pretty fair.

rather have competent, caring, compromising (to get problems addressed), near-the-center leadership. rid america of crazed, corrupt, callous, craven cowards that prefer power over contentment.

tho' seeing higher education, sane healthcare, and a tax structure that provides for all the necessities of running a country...if that's a revolution - then joe missed the mark.

(see there? complaining about joe & ain't in office yet! not about the party, it's about feeling good enough to want to party!)

problems want to have...
- road surfaces so smooth, have to fight the impulse to nap
- primary education so effective, 8yr-old takes over doing the taxes after seeing last year's submitted forums
- healthcare so affordable, have no reason to see doctor...when too broke, embarrassed, or there are needles!
- an employer that pushes you to work harder w/"are we paying you too much?" & you know the bastard is right.
- hoping your mandated paid vacation time isn't so long you forget how to say 'you want fries w/that'
- keeping your voting selection secret because you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings 'it was so hard! all were so worthy! have to choose someone?!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klUweWE-u6A

I think the supreme court agreed with me (edit: apparently I'm wrong there, they struck down that part of the law), voters sure do.

IDs cost money, so are a poll tax if they're required to vote. Make them free, you erase that argument. Then you only have to solve accessibility.

Tens of millions of Americans don't have ID. Trump thinks you need one to buy bread because he's never done it, but has also likely never needed ID either...why would he?
If you're paid in cash and can't afford to drive, who needs ID?
https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-legislation-fact-sheet

That's the only thing you took issue with? That's real progress. So forget the mail in vote fraud fraud, and we're agreed that universal voting would kill the Republican party and they only survive by voter suppression.

There's always a chance, what there isn't is any evidence it's ever been a problem (except 2018 which had huge problems with Republicans trying to cheat, but they were caught), including in the multiple states that have been universally voting by mail for multiple elections. It's never been a question before Trump. Now it's only questionable because of Trump's incompetence, interference, and lies.
Yesterday he said if he loses, there's cheating, if he wins, there isn't. I'm certain you are so gone you agree with that and don't see any problems with that mindset.

Don't forget Trump's multi million dollar investigation into fraudulent votes in 2016 when he claims 3 million illegal immigrants voted found.....wait for it.......FUCKING NOTHING. The only voter fraud in decades has been by Republicans. You still never offered a single one of the "known instances of Democrats cheating", but you tried at least 3 times failing miserably every time and only coming up with Trump's plan to suppress and deny the votes of tens of millions of citizens, cheating them out of their vote to stop this lie of non existent, not found when investigated, rampant illegal voting. Nothing else, certainly not a single democrat cheating.

Voter ID is a poll tax. If Republicans had paid for the ID they wanted everyone to have, and forced everyone to get their voter only ID in person, so rich people weren't exempt from this extra day spent at the dmv and fee requirement to vote, it wouldn't be a consideration because the point isn't to stop in person voter fraud which isn't a problem, it's to stop people who can't afford to pay $25 and take two days off work to vote from voting.

It's the same reason Republicans refuse to consider making election day a holiday so everyone could vote...more voters mean fewer Republicans elected.

Yep, the answer to any problem from you, cut taxes. Military underfunded, cut taxes. Can't afford universal health care, cut taxes. Debt and deficit are bigger than GDP, cut taxes. Infrastructure crumbling, cut taxes. Daddy Trump's businesses are struggling, cut taxes, especially theirs.

How many trillions more do they need? How much of that goes directly into Trump's families pockets? They already took dozens, up to hundreds of millions last round despite being specifically banned from the program.

Democrats want higher taxes because we like America being a sovereign nation, and bankrupting us into third world status could change that. When the final numbers for 2020 come out, I bet you that dinner you still owe me it will be double the deficit of any other year in history or worse, $6 trillion+ in spending and another trillion+ in lost taxes from lost production thanks to not shutting down in March-May....on top of the trillion+ deficit built into the budget.....and we're heading into a global depression with this deep debt, making borrowing money near impossible.

2021 is going to be a disaster too, no matter who's elected. Trump has ensured it. Any company that can afford to leave is leaving already, bud. They took the handouts from Trump and in pure Trump fashion took the cash and ignored what it was for, many using that money for expansions outside America, companies like Harley Davidson.

JOBS JOBS JOBS will do wonders to turn around poverty.

Cutting taxes for companies to come in and create jobs is a good start.

Democrats seem to want higher taxes so Companies and those who can afford to leave, leave.

Bob,

Here's where we agree on something.

I came from amazing wealth, like total top .01%, then lost everything and ended up in absolute poverty. I taught myself a valuable skill and kept building and building on it. It started with shit jobs, but I kept learning and doing more and never stopped believing in myself or in my ability to better my circumstance. I went to college and learned how to learn more efficiently. Even now, I'm improving my skills on a daily basis. 40 years later, now I'm in the 1%.

This is America to me, one part of it: that in America, you at least have a chance -- however small, however improbable -- to better yourself through your own skills, drive and determination. It's not a 100% guarantee, but I honestly haven't seen another country that fosters this attitude.

For the nb, did I have a leg up? Definitely. I was born with an extraordinary mind into a hyper-affluent family. As a child I went to the best public schools in America during a time when education was valued above all else. By the time my mom and I were basically on the street, I had enough base knowledge to build on what I'd already learned. I also took advantage of community college when it was all but free ($50 a semester) and was able to take pretty much any class that interested me. I was also able to afford a computer when they were very expensive and complicated.

Finally, I was born a white male and caught innumerable breaks because of that. I have zero doubt that I am where I am in part to this accident of birth, because I was told by cops, teachers and employers, sometimes quite openly and sometimes in coded language, that I was preferred over non-white people.

For all America's sin -- and many be thy score -- the nucleus of true capitalism is still alive.

America is in for a serious wake up call when schools don't reopen, because spoiler alert. They're not reopening. And guess what, there's no alternative child care that will be available. Really. None. This is fine for the upper middle class and the wealthy, they can afford it, but the middle and lower class are going to be absolutely destroyed. Having a child unable to return to school means they can't work.

Don't believe me? here's what's going to happen. Currently in my state there's already a shortage of substitutes. They've cancelled classes numerous times because they simply can't find a sub when a teacher is sick. Now imagine what happens when a school has an outbreak and 30 or 40 students and staff gets sick. It's going to completely destroy the school, and the morale of teachers who are still there will be in the toilet. The classes they do continue are going to be absolutely worthless. The teachers will be miserable, and so will the kids. Now imagine the fact that school districts in Republican counties will refuse to shut down.You think these teachers are going to continue going to work and risking their lives? Nope. Not for what they get paid. So eventually the teachers union is going to stand up for the working conditions, and if they don't go online, they're going to strike. This will effectively shut down public schools across the entire US and costs billions and billions of dollars. But here's the worst part, all these schools that follow Betsy Devos' advice, and are taking the Republican approach of "stay in school no matter what!" are going to have zero alternate plans. You think it was bad back in march when schools were closing and didn't know what the fuck to do, take that times ten. Now, we've got another complication on top of everything else, and that's that parents are already fucking crazy about their kids education. They're not only going to be losing their shit because their kids will have to stay home, and they can't work, but their kids also won't be getting educated. Think of the gathering of the juggalos, and imagine it's Karens at a school board meeting. That's where we're headed. It's going to be an absolute shit show, and all because Americans are too fucking dumb and arrogant to simply wear a mask, and social distance for a few weeks. really, we could have this behind us like the rest of the world, but we've got to sit in time out and watch 100s of thousands die because we're acting like toddlers.

I would encourage everyonw to watch the latest interview with Betsy Devos. When asked what should be done when there's an outbreak at schools she said "we need to reopen schools", when asked again, she just repeated herself. They literally have no alternate plan. None. When the outbreaks happen, these schools are going to close, and the schools will have no contingency plans. Because the leadership in the US has been so abysmal, and the rich people making decisions have nothing to worry about. Fuck the poor, make them bring their kids to work, that's where we're at.

I looked up some stats just to see.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/

30 per million blacks fatally shot by police.
12 per million whites fatally shot by police.

So cops are roughly twice as likely to kill a black person, per racial group.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219gg

US being 76% white and 13% black, that works out to an aggregate ratio of roughly 9 whites killed per 4 blacks, per capita. In the end the death toll is high all around, white people aren't getting away scott free.

We should also consider poverty. Poverty and crime tend to track one another. It's safe to assume that areas with more crime will be more likely to experience police encounters, and hence more police shootings on average.

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%
22%7D

White poverty rate (9%) is roughly half of black poverty (22%), which implies that crime is also half as frequent among whites, which is roughly similar to the per capita difference in police shooting rate.

30/12 is 2.5
22/9 is 2.44
2.5 > 2.44, so it implies bias against blacks, but not as big as I expected.

As far as total people killed, cops kill plenty people of all races. The numbers don't look as lopsided as I expected, which surprises me.

I appreciate the solidarity among black people. They at least try to hold authorities to account.

White people couldn't care less when cops kill whites. They just shrug it off as 'well the guy must have done something to piss off the cop, so it was probably their own fault anyways'. You can sit on liveleak watching cops kill white people all day, but other white people never get worked up about it. It's a shame they don't have the same sense of unity as black people do.

I wish the protests were about police abuse in general. Or even goverment abuse. There are so many issues that need fixing (e.g. civil forfeiture, repeatedly trying people for the same event by tweaking charges until a conviction sticks, government budget being infinitely larger than a defendant's budget, government freezing a defendant's funds so they can't afford lawyers, etc).

-scheherazade

Not a paintball.

Whatever it was, it used explosive propulsion, not gas, you can clearly see the flash just after 21 seconds. Paintball guns give a little puff of gas sometimes, but it wouldn't light up like that. Paintball guns also don't sound like that.

I hope it was some form of "non lethal" ammunition, but remember a reporter lost an eye just the other day to something similar.

The #1 job of the police is, and always has been, to enforce the divide between rich and poor. Most pretend or believe they are there to "protect" law-abiding citizens, but times like these their true colors shine through. If there weren't such a stark divide between rich and poor, 90% of the work police do would vanish. Maybe if they actually enforced the law when it came to rich people, laws on tax evasion and wage theft, I might believe otherwise.

Of all financially-motivated crimes in the US (theft, robbery, fraud, all that rolled together) the biggest sector, outweighing ALL OTHERS COMBINED by a 2:1 factor, is wage theft. Employers not giving vacation days, or breaks they're obliged to, forcing employees to work extra hours without pay, docking pay for illegal reasons, or simply not paying what they owe. This is a criminal enterprise that steals 15 BILLION dollars a year from working-class Americans for the benefit of people who already have more money than they can use.

If you steal money from the rich and get caught, you go to jail Period.

The penalty for wage theft, literally stealing from those who cannot afford to lose more? First offense, if you're convicted (which is rare) a $10,000 fine.

These are really impressive. I'm not a big art person (gallery art, I mean)...but these are very intriguing. I'd put one in my house. But probably couldn't afford it.

Dishonest morons go to Cuba looking for problems and find some. Duh.


Every shortage problem they decry is caused by America's embargo. Gas shortages....because America won't let them import it. Old cars....because America won't allow them to import any new ones. Medicine shortages, no fresh food out of season in cities...
because America won't let them to export anything to be able to afford it, or use credit. No international investments...because America won't allow it. No American tourism (meaning by any American company or subsidiaries, or travel that includes America like cruise ships or international air travel), because America won't allow it. No money, because America won't let them export anything or exploit tourism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba

Cuba was doing just fine before we embargoed them into abject poverty for 60+ years. Cuba is doing far better today than they represent.

These are slums and abandoned buildings. Go to Detroit slums, you morons. It's worse, and not because it's communist. Try 5th ward Houston, same thing. Try Florida, plenty of hurricane ravaged ruins there too. American slums don't have communism to dishonestly blame.

Try flying your drone where it's not allowed in America, the cops will be at your door again, and this time you're going to prison, not the embassy, idiots.

And who do they claim is suggesting we convert to communism in America? Probably these morons don't know the difference between communism and socialism and assume their audience doesn't either, or the difference between pure communist socialism and democratic socialism, and don't know America already is a democratic socialist country. Such utter bullshit...it is from turningpoint USA after all.

So sad this is what the right calls informative.

Edit: don't take the above as an endorsement of communism, it's not one. It's a lambasting of dishonest propagandists twisting reality to suit their political narrative.

Hopefully she will be able to afford shoes now. Poor girl.

1) I question your sources, because some of the earliest writings ever found were business ledgers dealing with selling grains as I understand it. Capitalism has been a thing since before writing was a thing.

2) um...I think those kids in China would dispute that....THEY made the Iphones, which created a smart phone market by being useful and fun (for most people).

3) do you believe capitalism and the industrial revolution started at the same time, or that capitalism has something to do with surfs, civil rights, or secularism? Capitalism applied to people is indentured servitude, what we lazily call slavery. Unfettered capitalism created a situation where civil rights needed to be delineated and codified, it didn't create them any more than wildfires created firemen imo.

Some people do educate themselves before acting or making purchases, but it's not the norm.

Capitalism says your poor neighbors should die, because capitalism says there is no value to human life...I did a term paper on that. Value is derived from a supply/demand equation, and there's such a glut of humanity that human life has a negative value.

The government paid for around 75% of the technology development. "...it paid for some of the technology...." is incredibly misleading, if technically correct (the best kind of correct). Without a healthy dose of socialism, progress slows to a crawl and only the privileged few can afford it.

1 word....flip-phones. ;-) (I don't even have one of those)

1) Definitely - but without a market improvements fall flat and dont stick. Ancient people had a lot of good ideas but overall progress was really slow and retrograded often until.. well until capitalism became a thing. Abolishing serfdom, general civil rights, separation of church from state and the fall of absolutism made the Iphone possible.

2) No, that is my point. People "discover" things all the time, some of these things are deemed useful by the general public and capitalism provides the tools to finance production and distribution (the profit part is optional - it is entirely legal to sell your invention for any price or indeed give it away for free).

So to get to the original point capitalism did not discover or design the Iphone but it certainly MADE the Iphone.

3) Not impossible but incredibly slow. Generations lived out their entire lives without perceptible changes in their environments prior to the onslaught of capitalism and the industrial revolution. The advent of science from the renaissance onwards was OK, but only once factories and transport infrastructure became a thing did living conditions start to change for everyone.

A big problem with free markets is that they are never really "free". A theoretical free market implies too many things that dont ever happen in real life, like everyone having all relevant information and being able to make a good decision. People just dont do that IRL.

Also not everything can be solved by free markets because you cant just let your neighbors die poor because the market says they deserve it. However the Iphone is really not something the state should subsidize. I understand that it paid for some of the technology that went into designing it. But true socialism would have to make sure everyone could afford one, and would design a cheap bad phone to fit the need.