Among households that frequently incurred overdraft/NSF fees, 81% reported difficulty paying a bill at least once in the past year.
• Among consumers in households charged an overdraft fee in the past year, 43% were surprised by their most recent account overdraft, 35% thought it was possible, and only 22% expected it. Consumers who overdraft infrequently are more likely to be surprised by a fee
• While just 10% of households with over $175,000 in income were charged an overdraft or an NSF fee in the previous year, the share is three times higher (34%) among households making less than $65,000.
Perhaps if you aren’t interested in reading analysis by others you might want to consider why your response is a multi paragraph answer justifying why a good news headline is actually bad and confirms your priors that Biden and Democrats are bad. I think this comment is a pretty perfect example of bad faith arguments.
That’s the media fueling their usual bull. Bernie put up a vote on the issue and 72 out of 100 said ‘Yes’ to allowing Israel to keep their genocide going. It’s crazy
I don't love him. I think he's taking half measures mostly as an attempt to maintain an economic status quo while pushing for a little bit of social justice (as a treat). It's a move in a positive direction... but mostly because it's the best way to be in opposition of the other side.
I'll still vote for him, because that's the only two choices we're given for the presidential election. I'll still push for better, and vote more for who I think will actually make a difference at lower levels (state/local races), but I literally can't vote for who I "love" because it just won't make any difference.
This is actually a good example: the very concept of overdraft fees is obviously a tax on poverty that should be made illegal as soon as possible.
Instead, Biden (who’s been known to lie a lot even by politician standards) wants to lower them. In a year. If he’s re-elected.
Even his aspirational campaign promises are a compromise between the obvious only just course of action and retaining the status quo that enriches his owner donors.
Well there has already been things like this that are done in his current term like no surprise billing and capping student loan amounts to the initial principle. I like that he keeps putting out new things rather than waiting for after the election. We have had to much of this, oh its an election year so lets hold off on things which then take time to get going. At least if he does get re-elected it can go into place quickly rather than starting at square one.
Leading this with - I will vote, and I will vote for democrats if it’s what’s needed.
But the reason I view the (objectively good) things that he’s doing with a grain of salt is that it feels like he’s only doing them because of an impending election.
Why - when the democrats had control of all 3 branches of government in 2020 and 2021 did they not do anything that mattered?
They could have unpacked the courts by expanding them. They could have ensured abortion rights. They could have fixed the voting rights act (or implemented something that addresses gerrymandering, racial or otherwise). They could have overturned Medicare Part D. They could have fixed the compromises made when the ACA was written. They could have fixed the Citizens United decision. They could have amended the TCJA so that the tax cuts for the wealthy sunset alongside with the tax cuts for the poor (or even flipped it, so the tax cuts for the poor are made permanent, and the tax cuts for the wealthy sunset, unlike how it was written)!
They could have done so very, very much. But instead they wrung their hands about Manchin and Sinema, claiming that’s why they were a ‘do-nothing’ congress, and waited to lose the house so they could claim gridlock and return to merely being an alternative to republicans.
But even the core of that justification is dumb. They could have supported candidates prior to 2020 that weren’t just republicans running on the democrat ballot.
The issue I think people have with Biden is not that he himself is a bad guy (although he did contribute majorly to the prison-industrial system in the U.S., and championed preventing student loan discharge through bankruptcy when he was a senator).
It’s that he’s the figurehead of a political party that is more interested in gaming the system than they are in leading the people it is supposed to represent. The only real difference between democrats and republicans in that regard is that republicans deliver on their (often wildly unpopular) policies, and their base respects them for it, even if it means they will die homeless in a polluted gutter.
The Democratic Party, and by extension, Joe Biden, do not lead, and thusly do not earn respect. Their moves are only the smallest incremental moves, and that does not work at a time when the world and society is redefining itself several times within each generation.
I totally get that and I do not like the situation, but when the choice is with or without lube im not going to forego the lube in protest of the situation.
I’m there, too. It’s just such a gross compromise.
The crux of the issue is probably structural. If you only get two choices and both are chasing the same sources of money in a system that heavily favors a very small set of investors, then, well… any effort to get votes by distinguishing themselves is ultimately performative.
In the end, we all wind up getting served shit sandwiches, but one party tells us they don’t want to feed them to us, and the other party has convinced their voters that shit sandwiches are delicious, or at least more offensive to ‘them’ than they are to ‘us.’
Its just getting worse to. Citizens united really bufu'd our system massively. Republicans may have been usually the worse option but there were individuals who it made sense to vote for. But decade by decade that just disapeared. By 2000 or so (citizens united) it was such that could never vote for one and since then its become literally life and death. Its become a bit like modern media. Something not being totally crappy or massively screwed up is reason to praise.
Bernie is in Biden’s back pocket, he’s incredibly influential to the presidency right now. Bernie has helped Biden come up with nearly every progressive policy he’s rolled out. This statement actually will mean something.
He played an important part in pressuring rail companies to give workers more sick time and remove the advanced notice clause, the Inflation Reduction Act, Build Back Better, the infrastructure bill, and several executive orders.
Because they’re just rich people. When are people going to realize they’re all just rich people. None of them will ever do anything for you. We can either eat them or die.
What do you think? Are they bitter from a life of uselessness and moral squalor or tender from never working on anything of value, soft like a baby lamb kept out of the light? I think about it sometimes at night when my tum-tum rumbles
Your comment seems detached from reality, Biden appointed people to the national labor board and they changed the rules so that when companies try to do their anti-union fuckery, unions get automatically implemented:
Neither of these people, nor the dozens of lawmakers like them, support unions in a real way. They care about money first and appearance of support to their constituents second. Pelosi keeps getting reelected because she’s the biggest money maker for the DNC.
Pelosi has not been good for poor people or LGBT. We live in a capitalist society and the damage she’s done to the rights of everybody who works for a living far outpaces any good she has done. She’s a corrupt piece of shit.
You can’t cherry pick Biden’s appointments and claim worker support. Biden also appointed Janet Yellen and reappointed Jerome Powell who are both in an outright war with the working class. Fuck Joe Biden.
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