Poor bastards are going to get screwed.
Everyone in this video will die as a result of their Trump vote.
Clinton, for all her faults, desperately tried to put through real healthcare reform in the 90's. Bill told her to stop because it was haemmoraging them votes.
Why didn't she run on that, at least in these places?

In that case I believe we agree

(voting for anything other than either of the two big parties is a protest vote)

And yes absolutely there needs to be some kind of reform.

@radx

I don't see money being taken out of politics. Especially not with a Republican legislative / executive before the next election. In fact I've honestly become cynical about campaign finance reform having any serious effect no matter how well designed.

You can limit campaigns and their committees all you want, but if the money's there it will find it's way in through sponsored media and astro turfed 'grass roots' organisations that will claim some kind of legal disassociation with the candidate. Or the law will just be ignored like the supposed separation between campaigns and super PACs now.

Not that I like this, but I feel the lesson here as far as winning elections is concerned is, for a successful party the campaign never ends. Obama was blamed for every economic and foreign policy event over the past 8 years with little meaningful rebuke despite GOP obstructionism being a huge factor. He came very close to losing to Romney.

After Republicans claimed the legislative branch and so many state level positions that message should have been easy to refute citing an unwillingness to compromise for results (Simpson-Bowles debt plan should have been exhibit A). I would not at all be surprised if even now with almost complete government dominance, they are able to blame the Democrats for years to come by claiming to be fixing existing policy mistakes.

If Democrats don't deliver an effective message, they'll be looking at a second Trump term, with every failing over the previous 4 years blamed on them.

@gorillaman

The only thing I see failing completely is your absurd attempt at rationalizing your bigotry--more aptly labelled in this case by its proper name: Islamophobia. I don't for a second believe what I'm about to post will change your mind about Islam or Muslims in general but I do believe that this kind of bigotry needs to be called out when it rears its ugly head. And my, you went full ugly there, didn't you... comparing Muslims to rats and seriel killers? Classy.

Despite your protestations to the contrary, there are in fact Muslims who do not believe in God but for a variety of reasons (keeping peace with religious family members, maintaining a connection to their cultural heritage, networking, etc.) continue to attend services and identify as Muslims. This is true of many believers in all the major religions, including Christianity and Judaism.

You see, as much as you'd like Muslims to all be boogeymen coming to bring Sharia law down on the rest of world, anyone who has actually met and talked with a Muslim (and god-forbid actually visited one of the countries StukaFox listed) realizes that Muslims, like all people, are extremely diverse (again, despite your protestations to the contrary).

Indeed there are Sharia zealots. But there are also moderates and reformers and even liberal radicals. Mostly, though its just a lot of people trying to get on with their lives the best way they know how.

Now, I find most religious beliefs to be repugnant. However, I don't find the ideas expressed in the Koran to be much more repugnant than, say, the Bible. In fact, I'm less concerned about what is written in supposedly holy books and more concerned with how believers attempt to implement those ideas in reality. I do indeed find particular forms of this implementation, such as forcing women to wear a bhurka, disturbing (just as I find Christians' attacks on LGBT rights disturbing). It's important to note, though, that such practices are NOT universal. For example, in some Islamic countries like Malaysia it's enough to simply cover your hair with a colorful scarf.

On the other hand, other practices that you mentioned such as Female Genital Mutilation and virginity tests ARE NOT Islamic. FGM predates Islam and is still practiced in the locales where it originated (places such as Mali, for instance) that now happen to be Islamic majority areas. The Indonesian virginity tests as well do not stem from some universal commandment in Islam but from Indonesian culture which sees women as "the symbol of the nations moral guardians".

Again, I don't suppose any of this makes any difference to you. You want to see the world in black and white, us versus them, "rats" and "serial killers" versus you, the white knight who is just trying to save us all from our cultural relativistic blindness. And so the shades of grey I am describing to you will likely go overlooked. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but I suspect the reality is I'll receive some lengthy reply that can be distilled down to, "Islam bad, hur." Or perhaps, "All religions bad, but Islam worst, hur." To which I can only reply, that demonizing the practitioners of any particular religion is unlikely to bring about the reforms you seek.

Have I mentioned how much I like reading pieces by Thomas Frank?

He had a piece in the Guardian two days ago about the Podesta emails and it's just brilliant. Excerpt:

This genre of Podesta email, in which people try to arrange jobs for themselves or their kids, points us toward the most fundamental thing we know about the people at the top of this class: their loyalty to one another and the way it overrides everything else. Of course Hillary Clinton staffed her state department with investment bankers and then did speaking engagements for investment banks as soon as she was done at the state department. Of course she appears to think that any kind of bank reform should “come from the industry itself”. And of course no elite bankers were ever prosecuted by the Obama administration. Read these emails and you understand, with a start, that the people at the top tier of American life all know each other. They are all engaged in promoting one another’s careers, constantly.

Everything blurs into everything else in this world. The state department, the banks, Silicon Valley, the nonprofits, the “Global CEO Advisory Firm” that appears to have solicited donations for the Clinton Foundation. Executives here go from foundation to government to thinktank to startup. There are honors. Venture capital. Foundation grants. Endowed chairs. Advanced degrees. For them the door revolves. The friends all succeed. They break every boundary.

But the One Big Boundary remains. Yes, it’s all supposed to be a meritocracy. But if you aren’t part of this happy, prosperous in-group – if you don’t have John Podesta’s email address – you’re out.

I can't really disagree with that, but it has to be said that the issues that are not brought up are distinctly non-partisan--that is, the issues that are not brought up are the ones that are disadvantageous to both parties.

For instance, no one talks about gerrymandering anymore. It clearly benefits both parties, but it is destroying our political system by creating disincentives to working across the aisle with the other party.

In my view, there are three major structural reforms in the US government that need to be addressed: 1) Gerrymandering 2) Campaign finance and 3) regulatory capture. Of these three, only the second one is addressed by either candidate, but not in a satisfying way.

We need major reforms in healthcare and economic wealth distribution, and we need to prepare ourselves for certain worldwide economic changes due to technological innovation and globalization, but until we deal with those three major issues, we won't be able to make any headway.

Ohhhh, so you just reassert your point about Democrats never backing down, but Republicans do without any factual basis whatsoever! What a novel losing debate strategy!

Obamacare isn't perfect and needs to be fixed or replaced with something better. Not the Trumpian "something great" if it should be replaced, but something that is well thought out and addresses what Obamacare couldn't accomplish if the entire premise is systemically not going to work.

Did you see what I did there? I *gasp* recognize that sometimes things don't work! OMG! IT'S AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I also didn't say it's a "fucking disaster", because it isn't. If it were that, explain how the uninsured rate has dropped very significantly. It was never going to achieve 100% insurance rate. The only way that happens is with single payer.

Here's how stupid you are. You don't seem to understand that if Obamacare isn't the answer, you're just making single payer universal health care more likely to be enacted. The American people are not going to go back to being denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. They're just not gonna. Obamacare is the least left policy you could possibly enact that would help control costs and decrease the number of people who are uninsured.

You can scream to the top of your lungs, but Obamacare was enacted to remedy real problems. I'm even sympathetic to the argument that those were real problems, but Obamacare isn't the answer, but if you're going to make that argument, you have to propose something that has historical precedent and rationale to solve those problems. And you simply don't have one.

So again, keep struggling in the quicksand until it swallows you whole, and single payer is enacted.

Your evidence about health insurance premiums is anecdotal, and quite frankly, you don't seem to understand that your numbers and description of what happened to her is absolutely ridiculous. You don't get on medicaid because your insurance premiums go up under Obamacare. You qualify for Medicaid because of a lack of income.

Secondly, the claim is absolutely ridiculous that her premiums went up that much. For data we have available, *unsubsidized* premiums for the lowest cost silver plans for data we have in the Obamacare exchanges was $257 a month for a single person.

http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/analysis-of-2017-premium-changes-and-insurer-participation-in-the-affordable-care-acts-health-insurance-marke
tplaces/

If she qualifies for Medicaid, then surely she could go on a silver plan in the Obamacare exchanges and come out likely paying less. Oh, and, on top of that, she would EASILY qualify for federal subsidies if she qualified for medicaid.

Oh, and btw, without Obamacare, if health care companies decided to raise those premiums just to price gouge, what protection would she have? Not much. Obamacare insures that you can only take in so much that isn't spent on health care.

Your story is completely utterly full of crap on so many levels, it's clear you made it up.

I'm dismissing all your numbers are being unsubstantiated bullshit. Have premiums gone up? Sure have. Were they going up before Obamacare? Yep! There's a healthy debate about how much Obamacare is contributing to premium increases. Obamacare isn't perfect. I'm happy to discuss rationally what could be done to improve Obamacare, or another plausible alternative. But not with you, since you pull numbers out of your ass that easily are completely debunked.

BTW, FYI, Obamacare was not intended to lower premiums nor to completely eliminate the number of uninsured. It was to control costs in all forms and reduce the amount of uninsured, as well as reform the health care system to eliminate problems like being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, people having to declare bankruptcy due to medical bills, etc.

Some of its goals it succeeded in, and some not so much. That's a fair assessment at this point. Medical related bankruptcies have not declined. Being denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition has been eliminated. Premiums have gone up, but we simply don't have enough data to determine if they've slowed or accelerated since Obamacare was implemented. If you go by the immediate years after Obamacare was fully implemented, they slowed.

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/Adler_Exhibit1.png

More recently, they've accelerated. It's important to note that health care costs are not solely determined by premiums alone. It's interesting you cherry picked premiums only to prove costs haven't been controlled because premiums are your best case to make that point. Copays, coinsurance, deductibles, prescription drugs, all those play a role. IE, if the average American pays more in premiums but less everywhere else, it's possible the net average is lower for total costs paid for health care.

These are complex topics that have no room for bringing in rose colored ideologically tinted lenses to force the outcome to be "a fucking disaster", where you'll bring in anecdotal evidence, some of which is completely utterly made up.

Just how far are you willing to make stuff up? Hillary Clinton, according to you, has never in the last 40 years done anything substantially positive.

REALLY?! Look, I understand not necessarily wanting her to be President. OK, fine. But that claim is absolutely ridiculous. Over $2 billion has been raised by the Clinton Foundation, and over 90% of that has gone to charitable work according to independent studies. Before you go down the path of "paid access", blah blah blah, even if that were true, the reality is $1.8 billion went to charitable works around the world through the Clinton Foundation Hillary Clinton helped to create and run.

That's not substantial?!?!

Dude, just stop. The only people who believe that BS are people within your bubble. You're not convincing anyone else who didn't already think Hillary Clinton personally killed Vince Foster. You're just making people like me think you're a complete loon.

So what I saw on the recent John Oliver segment, is these cops resigning does not mean they are no longer working. They simply resign to avoid a disciplinary mark on their record, and then jump over to another precinct.
I think though that action would not dodge the criminal proceedings, only the internal charges.
The lawsuit costs seems to be the only motivation for policy reform.

But you have zero proof. You're stating that you have enough proof, but yet you really don't have any proof. You have circumstantial evidence.

I have zero doubts that DWS once in that position helped because she and Clinton are friends and political allies. But that's not quid pro quo. If Clinton hires her to help in her campaign, it isn't quid pro quo if Clinton hired her because of DWS's skills in the area. You have zero proof that's why DWS was hired. You have zero proof DWS did "whatever Clinton asked her to do". You have zero proof Clinton asked her to do anything that broke the rules in the first place. None.

You are inferring every single accusation you made against Clinton. There's absolutely no evidence of any of them at all.

Clinton has zero insights about what the public thinks? You're kidding, right? The woman who was the front runner for the Democratic nomination, who has been in the public spotlight at the national stage for almost 25 years doesn't have any insight about what the public thinks?

Come on, man.

Also, DWS's job wasn't solely to ensure the nominating process was fair. She had a ton of responsibilities, and many of them she did well. That was my point. All you're seeing is the part where she screwed up because it hurt your preferred candidate. Her job was also to protect the Democratic party, and help Democrats win elections, too.

Perhaps a few might say DWS wasn't the reason Sanders lost? A few? You mean like.... ohhhhh, I dunno... Bernie Sanders? How about Bernie Sanders' staff members? But what the hell do they know, AMIRITE?

Dude, Sanders got crushed with minorities. You know where that can allow you to win the nomination? The GOP. Unfortunately for Sanders, he was running for the nomination where minorities are a significant part of the voting bloc. Absolutely CRUSHED. Clinton won 76% of the African-American vote. Before the primaries really began, Clinton was polling at 73% among Hispanics. You honestly think that was because of DWS? Let me put that to rest for you. Hillary Clinton did well among Hispanics against Barack Obama. Was that DWS's doing, too?

That's the thing. I have clear cut FACTS about why Sanders lost. I have the words from Bernie Sanders and his campaign staff. You have speculation about whatever small impact DWS's had on primary votes.

Valarie Plame? No, Bush never named her. It ended up being Karl Rove.

How did I shove Hillary Clinton down your throat? Explain that one to me. I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries. In VA, I chose to vote in the GOP primary to do whatever I could to stop Trump, which was vote for Marco Rubio, as he was polling second in VA. I didn't do a damn thing to stop Sanders or help Clinton win the nomination.

Why didn't I vote for Sanders? Because of his lack of foreign policy experience, and he wasn't putting forth enough practical policies that I think would work. I like the guy fine. I'd vote for him as a Senator if he was in Virginia. I like having voices like his in Congress. But Commander In Chief is a big part of the job, and I want someone with foreign policy experience. He doesn't have that.

I also value flexibility in a candidate. The world isn't black and white. I like Sanders' values. It would be nice if everyone could go to college if they had the motivation. I very much think the rich are not taxed nearly enough. But I also think ideologies and ideals help to create ideas for solutions, but the solutions need to be practical, and I don't find his practical unfortunately. Sometimes they're not politically practical. Sometimes they just fall apart on the mechanics of them.

Gary Johnson has more experience? Uhhhhh, no. He was governor of New Mexico for 8 years. That compares well to Sarah Palin. Do you think Palin is more experienced than Clinton, too? Johnson has zero foreign policy experience. Hillary Clinton was an active first lady who proposed Health Care Reform, got children's health care reform passed. She was a US Senator for the short time of 8 years, which is way less than Johnson's 8 years as governor of New Mexico (wait, what?!), was on the foreign relations committee during that time. Then she was Secretary of State.

Sanders is the only one who I'd put in the ballpark, but he's had legislative branch experience only, and he doesn't have much foreign policy experience at all. Interestingly enough, you said he was the most experienced candidate, overlooking his complete lack of executive experience, which you favored when it came to Gary Johnson. Huh?

Clinton can't win? You know, I wouldn't even say Trump *can't* win. Once normalized from the convention bounce, she'll be the favorite to win. Sure, she could still lose, but I wouldn't bet against her.

Clinton supporters have blinders on only. Seriously? Dude, EVERY candidate has supporters with blinders on. Every single candidate. Most voters are ignorant, regardless of candidate. Don't give me that holier than thou stuff. You've got blinders on for why Sanders lost.

There are candidates who are threats if elected. There are incompetent candidates. There are competent candidates. There are great candidates. Sorry, but there aren't great candidates every election. I've voted in enough presidential elections to know you should be grateful to have at least one competent candidate who has a shot of winning. Sometimes there aren't any. Sometimes there are a few.

In your mind, I'm a Hillary supporter with blinders on. I'm not beholden to any party. I'm not beholden to any candidate. It's just not in my nature. This is the first presidential candidate from a major party in my lifetime that I felt was truly an existential threat to the US and the world in Trump. I'm a level headed person. Hillary Clinton has an astounding lack of charisma for a politician who won a major party's nomination. I don't find her particularly inspiring. I think it's a legitimate criticism to say she sometimes bends to the political winds too much. She sometimes doesn't handle things like the email thing like she should, as she flees to secrecy from a paranoia from the press and the other party, which is often a mistake, but you have to understand at some level why. She's a part of a major political party, which has a lot of "this is how the sausage is made" in every party out there, and she operates within that system.

If she were a meal, she'd be an unseasoned microwaved chicken breast, with broccoli, with too much salt on it to pander to people some to get them to want to eat it. And you wouldn't want to see how the chicken was killed. But you need to eat. Sure, there's too much salt. Sure, it's not drawing you to the table, but it's nutritious mostly, and you need to eat. It's a meal made of real food.

Let's go along with you thinking Sanders is SOOOOOOOOOOO much better. He was a perfectly prepared steak dinner, but it's lean steak, and lots of organic veggies, perfectly seasoned, and low salt. It's a masterpiece meal that the restaurant no longer offers, and you gotta eat.

Donald Trump is a plate of deep fried oreos. While a surprising number of people find that tasty, it also turns out the cream filling was contaminated with salmonella.

Gary Johnson looks like a better meal than the chicken, but you're told immediately if you order it, you're gonna get contaminated deep fried oreos or the chicken, and you have absolutely no say which it will be.

You can bitch and complain all you want about Clinton. But Sanders is out.

As Bill Maher would say, eat the chicken.

I'm not voting for Clinton solely because I hate Trump. She's a competent candidate. At least we have one to choose from who can actually win.

And I'm sorry, but I don't understand your comparison of Trump to Clinton. One of them has far more governmental experience. One of them isn't unhinged. One of them is clearly not racist or sexist. You would at least agree with that, right? Clinton, for all her warts, is not racist, sexist, bigoted, and actually knows how government works. To equate them is insane to me. I'm sorry.

And this is coming from someone who voted for Nader in 2000. I totally get voting for a third party candidate in some situations. This isn't the time.

Edit: You know who else is considering voting for Clinton? Penn Jillette, one of the most vocal Clinton haters out there, and outspoken libertarian. Even he is saying if the election is close enough, he'll have to vote for her.

"“My friend Christopher Hitchens wrote a book called No One Left to Lie To about the Clintons,” Jillette says. “I have written and spoken and joked with friends the meanest, cruelest, most hateful things that could ever been said by me, have been said about the Clintons. I loathe them. I disagree with Hillary Clinton on just about everything there is to disagree with a person about. If it comes down to Trump and Hillary, I will put a Hillary Clinton sticker on my fucking car.”

But he says he hopes the race will turn out well enough that he feels safe casting his vote for Gary Johnson, who is running on the libertarian ticket, and who he believes is the best choice."
http://www.newsweek.com/penn-jillette-terrified-president-trump-431837

The president also has the power to sink us if his party is in control of congress and goes along with any stupid thing he does, and so does the Supreme Court (which will essentially belong to whoever is the next president).
If Clinton only worked within a broken system, she might be forgiven, but she doesn't. This latest DNC collusion fiasco is just the latest shining example of how she and her team flagrantly disregards the rules if they aren't convenient for her. She just gave Shultz a nice position in her campaign and you can bet she'll have a cabinet position if Clinton wins for blatantly rigging the primary for her, which is not the action of someone who values ethics.
Yes, the system needs to be reformed, but by someone that believes that rules and laws apply to everyone including them, not someone who's an expert at slipping through loopholes and skirting the rules if not breaking them outright then lying about it....which is either major party candidate.
IMO, Clinton is the fairly competent but corrupt one, Trump is fairly incompetent and corrupt and pathological and racist and narcissistic and just a terrible human being. I'm not certain which is more dangerous, because I can't tell what either of them will actually do in any situation beyond whatever appears to benefit them most at the time.

I, for one, am glad we don't have a two party system and I have other choices. I will only vote for someone I want to be president, and refuse to cast a vote against someone. That's what has us in this mess.

The President does have enough power to totally sink us IF they're volatile enough. Simple incompetence in a president doesn't sink us. However, that can cost lives. 1,833 people died officially from Katrina, although obviously not that many were directly from the utter incompetence of the Bush administration. 4,500 Americans have died in Iraq during the invasion and subsequent occupation. These things don't "sink" the US completely, but they're VERY consequential.

But Trump is incompetent AND volatile. Bringing both of those qualities to the table as president, and you've got much much bigger issues.

Finally, I absolutely do not get the charges of personal corruption against Hillary Clinton, especially when compared to Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton, so far as I can tell, is an agent who is operating within a system that has been corrupted, and not personally by her. The system needs to be reformed. She's done things to win within the system that you'd ideally not do. But I don't get how she is personally corrupt.

But you speak as if Clinton is the competent but corrupt one, and Trump is the incompetent but non-corrupt one, which blows my mind. How is the only way you can be corrupt is through accepting campaign contributions? How is Trump University not an indictment of how corrupt Trump personally is? How is it not corrupt to appeal to white supremacists? How is it not corrupt to name call, incite your supporters to violence, and dismiss women because they must be on their periods? How is it not corrupt to have your daughter make a speech at the RNC and then tweet how to buy the dress she was wearing, so she could make some coin?

Because one of those forms of corruption is being potentially corrupted by a corrupt system, but they're at least trying to reform that system. Hillary Clinton is the one against Citizens United, officially calling for a constitutional amendment to get rid of it. Has Donald Trump?

I don't think HRC will be a great president. I don't particularly like her much. However, she is qualified to be President. She's done nothing illegal, which is the hallmark of whether someone is corrupt.

And don't kid yourself about our government's ability containing a fascist. The Weimar Republic's government had structures in place to prevent the rise of Hitler, too. They had separation of powers. The government was one of the most democratic governments in the world. Fat lot of good that did.

I'm not saying necessarily that Trump is the next Hitler. But I am saying that there are enough similarities that I can't vote for him, and the mere fact he got a major party's nomination is scary beyond all reason. And voting for someone like that proves out their blueprint for future candidates across the board for offices in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches at all levels of government.

As much as I don't like HRC, Trump is easily the worse major party's nominee in a very very very long time.

The patent is clearly invalid.
It fails both the "prior art" and "non-obvious" aspects of a patent, in that cell phones existed prior to the creation of this patent and using voice communication over a device is not "non-obvious" (at least, not since the 1900s).

So pretty much yeah, "WHAT THE FUCK PATENT OFFICE?" indeed.

I don't get his "this is what happens when the government controls patents" rant. It's a bad patent, they happen, and patent reform is badly needed in the US, but if you're going to make a statement like that, you need to propose an alternative.

If you don't want the "government" controlling patents, you want ... what? Get rid of patents altogether? Allow a private company to control them?

I'm not sure how much of the "conspiracy" angle I buy, but this does illustrate how badly election reform is needed in the US.

I would love to know if the general elections are run as poorly.

I know it's Colbert's shtick and I never really got into it, but still...

"I have friends who live and work in London. They said "don't worry,we're very sensible people."

What's sensible for people in London might not be sensible for people in Salford. Or Boston. Or Wolverhampton. London, or the South-East in general, is as representative of the UK as the East/West Coast is of the US.

The hinterland has been drained at the expense of the center, on both a global and a national scale. If you live and work in the City of London, things might look quite ok, and whatever issues there are only need some reforms to no longer be an issue. But if your factory, the factory that provided jobs for the people in your home town, closed down ten, twenty years ago and now the best you can get is zero-hour contracts, then no, things are not ok.

People up top keep telling you that the economy is growing, that everyone's gonna be better off, that it's ok for multinational corporations and rich individuals to optimise their taxes, while they cut your welfare. Banks get a bailout, you get to pay the bedroom tax.

So no, your sensible friends, if they exist, live in a different universe than many of their countrymen. That's the disconnect we've been talking about.

-----
"The British economy is tanking. The pound has plunged to its lowest level since 1985... The Dow lost 611 points."

Again, so what? If the economy is growing and it has no effect on you, why should you give a jar of cold piss about the value of the pound or the stock exchange? Arguably, a drop in the exchange rate of the pound makes it easier for you to export your goods and raises the prices for imports, thereby encouraging you to produce the shit yourself. The UK does have a sovereign currency, unlike the Spanish, the Greeks, the Portuguese or the Italians who have to suffer internal devaluations, because Wolfgang Schäuble says so.

"Equity losses over $2 trillion"

Why should that matter? QE has pushed up stock prices beyond any resonable level, so what meaning do these book values hold? Not to mention that a lot of people made a shitload of money by shorting these stocks, including George Soros against Deutsche.

"There'll be no more money"

QE never trickled down anyway, makes no difference. Corbyn's people call their version "QE for the People" and "Green QE" for a reason: the previous version was only meant to prop up banks and stock values.

--------------

On a more general note, the hatred, the racism, the xenophobia... in most cases, it's a pressure valve. You leash out against someone else, you need someone to blame. The narrative is that we're living in a meritocracy, which makes it your fault that you didn't inherit an investment portfolio. So you start blaming yourself. You're a fuck-up. You worked hard and not only didn't climb the ladder, you actually went down. There's depression for ya. Guess what happens if someone, a person of perceived authority, then comes along and tells you it's not your fault, it's the fault of the immigrants. That narrative is very appealing if history is any indication. Even the supposedly most prosperous country in the EU, Germany, has the very same issue in the eastern parts, where there is no hope for a meaningful job.

People need work, meaningful work. Wanna guess how many of those "xenophobes" would be out in the street protesting against immigrants if they had a meaningful job with decent pay? Not to many would be my guess.

So the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are providing the narrative. But the lack of social cohesion is a result of market fundamentalism, of Thatcherism, of Third Way social-democrats leaving the lower half of the income distribution to the wolves. You can't exclude large swaths of the population from the benefits of increased productivity, etc. Social dividend, they called it. It's what keeps the torches and pitchforks locked away in the barn.

Nobody can deny that the current situation made the life of that lady and her children infinitely more complicated, and it will make it more miserable in the future.

However, what about all the Chavs? No, I'm not being sarcastic. What about all the people whose life can hardly become more miserable, because it's been miserable all along with no hope for improvement? Life is shit for a lot of people, and it has been for a long time.

What were their options in this referendum?

Remain told them that their quality of living would decline in case of a Brexit, and that it would decline more slowly if they remain part of the EU. In short, they offered them fuck all. Any notion of reforming the EU from within to make it care about the proletariat is an illusion, and a costly one if you look at either Greece or the recessionary EU in general.

So they went with the demagogues, who spewed such outrageous lies that even Goebbels would be ashamed. But they made an offer nonetheless.

All this talk about stock prices or the exchange value of the Pound is meaningless dribble if you live in places like Nuneaton. How is telling them all to sod off an irrational decision if all they did for decades was shit on you?

So yeah, I fucking hate the anti-immigration part of the discussion. It's despicable. But the patronising reactions from not just the elites but also large swaths of the Remain campaign gives me assteroids.

The casual way they discuss how to ignore or reverse the result of the referendum is a sign of why it went this way in the first place. They look down on the decision made by "those people". It makes no sense to them, so it has to be irrational. Silly plebs are not informed enough to make smart decisions, let's educate them. Or better yet, let's make the decisions for them.

It just oozes condescension. And it breeds contempt.

To end on a personal note: how the German government now appears to be the moderating factor on the EU side is beyond fucked up, given how they were the ones to piss on the plebs the most with their anal fixation on austerity. You really cannot make this shit up...

Edit:
Here's one for sovereignty: just last night, Jean-Claude Juncker said that the European Commission doesn't want national parliaments to vote on CETA. What's the point of democracy then?