A thread for Democrats Only by THGRRI

Yeah. I don't know what he's doing.

Let's stop pussyfooting around and call invaders invaders. No tariffs.

If somebody illegally crosses the border, they will be treated as hostile invaders and and anybody crossing the border after July 1st will be considered an act of war.

"Help".

Please.

We don't need Mexico's help.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, May 31, 2019 10:17 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yeah. I don't know what he's doing.

Let's stop pussyfooting around and call invaders invaders. No tariffs.

If somebody illegally crosses the border, they will be treated as hostile invaders and and anybody crossing the border after July 1st will be considered an act of war.

"Help".

Please.

We don't need Mexico's help.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

The next logical step for Trump is to escalate the border war to machine-guns and land mines, but he'd lose some votes in 2020. Same thing if he opens concentration camps, complete with cremation furnaces, for illegal migrants. It is not too farfetched for Trump:
www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, June 5, 2019 12:44 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The modern Fed’s independence is an outgrowth of the wild inflation of the 1970s spurred by Richard Nixon’s meddling.

Nixon appointed Arthur Burns to run the Fed during his first term and then sought to control Fed policy through both overt and sleazy means. Nixon’s basic goal was to keep the economy hot through his 1972 reelection campaign, even if that meant running some risk of inflation. Inflation, of course, became a major problem in the mid-1970s. As inflation came back under control in the early 1980s, the conventional wisdom became that central bank independence was key to avoiding it.

There’s a theory that an incumbent president will always want to err in the direction of a little less unemployment now even if it means a little more inflation. And while on any given day that may be a reasonable trade-off, over the long run, it inevitably means a lot of inflation. And, as the theory goes, in the end, this won’t even get you sustainable low unemployment — just the dreaded “stagflation” of the late 1970s.

During the 1980s and ’90s, this evolved into a norm of Fed independence that had grown so strong that Obama administration economic policy officials would routinely decline to comment at all on monetary policy, whether on or off the record.

Still, at the end of the day, the Fed chair and the other members of the board are presidential appointees. Trump wants a Fed that will do what he wants. Modern central banking, meanwhile, is built on a foundation of independence from the day-to-day political needs of elected officials. Trump is not exactly a huge respecter of norms or a big believer in independence. That tradition has held up in the Trump years, but arguably more due to Trump’s sloppiness than to anything else.

More at "Judy Shelton’s potential nomination to a Federal Reserve Board seat"
www.vox.com/2019/6/5/18652025/judy-shelton-federal-reserve
The former “sound money” advocate and gold bug now suddenly backs Trump’s push for lower interest rates.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, June 9, 2019 8:21 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Letters sent from prison by the former Irish mob boss detailed his love for President Donald Trump and annoyance at the Mueller probe.

James "Whitey" Bulger wrote on a number of topics ranging from the first lady to the news media to Trump's foreign policy efforts.

“History may show Trump was the man of the hour,” Bulger wrote. “Feel China respects him and hesitant to try to bully him.”

Bulger also talked about Mueller, who led the FBI at a time when rogue agents had protected mob bosses like Bulger.

"Trump is experiencing what Mueller and company can orchestrate," Bulger said last September. "[Mueller] should observe biblical saying - 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.'"

The former mob boss said he enjoys Trump's war against the media and that the President has his vote in the next election.

More at Fox News www.foxnews.com/us/whitey-bulger-praised-trump-prison-letters

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, June 10, 2019 6:14 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

America’s Political Mood Is Now the ‘Most Liberal Ever Recorded’

The American public is in the mood for “big government.” According to the distinguished political scientist James Stimson’s “Public Policy Mood estimate” — a widely respected tool for measuring shifts in ideological opinion across time — the U.S. electorate is more sympathetic to left-wing economic policy today than at anytime in the past 68 years (which is as far back as Stimson’s data goes).

Economists who favor increasing worker power, promoting full employment, stimulating demand, and having the public sector play a more active role in channeling investment now have a lot more empirical ammunition at their disposal than they did a decade ago — while those who champion fiscal austerity, a hawkish posture on inflation, and supply-side tax cuts as a panacea for increasing productive investment have far fewer arrows in their quiver.

And it shows. The Democratic Party’s leading economic thinkers have ceased worrying about deficits and grown far friendlier to organized labor and comfortable with sweeping state interventions in the economy to mitigate inequality and facilitate socially beneficial investment. And while the Republican Party’s finest hacks have carried on supplying the same rationalizations for plutocracy they always have, other GOP policy wonks (like those working in Rubio’s office) and center-right think tanks (like the Niskanen Center) have been gravitating away from supply-side dogma and toward the formerly “liberal” terrain of industrial policy.

More at http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/americas-political-mood-is-now-
most-liberal-ever-recorded.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, June 10, 2019 7:07 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
America’s Political Mood Is Now the ‘Most Liberal Ever Recorded’

The American public is in the mood for “big government.” According to the distinguished political scientist James Stimson’s “Public Policy Mood estimate” — a widely respected tool for measuring shifts in ideological opinion across time — the U.S. electorate is more sympathetic to left-wing economic policy today than at anytime in the past 68 years (which is as far back as Stimson’s data goes).

Economists who favor increasing worker power, promoting full employment, stimulating demand, and having the public sector play a more active role in channeling investment now have a lot more empirical ammunition at their disposal than they did a decade ago — while those who champion fiscal austerity, a hawkish posture on inflation, and supply-side tax cuts as a panacea for increasing productive investment have far fewer arrows in their quiver.

And it shows. The Democratic Party’s leading economic thinkers have ceased worrying about deficits and grown far friendlier to organized labor and comfortable with sweeping state interventions in the economy to mitigate inequality and facilitate socially beneficial investment. And while the Republican Party’s finest hacks have carried on supplying the same rationalizations for plutocracy they always have, other GOP policy wonks (like those working in Rubio’s office) and center-right think tanks (like the Niskanen Center) have been gravitating away from supply-side dogma and toward the formerly “liberal” terrain of industrial policy.

More at http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/americas-political-mood-is-now-
most-liberal-ever-recorded.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

The title of that article is quite misleading.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, June 10, 2019 7:58 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

The title of that article is quite misleading.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

What qualifies as the “liberal” or “conservative” position on a given issue evolves over time. This is most conspicuously apparent on social and cultural policy, where Barack Obama’s “liberal” 2008 position on gay marriage would be more “conservative” than some congressional Republicans in 2019. But Stimson’s "liberal" index confines itself to the role of government in the economy and only the economy.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/americas-political-mood-is-now-
most-liberal-ever-recorded.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, June 10, 2019 9:29 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

The title of that article is quite misleading.

Do Right, Be Right. :)
What qualifies as the “liberal” or “conservative” position on a given issue evolves over time. This is most conspicuously apparent on social and cultural policy, where Barack Obama’s “liberal” 2008 position on gay marriage would be more “conservative” than some congressional Republicans in 2019. But Stimson’s "liberal" index confines itself to the role of government in the economy and only the economy.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/americas-political-mood-is-now-
most-liberal-ever-recorded.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

A more appropriate title would be "According to Stimson's Liberal Index, which confines itself to the role of government in the economy and only the economy, America’s Political Mood Is Now the ‘Most Liberal Ever Recorded’"

I would agree with that statement. But that's not what the article title says at all.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, June 11, 2019 10:10 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Economic policy divides the GOP and unites Democrats
www.vox.com/2019/6/11/18659986/voter-study-group-democrats-economics

The study, released Tuesday, gauged support for different progressive economic policy ideas and then compared the views of low-income voters (with less than $40,000 per year in household income) to more comfortable ones (with more than $80,000 per year in household income). For Democrats, the more affluent voters were generally more left-wing, but the difference is small.

For Republicans, by contrast, there’s a huge fall-off in support for progressive economic policy ideas as you go up the income ladder.

Alignment with cultural conservatism (but not economic conservatism) is near universal among Republicans, and it keeps the party together even as its members have a lot of disagreements about specific economic policy issues.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, June 11, 2019 8:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Economic policy divides the GOP and unites Democrats
www.vox.com/2019/6/11/18659986/voter-study-group-democrats-economics

The study, released Tuesday, gauged support for different progressive economic policy ideas and then compared the views of low-income voters (with less than $40,000 per year in household income) to more comfortable ones (with more than $80,000 per year in household income). For Democrats, the more affluent voters were generally more left-wing, but the difference is small.

For Republicans, by contrast, there’s a huge fall-off in support for progressive economic policy ideas as you go up the income ladder.

Alignment with cultural conservatism (but not economic conservatism) is near universal among Republicans, and it keeps the party together even as its members have a lot of disagreements about specific economic policy issues.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

If the underlined is true, that may be enough going forward for them.

Democrats can't agree on anything under the sun, and now that they've boldly claimed that their the party of intersectionality and identitarianism they never will.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, June 12, 2019 5:59 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Pete Buttigieg is the first Democratic presidential candidate to actually articulate foreign policy proposals beyond general themes and ideas. Specifically, he said he would:

1) “Repeal and replace” the 2001 congressional authorization that the US military still uses to this day to fight terrorism and engage in foreign wars around the world

2) Recommit the US to the Iran nuclear deal

3) Withhold some US taxpayer money from Israel if it annexes parts of the West Bank

4) Rejoin the Paris climate accord

5) Increase investment in renewable technologies to reverse environmental degradation. Buttigieg’s most specific proposal was to quadruple federal government funding for research and development on renewable energy technology, to at least $25 billion. That’s likely to anger the fossil-fuel industry but delight those that work in solar, wind, and other growing energy sectors.

More details about all 5 at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/11/18661329/pete-buttigieg-fore
ign-policy-speech-indiana-university

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, June 12, 2019 6:21 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The thinking typically goes that boomers have put undue pressure on the Social Security system because of the size of their generation.

About 10,000 people turn 65 every day. Many of those individuals are claiming Social Security retirement benefits, which has created the perception that they are draining the system.

However, the Center for Retirement Research found the boomer cohort born between 1946 and 1964 will actually have paid more into the system than they will receive in benefits.

There is a group of retirees, however, who did receive more money than they contributed: people born before 1946 who predominately vote Republican. That’s because they generally worked for fewer years before collecting benefits.

More about how elderly Republicans didn't pay their fair share and got a free ride on Social Security at www.cnbc.com/2019/06/10/its-not-baby-boomers-who-have-taken-the-most-f
rom-social-security.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, June 12, 2019 7:01 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

You must be really gassy lately.

And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
tic tac

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Wednesday, June 12, 2019 7:11 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Noam Chomsky, June 04, 2019:

Both parties shifted to the right during the neoliberal years: the mainstream Democrats became something like the former moderate Republicans, and the Republicans drifted virtually off the spectrum. There’s merit, I think, in the observation by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein that increasingly since the Newt Gingrich years — and strikingly in Mitch McConnell’s Senate — the Republican Party has become a “radical insurgency” that is largely abandoning normal parliamentary politics. That shift — which predates Donald Trump — has created a substantial gap between the two parties. In the media it’s often called “polarization,” but that’s hardly an accurate description.

Both in the United States and Europe, neoliberal/austerity programs have sharply concentrated wealth while also stagnating wages for the majority, undermining benefits, eroding functioning democracy, and encouraging what former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan hailed as “growing worker insecurity.” These socioeconomic policies, quite naturally, have engendered anger, resentment, and bitterness — which are often exploited by demagogues. As centrist political institutions have declined, sometimes virtually disappearing, both political parties have been affected. The Republican establishment used to be able to crush extremist candidates who rose from the voting base in primaries, but not in 2016.

What [Bernie] Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mean by “socialism” seems to be something similar to New Deal social democracy. Sanders’s platform, for example, wouldn’t have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower, who argued strongly that anyone who challenged New Deal programs didn’t belong in the U.S. political system — an indication of how far to the right politics has drifted [since Eisenhower.]

More at https://bostonreview.net/politics/noam-chomsky-scott-casleton-choosing
-hope

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, June 12, 2019 7:25 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Noam Chomsky, June 04, 2019:

Both parties shifted to the right during the neoliberal years: the mainstream Democrats became something like the former moderate Republicans, and the Republicans drifted virtually off the spectrum. There’s merit, I think, in the observation by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein that increasingly since the Newt Gingrich years — and strikingly in Mitch McConnell’s Senate — the Republican Party has become a “radical insurgency” that is largely abandoning normal parliamentary politics. That shift — which predates Donald Trump — has created a substantial gap between the two parties. In the media it’s often called “polarization,” but that’s hardly an accurate description.

Both in the United States and Europe, neoliberal/austerity programs have sharply concentrated wealth while also stagnating wages for the majority, undermining benefits, eroding functioning democracy, and encouraging what former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan hailed as “growing worker insecurity.” These socioeconomic policies, quite naturally, have engendered anger, resentment, and bitterness — which are often exploited by demagogues. As centrist political institutions have declined, sometimes virtually disappearing, both political parties have been affected. The Republican establishment used to be able to crush extremist candidates who rose from the voting base in primaries, but not in 2016.

What [Bernie] Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mean by “socialism” seems to be something similar to New Deal social democracy. Sanders’s platform, for example, wouldn’t have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower, who argued strongly that anyone who challenged New Deal programs didn’t belong in the U.S. political system — an indication of how far to the right politics has drifted [since Eisenhower.]

More at https://bostonreview.net/politics/noam-chomsky-scott-casleton-choosing
-hope

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Well...

It seems as though somebody is finally agreeing with me that the Democrats of 2019 are a goddamned carbon copy of the GWB administration... finally. Pro censorship, pro surveillance and anti-Constitution as well.

Glad to have you on board, Second.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, June 12, 2019 8:20 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Well...

It seems as though somebody is finally agreeing with me that the Democrats of 2019 are a goddamned carbon copy of the GWB administration... finally. Pro censorship, pro surveillance and anti-Constitution as well.

Glad to have you on board, Second.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

I am not onboard with you, 6ix. Today's Democratic politicians are carbon copies of Eisenhower Republicans from the 1950's. They are nothing like GWB. And Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are old-fashion FDR New Dealers, not radical at all, despite silly fools and Republican voters shitting themselves over the existence of New Dealers.

https://bostonreview.net/politics/noam-chomsky-scott-casleton-choosing
-hope

6ix, I have a much longer memory than you do, very clear and detailed, but how actual Republican voters I know have evolved, no, make that devolved, over my lifetime. And today's Republican politicians? Republican President Eisenhower would have recognized Trump as a Mussolini -- a loudmouth, a liar, and an incompetent -- while today's Republican voters think Trump is somebody special deserving of reelection because Democratic candidates will never be good enough for today's Republicans.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, June 12, 2019 9:19 AM

You don't have a better memory.

You're just an old hippie piece of trash is all.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, June 17, 2019 6:26 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump tweets Vote for me — or you’ll never see your precious bull market alive again.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go....However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before! KEEP AMERICA GREAT
6:44 AM - 15 Jun 2019
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1139891393252474880

Trump brags about U.S. prosperity. But conditions improved more under his predecessors. (Even Pres. Jimmy Carter.)

The Trump years have been no better than average and mostly below average in 12 of the 14 measures. The bond market suffered its worst performance the past two years than in any other presidency since Carter. Anemic productivity and a widening deficit as a percentage of GDP are the worst since George W. Bush was president. The dollar’s 3.2 percent annualized decline and GDP growth of 2.24 percent give Trump no better than a No. 5 ranking.

The 14 measures where Trump does not measure up to the last 7 Presidents (but he does beat Bush):

Trump’s Rank out of 7 Presidents
4 S&P 500 Index
4 Gap between U.S. and global stocks
4 Nonfarm payrolls
3 Disposable income per capita
4 Debt-to-income ratio
5 Gross domestic product
6 Deficit as share of GDP
4 Home equity
7 Bond performance
5 Dollar value
1 Manufacturing jobs
4 Auto sales
4 Hourly wages
6 Productivity
6 Trump’s OVERALL RANK (But at least it is better than G.W. Bush, who crashed the economy in 2008. Trump is threatening to do the same if you don’t vote for him. www.thebalance.com/2008-financial-crisis-3305679 )

Much more at www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-28/trump-economy-lags-clint
on-s-obama-s-reagan-s-and-even-carter-s

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, June 17, 2019 7:34 AM

The one thing I won't argue you on is that the working guy is still getting screwed just as bad as he has for decades.

The DOW means nothing to most of us.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, June 17, 2019 8:12 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The one thing I won't argue you on is that the working guy is still getting screwed just as bad as he has for decades.

The DOW means nothing to most of us.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Does the minimum wage mean anything? There is a bill to raise it, but the Republican majority leader in the Senate refuses to vote on it because it's communism or something according to him. It has a cute name: "Raise the Wage Act". It's not gonna happen so long as the GOP can stop it. www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/582/text

The federal minimum wage was last raised on July 24, 2009, when it rose from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour, the last step of a three-step increase approved by Congress in 2007. Before 2007, the minimum wage had been stuck at $5.15 per hour for 10 years.

According to 2017 estimates from the Economic Policy Institute, raising the minimum wage to $15 would increase wages for roughly 40 million people — nearly 30 percent of the workforce. Once fully phased in, this roughly translates into an annual pay increase of about $3,500 for the average affected worker. (It is raised in steps to $15/hr over 5 years. $15 in 2024 is equivalent to $1.05/hr I was making at Burger King in 1970, adjusted for inflation. I felt rich going from 95¢ to $1.05. A 1 dime raise was huge to an 18 year old. I figured that if I saved my dimes I'd be rich someday. I was right.)
https://edlabor.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2019-01-16%20Raise%20the%20Wag
e%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, June 17, 2019 9:53 AM

Doesn't really mean anything without any meaningful healthcare. Probably won't mean much when a lot of people lose jobs and prices of everything go up too.

Minimum wage should have been tied to inflation all along.

It's really going to suck for people who make $15/hr right now and don't see any increases.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, June 17, 2019 9:53 AM

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Monday, June 17, 2019 9:14 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
1) Doesn't really mean anything without any meaningful healthcare. 2) Probably won't mean much when a lot of people lose jobs and prices of everything go up too.

1) Democrats have drafted a law for meaningful healthcare. The Republican majority leader in the Senate will never allow it to be voted on.
Read it: www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1129/text

2) It is a standard Republican talking point that you will be fired if the minimum wage is increased. Read it: www.epionline.org/oped/o161/

It also happens to be a standard Republican lie. In the places where the minimum wage has been raised to $15/hr they aren't fired. Amazon had to be pressured to raise wages, but it did and Amazon is still hiring: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/11/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-challenges-riv
al-retailers-to-raise-their-minimum-wages-too/

Seattle and $15/hr: www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattles-minimum-wage-hikes
-didnt-boost-supermarket-prices-new-uw-study-says/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, June 17, 2019 9:26 PM

Yup. Because all of that magic money comes from magic money trees.

No sir. Nobody will be fired and prices of stuff won't go up to pay those additional wages. We've got magic money trees.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, June 17, 2019 9:58 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

That ranking is bullshit. How can anyone who gets mostly "4" rank "6'? The numeric average for the ranking is 4.3.

Sheesh, doesn't Bloomberg know how to do arithmetic?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .

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Tuesday, June 18, 2019 6:24 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
That ranking is bullshit. How can anyone who gets mostly "4" rank "6'? The numeric average for the ranking is 4.3.

Sheesh, doesn't Bloomberg know how to do arithmetic?

In golf, everybody shoots 3's and 4's and once in a great while a 1 from a hole in one. How in world can they possibly rank the players if everybody is almost equal? They add up the number of strokes for the entire game. The player with the fewest strokes is #1. The player with the most strokes gets assigned the #7 rank. Something like that happened to Trump's score. Only Bush, who crashed the economy in 2008 and inflated the national debt and started two wars (that's a two stroke penalty), has a worse score than Trump.

Trump brags about U.S. prosperity. But conditions improved more under his predecessors, except Bush.
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-28/trump-economy-lags-clint
on-s-obama-s-reagan-s-and-even-carter-s

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, June 18, 2019 7:23 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
That ranking is bullshit. How can anyone who gets mostly "4" rank "6'? The numeric average for the ranking is 4.3.

Sheesh, doesn't Bloomberg know how to do arithmetic?
In golf, everybody shoots 3's and 4's and once in a great while a 1 from a hole in one. How in world can they possibly rank the players if everybody is almost equal? They add up the number of strokes for the entire game. The player with the fewest strokes is #1. The player with the most strokes gets assigned the #7 rank. Something like that happened to Trump's score. Only Bush, who crashed the economy in 2008 and inflated the national debt and started two wars (that's a two stroke penalty), has a worse score than Trump.

Trump brags about U.S. prosperity. But conditions improved more under his predecessors, except Bush.
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-28/trump-economy-lags-clint
on-s-obama-s-reagan-s-and-even-carter-s

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Well, to be fair, under your own metrics here, there are quite a few years left before you can truly tally up Trump's score. At least 1/2 if we're only comparing to GHWB and Carter.

Trump's had 2 1/2 years.

Obama had 8.
GWB had 8.
Clinton had 8.
GHWB had 4.
Reagan had 8.
Carter had 4.

That's not even going into the fact that the economy just gets worse the longer time goes on and we run out of 3rd world countries to exploit and US labor gets replaced by cheaper labor and automation.

The good times are over, and nobody's going to right that ship.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, June 18, 2019 10:55 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

That's not even going into the fact that the economy just gets worse the longer time goes on and we run out of 3rd world countries to exploit and US labor gets replaced by cheaper labor and automation.

The good times are over, and nobody's going to right that ship.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

That is how the King of Belgium got rich, by exploiting the Congo. But that strategy for wealth building is 100 years out of date.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Leopold%27s_Ghost

The basic formula for national economic growth is simple: Economic growth = Population growth + Productivity growth. Population growth has been slowing down for decades. We know exactly what the population of the country is going to be over the next few years.

So that leaves productivity growth, which the BLS estimates. In order to achieve 3 percent economic growth, we need productivity growth of about 2.3 percent. This is decidedly not normal for the history of the country—not in the past 50 years, anyway. With the brief exception of the unsustainable housing bubble era, we haven’t hit 2.3% productivity growth since the end of 60s.

Productivity growth is a real problem. Trump cannot more than double the productivity growth rate of the past ten years, reaching a target we haven’t hit in a normal, healthy economy for the past half century. There’s simply no reason to believe him, and Mick Mulvaney hasn’t even tried to explain how he thinks Trump can accomplish it. Not even hand waving. He’s literally said nothing about productivity growth at all.

More at www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/05/productivity/

If you wanted tremendous economic growth, America could make every roof a solar electric roof, every car an electric car, every city connected by 400 MPH high speed rail, etc. It is the Green New Deal. That won't happen because the GOP Senators will filibuster it to death. The GOP doesn't want to tax the rich to pay for these projects that create middle-class wealth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, June 19, 2019 5:50 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Joe Biden, speaking at a fundraiser in New York on Tuesday night, fondly remembered the days he served in the Senate with James O. Eastland, a white supremacist Democrat from Mississippi.

It’s not the first time Biden’s ties to Eastland, a man who called the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education a “monstrous crime,” have drawn scrutiny. As CNN has reported, as a young senator, Biden tried to enlist Eastland’s help in his fight to prevent busing in school desegregation. He also had this to say to at a Doug Jones rally in 2017:

"I’ve been around so long, I worked with James Eastland. Even in the days when I got there, the Democratic Party still had seven or eight old-fashioned Democratic segregationists. You’d get up and you’d argue like the devil with them. Then you’d go down and have lunch or dinner together. The political system worked. We were divided on issues, but the political system worked."

Well, as long as we’re talking about the way things used to get done in the Senate, there’s no reason to settle for Joe Biden’s imitation of Eastland’s Southern drawl: the man can speak for himself just fine.

The video is here https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/joe-biden-james-eastland-m
ike-wallace-interview.html

I can’t tell if the video cuts off when interviewer Mike Wallace suggests a centrist compromise is obviously the answer to questions like “Should black people be allowed to vote?” or if I keep having a minor stroke whenever I watch it. Anyway, that’s James Eastland. Joe Biden misses having dinner with him.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, June 19, 2019 8:34 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

If you wanted tremendous economic growth, America could make every roof a solar electric roof, every car an electric car, every city connected by 400 MPH high speed rail, etc. It is the Green New Deal.

No. It's not.

I'm on board with all of that. Unfortunately, there is a LOT more in the Green New Deal, including a lot of identity politics and open border bullshit.

Take the shit out of the Green New Deal and then we'll talk about it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Wednesday, June 19, 2019 9:10 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:

If you wanted tremendous economic growth, America could make every roof a solar electric roof, every car an electric car, every city connected by 400 MPH high speed rail, etc. It is the Green New Deal.

No. It's not.

I'm on board with all of that. Unfortunately, there is a LOT more in the Green New Deal, including a lot of identity politics and open border bullshit.

Take the shit out of the Green New Deal and then we'll talk about it.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

6ix, quote some of those parts you object to in the Green New Deal from Congress's website:
www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/109/text

There is not even one item (A to N, see below) that will pass in the Senate. It is the way it will be for as many years as there are at least 41 GOP Senators to filibuster these goals:

The goals should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization (referred to in this resolution as the “Green New Deal mobilization”) that will require the following projects—

(A) building resiliency against climate change-related disasters, such as extreme weather, including by leveraging funding and providing investments for community-defined projects and strategies;

(B) repairing and upgrading the infrastructure in the United States, including—

(i) by eliminating pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as technologically feasible;

(ii) by guaranteeing universal access to clean water;

(iii) by reducing the risks posed by climate impacts; and

(iv) by ensuring that any infrastructure bill considered by Congress addresses climate change;

(C) meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources, including—

(i) by dramatically expanding and upgrading renewable power sources; and

(ii) by deploying new capacity;

(D) building or upgrading to energy-efficient, distributed, and “smart” power grids, and ensuring affordable access to electricity;

(E) upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification;

(F) spurring massive growth in clean manufacturing in the United States and removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and industry as much as is technologically feasible, including by expanding renewable energy manufacturing and investing in existing manufacturing and industry;

(G) working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible, including—

(i) by supporting family farming;

(ii) by investing in sustainable farming and land use practices that increase soil health; and

(iii) by building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food;

(H) overhauling transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in—

(i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing;

(ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transit; and

(iii) high-speed rail;

(I) mitigating and managing the long-term adverse health, economic, and other effects of pollution and climate change, including by providing funding for community-defined projects and strategies;

(J) removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and reducing pollution by restoring natural ecosystems through proven low-tech solutions that increase soil carbon storage, such as land preservation and afforestation;

(K) restoring and protecting threatened, endangered, and fragile ecosystems through locally appropriate and science-based projects that enhance biodiversity and support climate resiliency;

(L) cleaning up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites, ensuring economic development and sustainability on those sites;

(M) identifying other emission and pollution sources and creating solutions to remove them; and

(N) promoting the international exchange of technology, expertise, products, funding, and services, with the aim of making the United States the international leader on climate action, and to help other countries achieve a Green New Deal.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, June 24, 2019 5:41 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

On June 7, 1892, a dapper shoemaker purchased a first-class ticket on a Louisiana train for a short journey he knew he wouldn't finish.

The 30-year-old man of mixed-race heritage sat in the whites-only section of the train. When a conductor ordered him to move to a dingy rail car reserved for blacks, he refused, was arrested and convicted at a trial.

The man appealed his case to the Supreme Court. Four years later, the court rejected his claim that sitting in a segregated train car stamped him with "a badge of servitude."

The New York Times published only two paragraphs on the 7-1 decision. But Homer Adolph Plessy, the man on the train, did not fade from history. Plessy v. Ferguson eventually became known as one of the Supreme Court's most nakedly racist decisions. The 1896 ruling played a pivotal role in giving legal cover to Jim Crow segregation that would last for more than half a century.

It's hard today not to marvel at the casual cruelty of the Plessy decision. How could the court accept the transparent lie that blacks lived in separate but equal worlds with whites? And how could they give Constitutional sanction to a blatant display of racism?

You don't have to study history to answer those questions. Watch what happens this week when the US Supreme Court issues its decision on whether the Trump administration can add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census, some legal scholars and historians say.

They say the conservative majority on the court is on the verge of embracing in the census case some of the same legal rationalizations that produced Jim Crow segregation.

If they accept the census question, they are following the same pattern that the late-19th-century and 20th-century court made that was clearly intended to cement white rule. The census-citizenship case is expected to be one of the most significant Supreme Court cases involving race in recent history.

The formula for this version of White Supremacy 2.0 is the same as it was then: Ignore the racist intent behind laws to justify a preordained decision. Supporters of the census-citizenship question say that its purpose is actually protecting racial minorities. But documents from the Supreme Court case show that the Trump administration’s true purpose in putting the citizenship question on the upcoming census was not its stated one to help Hispanic voters under the Voting Rights Act, but rather to create policy that would be “a disadvantage to the Democrats” and “advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic Whites.” It’s difficult to produce a greater smoking gun than explicitly saying you are hoping to help the GOP by increasing white voting power.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/census-memo-supreme-court-
conservatives-white-voters-alito.html

But instead of asking about those memos describing the purpose of the citizenship question, the conservative justices focused on tangential questions revolving around the Trump administration's authority to add the question to the census.

What the court does -- and the court does this often -- is evade reality. It allows them to focus on technical questions.

More at www.cnn.com/2019/06/23/us/supreme-court-census-citizenship-blake/index
.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, June 24, 2019 8:45 AM

There is zero comparison between the two scenarios stated above if you have an ounce of common sense within you.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, June 24, 2019 10:25 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
There is zero comparison between the two scenarios stated above if you have an ounce of common sense within you.

Wow, then I should have ended as a complete failure because my commonsense doesn't work like your oh-so-superior commonsense. Every single time you comment I understand more about why you fell to the bottom of the economic scale, 6ix. In the census-citizenship case, the Supreme Court may once again affirm 'white rule'. That 19th century Supreme Court case wasn't about blacks only railroad cars, but about whites only railroad cars, or 'white rule'.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, June 24, 2019 12:33 PM

I don't give two shits what that was about.

Right now it's about citizens (which include blacks and legals born of Mexican and South American descent), vs illegal aliens.

Go fuck yourself for purposely trying to conflate the two as being even remotely similar by making it a "white" thing.

Idiot.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Monday, June 24, 2019 3:05 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

People who claim it's a 'white' thing are racist.

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Thursday, June 27, 2019 7:17 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
People who claim it's a 'white' thing are racist.

The existence of conservative Southern Democrats — the Dixiecrats — was the fundamental fact of Congress in the mid-20th century.

The Southern Democratic Party was an institution unto itself. As the political scientist V.O. Key Jr. observed, “the one-party system of the South is an institution with an odd dual personality. In state politics the Democratic party is no party at all but a multiplicity of factions struggling for office. In national politics, on the contrary, the party is the Solid South; it is, or at least has been, the instrument for the conduct of the ‘foreign relations’ of the South with the rest of the nation.”

The Dixiecrats had hegemonic control of the South. They ran it as an authoritarian state built to sustain a violent racial hierarchy. And they protected their autonomy by currying favor with, and amassing power in, the national Democratic Party.

For Southern Dixiecrats, good relationships with the broader Democratic Party were the currency of Southern power. So long as they had seniority and allies, they could protect the South. The moment they didn’t, they were endangered.

By the time Joe Biden got to Congress, the Civil Rights Act had passed, and the realignment of the South from Dixiecrat to Republican was beginning. . . . but the Southern Dixiecrats still had the power to slow-walk civil rights legislation, and they wielded that power cunningly, ferociously, and with a smile. Biden could cut deals with Eastland the Dixiecrat because it was in Eastland’s interest to cut deals with him. Eastland’s power — his committee chairmanship — came from remaining a Democrat in good standing. If he didn’t cut deals and build relationships with young bucks like Biden, his influence was over. This was the strategy and the structure of the Dixiecrat bloc.

Biden wasn’t a master legislator at age 30; he was one piece in a much larger game, a game that was ending even if the players didn’t yet know it. That is not a knock on him. We are almost all pawns of the larger forces that order our worlds. What’s important is to be aware of that fact, to not get so caught up in our individual stories that we lose sight of the structures that shape us.

The Republicans of today may be the inheritors of the Dixiecrats’ seats, but they have adopted an entirely different strategy. It is not in Mitch McConnell’s interest to cut true deals with Biden. Here, again, Biden is a pawn in the politics of his era, not the master. The problem is he doesn’t seem to realize it.

More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/26/18715650/joe-biden-2020-prim
ary-democrat-senator-segregation

Did I mention the Dixiecrats were all white? They are all gone now, but they were replaced with all whites from another party.

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Thursday, June 27, 2019 7:55 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I don't give two shits what that was about.

Right now it's about citizens (which include blacks and legals born of Mexican and South American descent), vs illegal aliens.

Go fuck yourself for purposely trying to conflate the two as being even remotely similar by making it a "white" thing.

Idiot.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

With Census Decision, Trump’s GOP Falters in March Toward White Minority Rule

Today the Supreme Court agreed with the government that a citizenship question on the 2020 Census could be legal, if justified by a legitimate reason.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s justification for adding the citizenship question was “contrived,” and remanded the decision back to the lower courts.

The ruling essentially says, ‘You can’t give a fake reason.’ Ross would now have to give a real reason, but the time window is closing quickly on that. And if Ross can come up with a justification, derived from a reasonable decision-making process, it would still have to survive the scrutiny of New York City District Judge Jesse Furman, to whom the case has been remanded. But Furman has no shortage of skepticism for Ross.

The court’s characteristically narrow ruling, however, elides the most important revelation of the census saga: that the Donald Trump administration allied with anti-immigrant demagogues and the architects of Republican gerrymandering in an effort to specifically suppress the political power and participation of immigrants and people of color. Emails released by the Commerce Department during litigation revealed that former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, mastermind of nationwide voter suppression efforts, wrote to Ross in July 2017, “at the direction of Steve Bannon,” urging him to add a citizenship question because its absence “leads to the problem that aliens . . . are still counted for congressional apportionment purposes.”

Then, earlier this month, it was reported that the late Tom Hofeller, a Republican National Committee redistricting expert, had urged the Trump transition team to adopt a citizenship question after determining that it “would clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and “advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.” A paragraph drafted by Hofeller and found on his hard drive by his estranged daughter supported the premise that citizenship data would help enforce the Voting Rights Act. That paragraph later appeared word for word in a draft letter from the Justice Department to the Census Bureau requesting the citizenship question.

This accumulation of evidence suggests not just that Ross’s justification — to Congress and the public — was a lie (or, as Roberts would put it, a “contrivance”), but that the real motive was the one suspected by Democrats and civil rights advocates from the outset: to transfer political power from minority communities to white people in red states.

More at https://theintercept.com/2019/06/27/census-citizenship-question-suprem
e-court/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, June 27, 2019 7:59 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
People who claim it's a 'white' thing are racist.

Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
fart

fify

And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
tic tac

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Friday, June 28, 2019 7:54 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The other day The Times published an Op-Ed that used analysis of party platforms to place U.S. political parties on a left-right spectrum along with their counterparts abroad. The study found that the G.O.P. is far to the right of mainstream European conservative parties. It’s even to the right of anti-immigrant parties like Britain’s UKIP and France’s National Rally. Basically, if we saw something like America’s Republicans in another country, we’d classify them as white nationalist extremists.

True, this is just one study. But it matches up with lots of other evidence. Political scientists who use congressional votes to track ideology find that Republicans have moved drastically to the right over the past four decades, to the point where they are now more conservative than they were at the height of the Gilded Age.

Or just compare the G.O.P., point by point, with parties almost everyone would classify as right-wing authoritarians — parties like Hungary’s Fidesz, which has preserved some of the forms of democracy but has effectively created a permanent one-party state.

Fidesz has cemented its power by politicizing the judiciary, creating rigged election rules, suppressing opposition media and using the power of the state to reward the party’s cronies while punishing businesses that don’t toe the line. Does any of it sound like something that isn’t already happening here, and which Republicans will do much more of if they get the chance?

One might even argue that the G.O.P. stands out among the West’s white nationalist parties for its exceptional willingness to crash right through the guardrails of democracy. Extreme gerrymandering, naked voter suppression and stripping power from offices the other party manages to win all the same — these practices seem more prevalent here than in the failing democracies of Eastern Europe.

www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/opinion/socialism-2020.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, June 28, 2019 10:17 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
People who claim it's a 'white' thing are racist.
Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
fart
fify

And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
tic tac

Yup. Second's an idiot.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, June 28, 2019 4:05 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Former President Jimmy Carter, on Friday, describing President Donald Trump as an illegitimate president who wouldn’t have won but for Russian interference on his behalf.

“I think the interference, although not yet quantified, if fully investigated, would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016,” the 94-year-old Carter said. “He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”

The panel moderator, historian Jon Meacham, asked Carter if that means he thinks Trump “is an illegitimate president.” Carter said he does.

Trump indicated that he’s not opposed to the idea of Russia helping him again in 2020. Trump said he’d be willing to accept dirt on his Democratic opponents from a foreign entity — a willingness at odds with the position of FBI Director Christopher Wray, who testified to Congress that candidates should contact the FBI in such a scenario.

“The FBI director is wrong,” Trump proclaimed when Stephanopoulos brought up the position of his own handpicked FBI director.

Just a few hours before Carter called him an illegitimate president, Trump signaled during a photo op at the G20 summit in Japan with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he still doesn’t think Russian interference is a serious matter.

It’s worth noting that Carter has been relatively muted in his criticisms of Trump to date, and has in fact praised aspects of his foreign policy — including his openness to diplomacy with North Korea and his decision not to launch military strikes against Iran — so it’s not as though he’s an outspoken member of the “resistance.”

Trump himself recently drew the results of the 2016 election into question, but for quite different reasons. During an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd that aired last Sunday, Trump suggested he may not have actually lost the popular vote, if you factor in what he claimed was massive voter fraud.

“There were a lot of votes cast that I don’t believe,” Trump told Todd, citing zero evidence for the claim, which elections experts have repeatedly debunked.

www.vox.com/2019/6/28/19127475/jimmy-carter-trump-illegitimate-preside
nt

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, June 29, 2019 8:49 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Jeff Flake @JeffFlake tweeted:

Words matter, Mr. President. Joking with Vladimir Putin about "getting rid" of journalists is not funny at all. It puts journalists at risk.
4:15 PM - 28 Jun 2019

Jeff Flake offers rare defense of Trump after Jimmy Carter suggests POTUS is 'illegitimate'
www.foxnews.com/politics/jeff-flake-offers-rare-defense-of-trump-after
-jimmy-carter-suggests-potus-is-illegitimate

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, June 29, 2019 10:23 AM

Yeah. Nobody should joke about getting rid of journalists when they're being laid off left and right.

Being out on your ass with no prospects of ever getting a comparable wage in your future is no laughing matter.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, June 29, 2019 1:07 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yeah. Nobody should joke about getting rid of journalists when they're being laid off left and right.

Being out on your ass with no prospects of ever getting a comparable wage in your future is no laughing matter.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

It is not about wages:
List of journalists killed in Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_Russia

Not everyone who has a quarrel with Russian President Vladimir Putin dies in violent or suspicious circumstances. But enough loud critics of Putin's policies have been murdered that Thursday's daylight shooting of a Russian who sought asylum in Ukraine has led to speculation of Kremlin involvement.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the shooting in Kiev of Denis Voronenkov, a former Russian Communist Party member who began sharply criticizing Putin after fleeing Russia in 2016, an "act of state terrorism by Russia."

That drew a sharp rebuke from Putin's spokesman, who called the accusation "absurd." Throughout the years, the Kremlin has always dismissed the notion of political killings with scorn.

Here are some outspoken critics of Putin who were killed or died mysteriously:

10 critics of Vladimir Putin who died violently or in suspicious ways
www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/23/here-are-ten-crit
ics-of-vladimir-putin-who-died-violently-or-in-suspicious-ways/

At G20, Trump Continues to Excuse and Justify the Murder of Journalists
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/06/28/at-g20-trump-continues-to-exc
use-and-justify-the-murder-of-journalists/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, June 29, 2019 1:33 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
fart

fify

Meanwhile, actual - yanno - facts from Statista that SLOPPY-SECONDS seems to be allergic to:

Where's Russia on that list, SLOPPY-SECONDS?

Where's the US?

And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
tic tac

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Sunday, June 30, 2019 9:49 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Where's Russia on that list, SLOPPY-SECONDS?

Where's the US?

I see you misunderstood, launching yourself into a defense of Russia as a Russian troll would. What is to be understood is that it was about Trump, the US President, joking with the Russian about killing Trump's personal journalistic enemies. So if the US is killing journalists, has Trump already started killing his enemies? Who knows? That is not in your graphic, but the Russian sure has a dozen dead enemies. The Russian says he did not kill them. Who knows? That, too, is not in your graphic.

Dozens of Russian journalists have been murdered since 2000, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Glasnost Defense Foundation. They weren't covering shooting wars or riots but powerful Russian institutions. A surprising number have implausibly fallen or slipped to their deaths.

Why Do Russian Journalists Keep Falling?
www.npr.org/2018/04/21/604497554/why-do-russian-journalists-keep-falli
ng

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, June 30, 2019 9:56 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump presents himself as an alpha male, bigger, badder and sexier than anyone else in the zoo. Threats and insults are his standard operating procedure. People don’t support him because they think he’s nice or sophisticated in his reasoning.

The irony, of course, is that once you get past his mouth he turns out to be an uncommonly weak and ineffectual president. True, his allies and cronies are securing judgeships and eviscerating regulations, but Trump himself is 99% Public Relations. His job is to distract you from what the real movers and shakers in the White House, the Cabinet, and the GOP controlled Senate are doing.

The New York Times, by giving us megadoses of Trump’s mouth, is a megaphone for him. If they secretly want him to be re-elected, they should continue doing more of that and less and less covering what his Cabinet and the Senate are doing. But here’s a better way:

1. Absolutely no front page news on Trump unless he actually does something — and saying stupid or mean stuff doesn’t qualify as doing.

2. Change the ruling meme from “He is upending the world through his threats and insults” to “He is a blowhard who actually does almost nothing.” Treat him not like an alpha but more like an omega with endless vocalizations, best ignored.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, July 1, 2019 6:52 AM