At some point

[Dave's Not Here Man]

GOP can't get votes it needs for a defense budget. Makes me wonder how many they'd get for an impeachment. Must be time to fly home and meet with their constituents before coming back to appease their constituents here. It's gone so fucking sideways and yet, there it is. We are so limp wristed that our only alternative to totalitarianism is an 80 year man hanging on to the threads of sanity. One that has done very little IMO to return the country to whatever we had hoped it to be at the time pre-Trump, which was as easy as leading from the front and openly speaking out at every opportunity. Statements from his press secretary ain't gonna cut the mustard for me.

[minx]

And yet, he's done more to stabilize the country than expected.

Which says a lot for the amount of damage Trump and his fellow assholes did and continue to do.

And I 100% agree - why is an 80 year old man our salvation? Are there no other qualified Democrats to step up?

[Dave's Not Here Man]

Sept 22, 2023 16:43:26 GMT -5 minx said:

And yet, he's done more to stabilize the country than expected.

Stabilized the country how?

[minx]

Restored our status abroad for one. And I do think his infrastructure bill will work, but it needs time. His administration has also finally started lowering drug prices and allowing Medicaid to negotiate with drug manufactures.

And he's finally starting to speak out about the importance of unions and also looking into anti-trust suits against large corporations.

But he NEEDS to step up and address the major cuts to our safety nets imposed by Republicans. And he NEEDS to reinstate the pandemic rules that helped people qualify for Medicaid and finally get some health insurance. The way people are getting kicked off the roles is a crime and a sin.

I wish that he and his party would also call for a program to re-purpose office buildings into housing. It's not cheap, but I would be willing to support tax breaks for developers who were willing to do it - apartments/condos upstairs, offices or small businesses downstairs. And make the tax breaks and subsidizes contingent on at least 50% of the place being affordable enough for a single person making $30k a year to live there.

There is a lot more to be done, and a lot of what he has done are things that people don't see. The biggest obstacle he faces right now are prices. And he needs to call out companies that create it through what pretty much amounts to price fixing and monopolies. I'd love to see him start with the auto strike - these people are striking so that younger workers can afford to live and have health insurance and pensions.

So start with the cost of a car - the average cost of a 'basic' model is around $25-30K right now. And most companies have throttled production, so dealers aren't getting the inventory they used to, so it's hard to negotiate - most times, you're waiting for your car to be built.

So point out that the average new car is $27K, and that the CEO of GM made xxx million last year, while the highest paid worker on the factory floor made xx/hr -and that was with 30+ years of experience.
Then ask - do you think the CEO EARNED that money? Do you think they worked as hard as the person on the floor? Do they DESERVE to be paid 300 times more than you do?

Start calling for legislation and taxes on these folks - you use all your yearly profits on stock buybacks and none for new equipment or worker pay? Tax penalty.
You pay your executives more than 100x what the highest paid worker makes? Tax penalty.

I bet if he started doing that type of shit, we might start seeing some real change - maybe.

Of course, that takes the balls to give up the luxurious lifestyle that most politicians get to live nowadays due to corporate lobbyists...

[Dave's Not Here Man]

I agree on the foreign relations but that's pretty much just with allies. Not for nothing but I haven't seen any coalition building to scale the current world affairs. Poland has just left the chat on Ukraine. That's Trump's fault though, right?

As for the rest all you gave me was high hopes turned bitter disappointments. "If he started doing that type of shit", well he's done nothing to ring the bell about IMO and I don't see another term getting him/us any closer to domestic tranquility. We need more than "if" D, on what he is willing to deliver, and I'd go as far as saying incapable of delivering. We need better.

[minx]

We definitely need better. And I do believe that better starts with the people below him - the Congress and the Senate. Both of them are strangely quiet for the most part about what's happening in our country.

I'd love to see bills introduced and heavily promoted that do the things we want - let's start with what should be a no-brainer for the Rs - military support. Put a bill forward that will pay the rank and file a little more, and repair and maintain base housing to a standard that we can all point to and be proud of (from what I've read and been told, living on most bases is a hellhole). Increase funding to attract more medical personnel to VA hospitals, especially veterans who will have experience as to what these men and women have gone through.

And make it a clean bill - no riders or any other shit. Then promote the hell out of it across the land - flyers mailed out to people, ads on every station possible (a good use of PAC money for once). List the key provisions of the bill and note that that's it - no riders asking for weird shit to sneak by. Just military funding to go directly to the men and women who are serving and have served our country.

Then let's see how the Republicans try to back out of that. And if they do, make sure their constituents know about it.

Twill never happen of course.

[minx]

Oh, and Biden has quietly started his campaign for re-election. This while everyone in the republican party have all but announced that Trump will be the nominee.

My trans nephew posted a meme on FB yesterday - anyone under 80 - 2024. While I understand the sentiment, I did point out that those who were under 80 that were running were all Republicans and asked if he's be happy with someone like DeSantis ascending to the White House with the note to be careful what you wish for.

[Dave's Not Here Man]

The news this weekend has been the polls showing Trump and Biden basically deadlocked if they were the nominees. I normally take polls with a grain of salt but if there's anything to them at all, they should be at least somewhat concerning for everyone. Trump should not even be considered a candidate and yet, as you said, he's the current presumptive -R nominee. It doesn't make any sense and it's a brutal indictment upon our ENTIRE nation that he could even be in the conversation let alone a viable candidate. As for Biden, he's not putting the country ahead of his ambitions or whatever it is that makes him want to rin for re-election. The age is one thing, but far from the biggest thing that makes him untenable as we try to move past Trump and forward as a democratic republic.