With the way these politicians prepare for debates, I can't imagine that there are too many questions that are ever asked that catch them off guard. Even if there is a tough question, they all know how to answer the questions they want to answer, even if it's not the question asked.
Heh, it was a question about what Clinton would do as president to help the people of Flint.
The debate took place in... wait for it... Flint, Michigan.
I'm sure Clinton would have been caught completely unprepared had her campaign been not warned ahead of time!
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Quote
Republican state Rep. Chad Hays said in a statement. “Ego, money and power eclipse the desire of well-meaning and honest public servants, and blame, press conferences and talking points have replaced governing. Sadly, voices of moderation and reason are increasingly elbowed out by well-financed fringe elements.”
End Quote
Sounds like the majority of the US and elsewhere. The extremes on both sides are drowning out the moderate majority
US intelligence officials are trying to prepare President Trump for his high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday by feeding him information the only way they know how: in bite-size 140-character pieces.
It’s a well-reported fact that Trump doesn’t read his daily briefings and prefers “killer graphics” like pictures, videos, and charts, or in-person briefings. Trump aides have come up with some creative ways to keep the president focused — such as mentioning his name as frequently as possible in memos — but this latest strategy might be their most desperate one yet.
According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, Trump aides have prepared “a list of tweet-length sentences that summarize the main points Trump could bring up with Putin” in the hopes that the president absorbs even a little of what he needs to know before sitting down with the canny, and sure to be well-prepared, Russian leader.
Threatening to release personal info about a private citizen because you don't like their content is doxing, and it's despicable regardless of whether you find their content offensive. Doxing can completely ruin people's lives, ruined relationships, job loss, etc.. CNN 'reserving the right' to release his info if he posts anything that ruffles their feathers is pretty low. Content is subjective. The meme was harmless (not that it even matters). They're a huge corporation going after a reddit user, and that's just making them look like even more of a joke.
Has Randy Bryce been mentioned here yet? He's an ironworker who plans to run against Paul Ryan. He's getting some serious traction, raising 430k in less than two weeks as a grass roots candidate. I'm sure the Republicans will throw everything they have against him, but guys like this will help the Dems repair their reputation as the party of the working man.
Just exactly what "working class" are you talking about? A massive percentage of the US work force is now working in fields like retail/hospitality or with companies like Uber and Lyft. Far gone are the days where "working class" was majority factory workers/miners.
Working class people are those people scraping by on 7.25/hour because we can't possibly imagine raising the minimum wage. Working class people are those who rely on Medicaid to help cover their healthcare needs because their employers don't pay enough, nor give them enough hours to qualify for benefits. Working class people making under $50k voted for Clinton. Millions of "working class" people live in the "elite cities" where Clinton was overwhelmingly the winner. You're confusing midwest/rural types as "working class," because "working class" includes a huge array of people in cities as well.
Republicans refuse to raise the minimum wage, and in many states they prevent even smaller communities from raising it. They want to cut Medicaid. They want to cut any and all social safety net services that protect the working class and keep them from becoming destitute. Republicans are absolutely not the party of the "working class," they're the party of the people who hate abortion and gays and immigrants and science and education and love guns and coal.
First of all, you have millions of people in the US with college degrees who are working jobs that barely cover the bills, especially in bigger cities. These are people who have plenty of economic instability, and yet they still overwhelmingly voted Democrat. Working class includes all those people working in urban and suburban shopping centers. It includes Damien the Starbucks barista in downtown Manhattan just as much as it includes Joe the Walmart employee from rural West Virginia. The difference is that the Starbucks employee in NYC sees various cultures and embraces the diversity of it. The Walmart employee wants to go back to the days where white men ran everything and women knew their place and gays were in the closet. Look up the stats--economic insecurity wasn't the leading factor that led Trump voters. Fear of change and diversity was. "Working class" is just a euphemism for white people in middle America who responded to Trump's xenophobic vitriol.
Secondly: Why can't they learn to code? When people want to raise the minimum wage, the first reaction is "Well they should just get a better job, fast food isn't a career!" So if their argument against a better minimum wage is that "well then, get a better job" why don't they look at their current situation and do something about it?
These coal miners in Appalachia who have been watching the steady decline of coal for decades refuse to listen to their own bootstraps argument. Rather than moving forward and accepting that times are changing, rather than finding new careers for themselves, they just whine and complain that the world left them behind. The world has been leaving them behind for decades, everyone saw it happening, but they refuse to adapt, so we're all now supposed to coddle them after they've spat on education for decades, after they've spent years voting against their own best interests?
Why should they expect everyone else to cater to them, when they refuse to adapt for anyone or anything else?
Sorry not sorry, guys. I grew up in a city decimated when the steel industry died. It was ugly and it hurt this city immensely, and the only way Pittsburgh survived is progress. Pittsburgh is thriving now because as a city we banded together and found new industries and technologies. So I don't have too much sympathy for people who refuse to do anything to help themselves and insist on living in the past.
There is so much wrong with what you stated in this post. Here's a brief economics lesson. You can thank Hillary's husband for NAFTA and other global trade agreements for why there are no more "working class" jobs anymore.
There is only two things that can happen when a mandatory minimum wage is instituted:
1. That cost is passed on to the consumers making goods and services more expensive. Robbing Peter to pay Paul essentially, and the consumers will only tolerate that so much before not participating.
2. The employer is forced to make cuts, guess where the axe usually falls? Those lower level jobs that you just effectively priced out of the market. It's a nice idea and something pretty easy to campaign on but clearly doesn't solve the problem that it claims to, it makes things worse EVERY time.
Where does the money from medicaid come from? Taxes, who pays most of the taxes? Those businesses that are employing people and can't afford to pay them a low wage because of these taxes and other regulations imposed on them, then sometimes forced to lay them off because of more costly government oversight and regulation. You can't just use the producers in society as an atm to fund all these social programs, if you want to have a low unemployment rate and a thriving economy. There's a reason why all socialist states always end up bankrupt given enough time, eventually you run out of other peoples money.
The Democrats use to be the party of the working class, but abandoned that long ago. Now they are the party of the people looking for "freebies", wealthy coastal dwellers and yuppies that want to have both their lavish lifestyle and "moral currency" at the same time.
Obama killed the coal industry and subsequently subsidized the "clean" energy movement. I guess we will see what Trump will do.......
If you are going to play the virtue signalling identitarian politics game from the left side, just remember that you are teaching the other side of the aisle the same game, hence the rise of people like Trump and the Alt right.... Just sayin.
Market forces killed coal, natural gas is cheaper and more plentiful. If we're blaming Obama for killing coal demand on a global scale, I guess he deserves all the credit for the shale oil and gas booms. Coal jobs aren't coming back in a meaningful way regardless how much Trump talks them up. Automation of mining equipment was also responsible for a large portion of the job losse, that change is permanent.
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There is so much wrong with what you stated in this post. Here's a brief economics lesson. You can thank Hillary's husband for NAFTA and other global trade agreements for why there are no more "working class" jobs anymore.
There is only two things that can happen when a mandatory minimum wage is instituted:
1. That cost is passed on to the consumers making goods and services more expensive. Robbing Peter to pay Paul essentially, and the consumers will only tolerate that so much before not participating.
2. The employer is forced to make cuts, guess where the axe usually falls? Those lower level jobs that you just effectively priced out of the market. It's a nice idea and something pretty easy to campaign on but clearly doesn't solve the problem that it claims to, it makes things worse EVERY time.
Where does the money from medicaid come from? Taxes, who pays most of the taxes? Those businesses that are employing people and can't afford to pay them a low wage because of these taxes and other regulations imposed on them, then sometimes forced to lay them off because of more costly government oversight and regulation. You can't just use the producers in society as an atm to fund all these social programs, if you want to have a low unemployment rate and a thriving economy. There's a reason why all socialist states always end up bankrupt given enough time, eventually you run out of other peoples money.
The Democrats use to be the party of the working class, but abandoned that long ago. Now they are the party of the people looking for "freebies", wealthy coastal dwellers and yuppies that want to have both their lavish lifestyle and "moral currency" at the same time.
Obama killed the coal industry and subsequently subsidized the "clean" energy movement. I guess we will see what Trump will do.......
If you are going to play the virtue signalling identitarian politics game from the left side, just remember that you are teaching the other side of the aisle the same game, hence the rise of people like Trump and the Alt right.... Just sayin.
So much wrong with YOUR post. The reason unrestrained capitalist states ALWAYS fail, and are forced to change, is because eventually the masses grow weary of the fruits of their labor being increasingly co-opted by their overlords and demand some kind of real participation in the economy beyond just being mindless drones.
Socialist states do NOT always fail. Communist states generally always fail. Progressive socially responsible states that balance their capitalism with tolerance, fairness, and compassion and understand that society moves forward best as a whole, not as a Darwinian exercise, thrive and consistently produce the highest levels of satisfaction for their citizens.
I am more than sick and tired of being told that the left needs to stop being so entitled and robbing the poor producers and that it's really best if we continue to just tolerate and accept the excesses of the monied right. Could the US not just be centrist, like most of the rest of the developed world?
Last edited by Biff; 07-05-2017 at 11:56 PM.
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There is so much wrong with what you stated in this post. Here's a brief economics lesson. You can thank Hillary's husband for NAFTA and other global trade agreements for why there are no more "working class" jobs anymore.
There is only two things that can happen when a mandatory minimum wage is instituted:
1. That cost is passed on to the consumers making goods and services more expensive. Robbing Peter to pay Paul essentially, and the consumers will only tolerate that so much before not participating.
2. The employer is forced to make cuts, guess where the axe usually falls? Those lower level jobs that you just effectively priced out of the market. It's a nice idea and something pretty easy to campaign on but clearly doesn't solve the problem that it claims to, it makes things worse EVERY time.
Where does the money from medicaid come from? Taxes, who pays most of the taxes? Those businesses that are employing people and can't afford to pay them a low wage because of these taxes and other regulations imposed on them, then sometimes forced to lay them off because of more costly government oversight and regulation. You can't just use the producers in society as an atm to fund all these social programs, if you want to have a low unemployment rate and a thriving economy. There's a reason why all socialist states always end up bankrupt given enough time, eventually you run out of other peoples money.
The Democrats use to be the party of the working class, but abandoned that long ago. Now they are the party of the people looking for "freebies", wealthy coastal dwellers and yuppies that want to have both their lavish lifestyle and "moral currency" at the same time.
Obama killed the coal industry and subsequently subsidized the "clean" energy movement. I guess we will see what Trump will do.......
If you are going to play the virtue signalling identitarian politics game from the left side, just remember that you are teaching the other side of the aisle the same game, hence the rise of people like Trump and the Alt right.... Just sayin.
So are you suggesting that the US is at the goldilocks tax and regulation rate?
I'd argue they are the best example of under regulation and under taxation at the expense of the average person in favour of concentrating wealth. And that in this tax environment which doesn't support public health and education. The long term issues this will create will reduce Labour participation and the average educational attainment of the workforce which in turn will harm the economy more than increasing taxes would at this point. You are absolutely right that there are trade offs to be made for increasing taxation and regulation. In the position the US is in those are good trade offs.
Natural Gas prices killed the coal industry not Obama. No one would ever build a coal plant now compared to gas regardless of economic/environmental regulations.
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There is so much wrong with what you stated in this post. Here's a brief economics lesson. You can thank Hillary's husbandfor NAFTA and other global trade agreements for why there are no more "working class" jobs anymore.
...
Trump and the cultists love to blame free trade deals, but curiously never blame the biggest culprit by a significant margin, technology and automation. When even China is losing manufacturing jobs to automation, blaming trade deals seems very misguided. I mean I'd be fascinating to see Trump remove Murica from all trade deals since it'd likely lead to a depression greater than 1929, but yeah we'd sort of take a huge hit too.
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"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
Trump and the cultists love to blame free trade deals, but curiously never blame the biggest culprit by a significant margin, technology and automation. When even China is losing manufacturing jobs to automation, blaming trade deals seems very misguided. I mean I'd be fascinating to see Trump remove Murica from all trade deals since it'd likely lead to a depression greater than 1929, but yeah we'd sort of take a huge hit too.
The also blame Mexicans, Muslims, the press, Obama, Clintons, etc. etc.. It's kind of their thing.
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