That’s terrible. And terrible it didn’t get more attention in the 1980 election.
Though knowing this stupid country, maybe it would have just helped RR win.
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He was also the one that decided that universities should start charging tuition instead of being funded by the state (why should the government pay for all those students that were protesting against it, against the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights?) Nixon picked up on that and ramped up the federal student loan system. We can all kinda see where that’s going.
Yet, in the 80s, when Reagan was president, everything I heard was that he was great, we were winning the Cold War, Reaganomics was going to make us all better off, and when I grew up I could get rich on the stock market as a wealthy yuppie.
Then in the 90s, most of what I heard was about small government, fiscal responsibility, local government, and individual freedoms (like the right to bear arms). The distant leftists, off in some faraway city, controlling the federal government, were the ones painted as responsible for things like militarizing the police, and the war on drugs and all that.
The age and experience to see through all that propaganda radicalized me. Starting with the Bushes’ Middle East rampage, but it probably wasn’t until after the Patriot Act that I started leaning left. And from there on, the more I read and learned, the clearer it became that the political views I grew up with were all a pack of lies, and it was getting worse over time - the center-right now is beyond what would’ve been thought of as loony wingnut extremist territory back then.
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To start, the emails have not been verified as authentic. They were said to have been extracted from a computer assumed — but not proven — to have belonged to the younger Biden. They were said to have been given to the Post by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who is known for making discredited claims about the Bidens.
The venue is also suspect. The pro-Trump New York Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a steady supporter of the president despite recently casting doubt on Trump’s reelection prospects. The lead reporter was a former producer for Sean Hannity, Trump’s best friend on his favorite news network, Fox News, also controlled by the Murdochs. And the story asserted the existence of a meeting absent any documentation that it actually occurred. (The Biden campaign says the tabloid never sought comment on the veracity of the claims.)
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Where’s Mr. Zip?
ALL THESE WHITE PEOPLE! Young, well-groomed, and all singing and dancing in support of the US Post Office!
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Some sobering statistics, showing that people in the heartland are starting to understand that the stock market =/= the ‘economy’:
Even before the pandemic, she said she felt she was getting very little help. Early childhood educators make about $10 an hour in Wisconsin and receive no benefits. “We don’t get a retirement account. We don’t give two hoots about what Wall Street is doing. We are not investing in that. We are trying to pay our rent, pay for food.”
A third of Wisconsin’s early childhood educators are on federal assistance “because that is how hard it is for us to make it.”
Trump’s biggest policy achievement – a $1.5tn tax cut that was billed as a “middle-class miracle” – actually increased her family’s taxes, she said. “It didn’t benefit us. That’s the reality.”
And a really shocking statistic:
Adjusted for inflation, wages in Wisconsin have gone up just 73¢ in 40 years
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Oh, no, not a President who will listen to scientists! Please, say it won’t be so! Don’t throw us into that briar patch!
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I’m old enough to remember when one of the Republican party’s main claims to fame was respecting authority.
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They got three new Supreme Court justices. That’s all the authority they need.
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The authority of a paranoid Quaker or of an ex-movie actor who used to be a lefty-Democrat?
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I voted yesterday.
Local politics always sounded like rival HOA snobs arguing over petty things like what color to paint the mailboxes or whether or not there should be benches in the park. Or should people be allowed to play music in the bandstand at the park, because it might disturb the wealthy homeowners who chose to buy property right next to a park but then didn’t like the noise. And state/national level always just seemed like one corporate-sponsored con-man against another corporate-sponsored con-man.
I thought of politics similar to history or philosophy - an interesting academic subject to talk about and even have strong opinions on, but not something that I could really affect in any way except by sharing my values and ideas and hoping they spread. If my state mostly votes the same way as me then my vote doesn’t matter, if it votes the opposite way, then my vote doesn’t matter either.
This year is different. So I went and registered and voted. I was not the only one there for the first time. It looks like we’re going to hit record levels this year.
Surprisingly, it was remarkably smooth and efficient with less than 1 minute wait time. And yeah I had to fill out the same info 4 times on forms and envelopes, but I had expected much worse. I hope they make this (allowing early and mail-in voting with registration at the time) a standard thing allowed every year. (It’s not usually allowed here.)
It has convinced me that winner-take-all first-past-the-post vote resolution is not only objectively bad regarding representation (that part I knew), but also conceals the fact that states/districts/municipalities are not consistently single party, and is therefore a form of passive voter suppression. People don’t bother to vote if they think their vote doesn’t matter.
I had thought that my area was consistently on one side, but it’s not. It’s happened to go that way consistently in recent times, which due to winner-take-all means entirely that way. But the actual proportional split is close enough that if a bunch of people like me did get out and vote, it could make a difference. So I did. And it seems like other people have come to the same conclusion.
So that’s the one positive thing that I can say about this administration - it has removed that blindfold. A lot of us are finally speaking up for the first time and we will never be silent again.
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I always enjoy the process: leafing through the voters pamphlet, googling people, and judging them.
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I ordered “JOE” campaign buttons today.
I alway thought advertising who you were going to vote for is a bit gauch but, as has been pointed out, this year is different.
I bought these for after the election, in case Joe loses:
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I received my mail-in ballot last week. I sat down over the weekend and filled it out. It was nice to be able to just look up whatever information I wanted in order to make a more informed decision. I dropped off my ballot in the box at the county election office, entirely contact-free and without involving the potentially compromised mail system. I much prefer voting this way that in-person, even in the absence of a global pandemic. I hope this continues to be available in the future to anyone who wants to use it. I have no illusions that Kansas will deliver its 6 electoral votes to the democratic candidate for the first time since 1964, but I can make a bigger impact in the Senate and House races, as well as the state and local level.
I watched most of the second(final) presidential debate tonight. It was a much more sedate affair, although not really more respectful, at least on the part of the incumbent. I think it generally benefited Biden over Trump, but I admit that I am biased.
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In case anyone doesn’t know this, you are allowed to bring in any notes you want into the polling booth. I always bring several sheets of paper, because the notes from the state bar association and state judicial association are only going to include the judges, whereas the political candidates are usually covered by the League of Women Voters, local papers, etc. It is totally legal. I know in Illinois they don’t even fuss if you read from your phone WHILE YOU’RE IN the booth itself, for those who don’t want to bring paper, but my guess is that wouldn’t play as well in Texas, for example.
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Been keeping it clenched for the last few years…
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