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Posts posted by berlinerbaer
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Muller testifies in congress this month, China talks fail and tariffs go up, sending stocks down, down, down...
When was the last war we started purely as a means of distracting the population? Was it one of the Reagan central American skirmishes? I can't even put Iraq in that category.
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3 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:
As far as I can tell, most open US gun owners are more likely to support fascism than fight it. Especially, if there is an old white guy trying to make himself king. They'll be the ones doing the military's dirty work for them. The "silent majority" of gun owners aren't going to do shit except maintain a low profile and defend themselves if needed. Just like now. The best way to avoid that drone strike is to sit tight rather than band with 10 or 15 guys and declare your town independent.Â
An armed population is antithetical to an authoritarian government. Period. A dictatorship with the available resources will eliminate all threats to its rule, eventually from present-day sympathizers.
The gun nuts will hoot and holler as The Others are rounded up, but how long is that sustainable? Will the old angry white men simply be content to shoot at the dark faces they see on TV for all eternity?
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Hey, I also want Trump to be tough on China. That's mostly because economic pain is the only way Trump's approval rating floor will go down, but there is also a little acknowledgement on my part that it's probably working to some extent and the Chinese need to be dealt with.
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2 hours ago, GRHorn said:
So I know y’all are all debating about how much socialism Venezuela has enacted, but can we agree that outlawing private gun ownership has put the average Venezuelans here in a tough spot?Â
Outlawing gun ownership isn't a socialist policy. It's authoritarian. You don't need to own guns in a well-functioning democracy. The founding fathers put the 2nd amendment in the constitution as a safeguard to democracy, most likely one that has outlived its usefulness.
There's a more important lesson here for you to learn. Under the right-wing illiberal "democracy" you have wet dreams about, you will not be allowed to own guns. They will come for the brown people's weapons long before yours, but they will disarm all of the masses one way or another. Eventually.
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On 5/1/2019 at 5:52 PM, bad_teammate said:
No clear path! We need some heat to draw attention.Â
Hotly-contested primaries lead to invaluable media attention and fiercer loyalties.
Pretty much this.
There were some great primary match-ups in 2018, like the Stacys in the GA governor's race and Fletcher vs. Moser in TX-7. The winners of these primaries are the stronger candidate in the general election.
Thanks to Joaquin, we won't know if Hegar really is the best option to beat Cornyn. Some of his would-be supporters now might remain invisible to party GOTV efforts, which is an overlooked reason to get high turnout in primary elections.
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7 hours ago, Skyline said:
Little late to the rankings talk, but here's my list:
Group I'm ok with: Warren, Booker, Harris, and Bernie.
Group that needs more experience, or needs to run for senate/governor in their state: Pete, and Beto
Group I don't care for: Tulsi, Biden, and Gillibrand.Â
Anybody I didn't mention is someone I would need convincing for.Â
Warren is in the lead for me right now. I like Kamala and Bernie, too.Â
But, man, ALL of them are head and shoulders above Trump. Voting for every single one in the general would be the easiest decision ever.Â
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10 hours ago, Parliament said:
So what does the "Surly Leadership Committee" recommend our President do? Pull support for Guido? End the sanctions? Start buying oil from them again?
I'm not for or against any of that. I just can't find a path that works.Â
10 hours ago, David Dennison said:John Bolton in the role of Baghdad Bob on the tee vee.
It's funny. I actually give Dotard some leeway on foreign policy, just because far more qualified people have been screwing up so bad since 2003. Other than being dead set against military intervention, I don't have strong feelings on our current Venezuela policy.
Then I see that John Bolton is in the administration and I know its all going to be a shit show. Like decades-long-insurgency-FARC-on-cocaine kind of shit show.
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7 hours ago, Incredulity said:
I somehow had never encountered a Muslim woman in a swimsuit.
Â
Maybe I'll take a creeper pic for you the next time I see one at the pool here in Sugar Land.
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I chatted at length about a year ago with a company VP about doing business in China, and he said in no uncertain terms how wearily he viewed the prospect. He was well aware of the risks, as I would imagine most upper managers would be. Thankfully, it's not an attractive market for our division.
Despite all that, we just can't resist sailing too close to the rocks. Our most technical salesperson just spent a month there. I recently learned we have started manufacturing our most popular product, and a major portion of our technology and competitive advantage, at our Chinese plant. We own the site, but espionage, if possible, has already occurred. The lure of fortune is just too strong.
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It's a good feeling when an elected official says things that not just make you think, but require one to pull out their calculator. That doesn't happen all that often anymore.
If only fact checking a Republican could be as sophisticated.
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Just hold another referendum, ya goddamn wankers.
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I barely follow basketball and that would be a splashy hire even to me.
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2 minutes ago, hpslugga said:
By that I meant the Diane Feinsteins, the Steny Hoyers, the Nancy Pelosis, et al. I obviously did not mean to indict AOC, Ilhan Omar, etc with that.
But what Bill Maher said years ago about the former is absolutely true even more so now: they are the New Republicans.
Ideologically, their differences are very seldom and when there are some, it’s usually by a flea’s hop. We wouldn’t be “losing a Conservative party” if the GOP vanished. They’re not conservatives. They’re today’s Democrats if today’s Democrats forgot to take their insanity medications for at least a year.
Ridiculous.
I think those aforementioned establishment Democrats would at least be capable of engaging in dialogue about climate change as opposed to the GOP, who refuse to acknowledge its existence and work to stymie all progress on legislation, etc. So, yes, there is a chasm separating the moderate wing of the Democratic party and the GOP.
If the GOP vanished and the moderates became the new conservatives then this country would take a massive leap forward. Hook that shit up to my veins.
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6 minutes ago, hpslugga said:
Just ask the DemocratsÂ
So they should just suck it up for the next decade and vote D.
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Now is a terrible time to join the Republican Party. My guess is that if you went to a local party meeting you'd either be afraid to speak up or you'd get shouted down by the wingnuts. If you're lucky, they'd humor you and then blow you off.
There's no convincing them. They'll only understand one thing: Losing. 2018 was a good start, but they need to lose more. Vote. Them. Out. Their brand of politics needs to be a political loser on a national level or they'll see no reason to change.
As an aside, you seem to think the Dems are heading to the leftist fringe at warp speed and you couldn't be a voice of moderation. That might be true, but I think we are a decade away, and that's only if the Dems do a lot of winning between now and then and become fat and dumb themselves.
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15 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:
The chicanery simply doesn't stop with these assholes. Greg Abbott filling courts with GOP judges whom voters rejected:
ÂSo are some Texas state judicial seats by appointment instead of through election, or are these just temporary fills until the next (special) election?
Either way, Hot Wheels was going to fill them with Republicans.Â
I look at this like I do the McSally appointment to the Senate in AZ after her loss. Seems like some personal back scratching or a mad scramble to fill the seat with someone with a pulse. It's pathetic, really. The fact is that the November election results, big gains for the Dems, still stand.
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11 hours ago, Incredulity said:
You ever been waiting in aisle to deplane and been crawled over by a person of Asian decent?
Don’t do that.
You ever encounter a pile of wadded up fecal soiled toilet paper in a trash bin?
Don’t do that.
Â
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5 hours ago, EMAWesome said:
The co-founder of Greenpeace gives his opinion of AOC and the New Green Deal.
Â
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13 hours ago, happyfunball said:
It is easy to shit on Trump and Co, but I rather no deal than a bad deal. I’m more amazed that Trump can walk away and not fold like a cheap lawn chair.
We'll take our wins, however diminutive, and like them, thank you.
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1 hour ago, Anastasis said:
I have consistently rejected a distributional approach to defining the "middle class", for  reasons that you allude to. The American Middle Class is defined by a set of lifestyle characteristics common to a certain stratum of the socioeconomic segmentation. It's not a bracket of the household income distribution. Historically, some of these characteristics were accessible home ownership, accessible secondary education, career professionals with relative job security, the ability to engage in recreation and leisure activities with disposable income after covering their primary needs and setting something aside for retirement, etc. These are the characteristics that define the middle class imo, with a range from lower to upper middle class. If you want to pull down a straight up distributional middle class, "middle is middle", the middle class ranges from 30k to 110k household (25th-75th percentiles). 30k is poverty level for a family of 4. That's not middle class by any realistic measure. 110k in a dual income household with 2-3 kids doesn't check many of the boxes I listed. I would hardly classify that as upper middle class. Distributional assessments really break down in this discussion. I think that we would agree that the middle class is getting smaller and being eroded in this country. Distributional arguments like "middle is middle" fail to acknowledge this. I am not sure where the lower end of middle income would be, somewhere in 50-60th (60-85k). But that gets pretty tight on the lower end. I could see a higher cut point. All very dependent on geographic region and number of persons in household and a variety of other factors. Â
I agree with this. I look at "middle class" as meaning earning a living through "work" in the usual sense, that is translating manual labor or a more refined skill into the production of goods or services. This could be flipping burgers, toiling in an assembly line, grading exams, managing someone's financial portfolio, or performing open heart surgery.
A member of the upper class OTOH is someone able to live purely off the economy, earning the majority of their income through stocks, interest, trust funds, equity, etc. They are a world away from anything resembling a traditional 40 hour work week.
Actual income doesn't really matter.
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51 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:
What you and the Times are calling “upper middle class” I think is more accurately called the “professional” class. You got your doctors, lawyers, university professors, small business owners, architects, accountants, upper management, etc. That’s generally the top 15 percent of income earners.Â
I don’t doubt that this groups income has chugged right along with GDP over the years. It’s in the interest of the top .0001 percent who are currently hoarding the grotesque majority of this country’s new wealth to keep both the professional class relatively happy and give the lower class, including what we used to know as the middle class, someone else to resent instead of the top .0001 percenters.
Think about it. How much contact does the bottom 90 percent have with the top .0001 percent? None. Never. Zilch.Â
How much contact does the bottom 90 percent have with the professional class? Quite a bit. And the professional class gets to tell them what to do, (watch your weight fatass, study for this test, get me a TPS report, fetch me some coffee, you fucked up your taxes last year, pay me 5k or your’re going to jail for DWI,) while looking relatively wealthy in comparison while the lower and middle class get poorer and poorer. It breeds understandable resentment that is misdirected as to where it should be going, namely the thieves at the top .0001 percent.
This latest republican tax scame is the perfect example of what is and has been going on for damn near 40 years and is nothing but a money grab by the top .0001 percent at the expense of every fucking other person in the country. It’s obscene and the fact that the republicans support it should doom them to minority status for not just years, but decades.Â
This right here. Each socioeconomic stratum hates the one immediately above and below it. The "middle" (working) class despises the welfare moochers below them and holds their daily credentialed overlords in disdain while giving the top 1% a pass simply due to ignorance.
IOW the ideal Republican voter.
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I'd love Biden to run. The sound bites and zingers would be fantastic. As much as I like him, I worry about him getting me-too'ed at the 11th hour and handing re-election to the Dotard.
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So this is kind of a big deal.Â
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The Left loves Barbara Lee. I'm curious what our resident leftists think of this.
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1 hour ago, David Dennison said:
You answered your own question.
As for the other people, not enough taxes were withheld from their paychecks. The dumbass Republicans wanted to get credit in the short term with bumps in pay without really thinking ahead to tax day 2019 when people would notice their refunds were lower or they actually owed money.
Is the too little withholding thing something Trump can "fix" by EO, or will it require passing a new bill in congress?

Trump's Trade War
in Cloak Room
Posted
If tariffs stay at 10%, then maybe. If they go up to 25%, the US consumer will for sure share the pain.