ExFed

… Biden did more for blue collar jobs in the States than anyone since Lyndon Johnson.

For fear of reminiscing “the good old days” … Yes, I did like a lot of his policies, especially regarding linking (ever-so-slightly progressive) climate policy with blue collar jobs. The theory was that red states would see enough of the benefits (or the hope of benefits) to soften on the Left. That clearly didn’t work out in the short-run. The Biden administration’s biggest weakness is Trump’s unfortunate strength: capturing media attention and driving a narrative, regardless of truth (i.e. bullshitting).

Oh, I’m not saying anything about Newsom, just trying to dispel some sadly common misinformation about NAFTA. I’ve yet to form a solid opinion of the guy, but I’m not without cynical biases, so he’s got an uphill battle to win in my mind.

Sure. But let’s set the record straight: blue collar jobs in the States didn’t suffer because “Democrat bad and hate workers!” That’s a myth perpetuated by politicians who would manipulate us for their own gain, Republican and Democrat alike.

In meantime we gotta figure out what to do with a ball of shit filled with rat poison.

The greatest trick the devil pulled was convincing people he didn’t exist. The greatest trick the Republican party pulled was convincing people that its most unpopular ideas are entirely Democrats’ fault.

NAFTA was championed by, majority supported, and voted in by mostly Republicans. It was ultimately bipartisan, but Democrats were significantly more opposed to it than Republicans (of Republican Congress members, only 10 in the Senate and 43 in the House voted against it; of Democrats, 28 in the Senate and 156 in the House voted against it).

This isn’t to say that NAFTA is objectively bad policy; most economists argue that it ultimately benefited the whole country. However it did expose US manufacturing to significant competition, reduced bargaining power for manufacturing workers, and shocked communities which were solely reliant on the sector to support them. Larger cities were mostly unaffected due to their more diverse economies, and in many cases thrived off increased trade and lower prices for goods. As a reminder, urbanites trend Democrat, rural folk trend Republican.

The trope that urban liberals successfully screwed over rural conservatives just isn’t true. Instead it seems that, at screwing themselves over, urban liberals failed and rural conservatives succeeded.

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1031/vote_103_1_00395.htm https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/1993575

There’s probably some truth to this, but it also leans into the “MSM is lying to you” narrative that’s pervasive in far right (and far left) circles. A production with [the appearance of] a low budget is associated with “genuineness” by most people. You can’t be paid off by the big corpos if you’re doing it out of the goodness of your heart…or so the reasoning goes.

all profits are wages stolen

Except when all the work is done by the owners. Employee-owned companies exist and are usually much better to work for.

Considering that I made a comment pointing out the futility of trying to make good-faith arguments within this environment and a mod removed it, I think this is a relevant quotation. Thanks!

It would appear you’re trying to argue against the contents of the above article by referencing an attribute or quality of the author. I believe we call that a genetic fallacy.

Would you like to try again?

Removed by mod

Not when the entirety of your conversations are jargon and in-jokes!

/s

Let’s just admit the answer to the question “does he associate with people who can do math?” is a resounding “no.”

We’ll need ranked choice (or some other voting scheme other than First Past The Post). Otherwise it’ll just end up the same as it always has.

How Republicans feel about the economy changes depending on who the President is rather than the actual performance of the economy.

Although it seems they’re particularly susceptible to it, this phenomenon isn’t entirely constrained to Republicans. It’s classic groupthink. Any idea or emotion that reenforces the group is good, and idea or emotion that threatens the group is bad.

If you’re looking for news sources, AP and Reuters are a starting place but you should be reading as many different sources as you can. I hate to encourage the use of Google but news.google.com can be a useful resource for quickly finding a bunch of different sources covering the same topic.

Fully agree on AP and Reuters. They’ve got good journalists. As for aggregators, Google News is good, but I’ve found Ground News is better, and it’s not run by a monopoly, so there’s that.

Right, forgot about that…

It’s hard to say whether it was the stroke, the exposure to DC, or a combination of both… But considering other progressive senators seem capable of (mostly) holding true to their campaign promises/personality, it’s more likely due to the stroke.

Edit: missing “progressive” modifier