A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
PAGE 67 of 725
Democrat won congressional seat in Trump strong hold in Pennsylvania. Even though Trump campaigned there twice for the republican. The Vice President went, Trumps son went and Kellyanne Conway as well. Oops...
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Quote:That Republicans manage to be doing so poorly with the economy humming along nicely is a godsend to Democratic Party operatives and political pros. But the foundation of that political success is a substantive disaster for the country.
Originally posted by THGRRI:
Democrat won congressional seat in Trump strong hold in Pennsylvania. Even though Trump campaigned there twice for the republican. The Vice President went, Trumps son went and Kellyanne Conway as well. Oops...
On a policy level, the Trump-era GOP is pushing unpopular policies on all fronts, from the looming deportation of DREAMers to health care executive actions that are driving up premiums to a rollback net neutrality to the dismantling of consumer financial protection rules. These are enormously harmful to the short-term interests of millions of people and to the long-term interests of nearly the entire country.
At the same time, Trump continues to act like a maniac — just this week, he fired the secretary of state over Twitter, deployed inappropriate political rhetoric at an official speech to active-duty Marines, and denied Russian culpability for assassinations carried out on British soil — and it’s only Wednesday.
At the same time, he’s enmeshed in an unprecedented level of personal corruption; his business enterprises are set up as perfect vehicles for interest groups seeking favors from the government to line his pockets with cash. And the growing Stormy Daniels scandal suggests a whole new dimension of possible corruption and lawbreaking over and above the basic financial conflicts of interest and the shenanigans with the Russians.
The American system, fundamentally, is meant to run more on prudence and separation of powers than on relentless partisan warfare. Congressional Republicans are supposed to see that Trump’s corruption and aberrant behavior are unpopular and do what they can to check him, while Trump is supposed to see that the GOP policy agenda is extreme and unpopular and do what he can to trim its sails. If they did that, the fundamentally benign economic and international climate might assert itself and they’d win the midterms.
Instead, Trump and congressional Republicans are acting like Thelma and Louise holding hands as they drive the car off the cliff.
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/14/17118858/pa-18-results-conor
-lamb
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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What does Martin Shkreli’s downfall tell us about modern America?
http://prospect.org/article/americas-shkreli-problem
March 13, 2018
Shkreli’s early life exemplified the rags-to-riches American success story. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in April 1983, to parents who immigrated from Albania and worked as janitors in New York apartment buildings. Shkreli attended New York’s Hunter College High School, a public school for intellectually gifted young people, and in 2005 received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Baruch College.
But soon thereafter, Shkreli turned toward shady deals. He started his own hedge fund, betting that the stock prices of certain biotech companies would drop. Then he used financial chat rooms on the Internet to savage those companies, causing their prices to drop and his bets to pay off.
In 2015, Shkreli founded and became CEO Turing Pharmaceuticals. Under his direction Turing spent $55 million for the U.S. rights to sell a drug called Daraprim. Developed in 1953, Daraprim is the only approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease that can cause birth defects in unborn babies, and lead to seizures, blindness, and death in cancer patients and people with AIDS. Daraprim is on the World Health Organization’s list of Essential Medicines.
Months after he bought the drug, Schkreli raised its price by over 5,000 percent, from $13.50 a pill to $750.00.
Shkreli was roundly criticized, but he was defiant: “No one wants to say it, no one’s proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system and capitalist rules.” He said he wished he had raised the price even higher, and would buy another essential drug and raise its price, too.
In February 2016, Shkreli was called before a congressional committee to justify his price increase on Daraprim. He refused to answer any questions, pleading the Fifth Amendment. After the hearing Shkreli tweeted, “Hard to accept that these imbeciles represent the people in our government.”
Shkreli was subsequently arrested in connection with an unrelated scheme to defraud his former hedge fund investors. In anticipation of his criminal trial, Shkreli boasted to the New Yorker magazine, “I think they’ll return a not-guilty verdict in two hours. There are going to be jurors who will be fans of mine. I walk down the streets of New York and people shake my hand. They say, ‘I want to be just like you.’”
During his trial, Shkreli strolled into a room filled with reporters and made light of a particular witness, for which the trial judge rebuked him. On his Facebook page he mocked the prosecutors, and told news outlets they were a “junior varsity” team.
He retaliated against journalists who criticized him by purchasing internet domains associated with their names and ridiculing them on the sites. “I wouldn’t call these people ‘journalists,’” he wrote in an email to Business Insider. He said on Facebook that if he were acquitted he’d be able to have sex with a female journalist he often posted about online.
After his conviction, Shkreli called the case “a witch hunt of epic proportions, and maybe they found one or two broomsticks.” As she imposed sentence last Friday, the judge cited Shkrili’s “egregious multitude of lies,” noting also that he “repeatedly minimized” his conduct.
How different is Martin Shkreli from other figures who dominate American life today, even at the highest rungs?
Shkreli will do whatever it takes to win, regardless of the consequences for anyone else. He believes that the norms other people live by don’t apply to him. His attitude toward the law is that anything he wants to do is okay unless it is clearly illegal.
He’s contemptuous of anyone who gets in his way—whether judges, prosecutors, members of Congress, or journalists. He remains unapologetic for what he did. He is utterly shameless.
Sound familiar? The Shkreli personality disorder can be found on Wall Street, in the executive suites of some of America’s largest corpor
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You didn't understand the article, did you? Mr. Hagerman can safely tune out Trump only because Mr. Hagerman is tremendously wealthy, which insulates him from Trump's failures. More money equals more personal safety and freedom. More insulation from the foolish American President's troubled life.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Too little? It sounds to me like he's got it all figured out.Quote:
“I had been paying attention to the news for decades,” Mr. Hagerman said. “And I never did anything with it.”
That about sums it up for nearly 100% of American's who can't bring themselves to tune out. None of it matters.
Hagerman got wealthy by using his head. The same brains that made him rich made him conclude that: “It’s not like I wanted to just steer away from Trump or shift the conversation. It was like I was a vampire and any photon of Trump would turn me to dust.” Trump is a bad President, to simplify the message being clearly sent in the interview with the successful Ohioan who is now retired.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Still sounds to me like he's got it all figured out.
All the people I care about are pretty much covered now, and the only way they're going down is if the whole country tanks and then we're all in the same boat anyhow.
That just leaves me and my paid for house and my piece of shit car and my decaying teeth and my part time job.
I won't ever live a life of luxury, but I don't have to take shit from anyone and that's the most valuable thing in the world in my eyes.
I'm not joking when I say that fff.net is my only source of news these days. Once I stopped drinking it wasn't long after that I stopped paying attention outside of here. So many good things I've done in my life since then, and it just keeps improving.
You're just a static character, second. A broken record. Every post you make in March of 2018 sounds exactly the same as it sounded in November of 2016.
Name me one good thing all of that bitching has done for you. What have you personally accomplished in that time?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:I had to take shit from everybody, 6ix. You’re smarter than me, younger than me. You could do better than me, but to do better you will need to give a shit and take some shit because America is a hierarchy. I spent 19 years at the same shitty job. Got laid off twice. I didn’t have the good sense to find a better job during those down times. The first full year worked, I made $17,189 in 1978. My best year, with overtime, was $66,622. And it was all to accumulate capital. 6ixStringJack, I wish you the best of luck and hope things go smoother for you than it did for me. And in America, things will, if you use your superior brain, rather than taking life easy, not planning ahead, and resigning yourself to doing only enough to survive. I see that you have already taken my advice before I even gave it:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I won't ever live a life of luxury, but I don't have to take shit from anyone and that's the most valuable thing in the world in my eyes.
Quote:Imagine me as Montgomery Burns saying about you, "Excellent!"
So many good things I've done in my life since then, and it just keeps improving.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Does working class support for President Trump prove shallow when a Democrat makes a populist economic argument? The panel digs into the results of Pennsylvania's special election.
https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/pennsylvania-race-shows-workin
g-class-trump-support-is-shallow-przybyla-1186582595712
T
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I had to take shit from everybody, 6ix. You’re smarter than me, younger than me. You could do better than me, but to do better you will need to give a shit and take some shit because America is a hierarchy. I spent 19 years at the same shitty job. Got laid off twice. I didn’t have the good sense to find a better job during those down times. The first full year worked, I made $17,189 in 1978. My best year, with overtime, was $66,622. And it was all to accumulate capital. 6ixStringJack, I wish you the best of luck and hope things go smoother for you than it did for me. And in America, things will, if you use your superior brain, rather than taking life easy, not planning ahead, and resigning yourself to doing only enough to survive. I see that you have already taken my advice before I even gave it:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I won't ever live a life of luxury, but I don't have to take shit from anyone and that's the most valuable thing in the world in my eyes.Quote:Imagine me as Montgomery Burns saying about you, "Excellent!"
So many good things I've done in my life since then, and it just keeps improving.
My motivation to bust my ass making somebody else money is virtually gone at this point. I see no path for any relatively meaningful upward advancement at any companies today without a college degree.
I've got plans for some personal projects I'm working on at the moment however. Just working for somebody else while I'm putting a lot of the pieces together. ;)
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:6ix, ask why is Finland happier than Indiana? It might go all the way back to WWII. If the Finns didn’t stick together, they’d all die together. www.history.com/news/ask-history/what-was-the-winter-war That’s certainly not an attitude found in America, where it is every man for himself, every state for itself, winner take all. At least that is the Texas I live in, which can be a brutal land to the losers, and wonderful beyond my greediest dreams to the winners.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
My motivation to bust my ass making somebody else money is virtually gone at this point. I see no path for any relatively meaningful upward advancement at any companies today without a college degree.
I've got plans for some personal projects I'm working on at the moment however. Just working for somebody else while I'm putting a lot of the pieces together. ;)
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Why is Finland happier than the US?
www.pri.org/stories/2018-03-14/why-finland-happier-us-0
"I've joked with the other Americans that we are living the American dream here in Finland," said Brianna Owens, who moved from the United States and is now a teacher in Espoo, Finland's second biggest city with a population of around 280,000.
"I think everything in this society is set up for people to be successful, starting with university and transportation that works really well," Owens told Reuters.
Finland rose from fifth place last year to oust Norway from the top spot. The 2018 Top-10, as ever dominated by the Nordics, is: Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia.
The United States came in at 18th, down from 14th place last year. Britain was 19th and the United Arab Emirates 20th.
One chapter of the 170-page report is dedicated to emerging health problems such as obesity, depression and the opioid crisis, particularly in the United States where the prevalence of all three has grown faster than in most other countries.
While US income per capita has increased markedly over the last half century, happiness has been hit by weakened social support networks, a perceived rise in corruption in government and business and declining confidence in public institutions.
"We obviously have a social crisis in the United States: more inequality, less trust, less confidence in government," the head of the SDSN, Professor Jeffrey Sachs of New York's Columbia University, told Reuters as the report was launched at the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
"It's pretty stark right now. The signs are not good for the US It is getting richer and richer but not getting happier."
Asked how the current political situation in the United States could affect future happiness reports, Sachs said:
"Time will tell, but I would say that in general that when confidence in government is low, when perceptions of corruption are high, inequality is high and health conditions are worsening ... that is not conducive to good feelings."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Voters May Be Wising Up
Originally posted by THGRRI:
Does working class support for President Trump prove shallow when a Democrat makes a populist economic argument? The panel digs into the results of Pennsylvania's special election.
www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/pennsylvania-race-shows-working-class-
trump-support-is-shallow-przybyla-1186582595712
www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/opinion/pennsylvania-election-voters.html
There’s no mystery about the Republican agenda. For at least the past 40 years, the G.O.P.’s central policy goal has been upward redistribution of income: lower taxes for the wealthy, big cuts in programs that help the poor and the middle class. We’ve seen that agenda at work in the policies of every Republican president from Reagan to Trump, every budget proposal from party stars like Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House.
This policy agenda is, however, deeply unpopular. Only small minorities of voters favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations; even smaller minorities favor cuts in major social programs. So how does the G.O.P. stay politically competitive? The answer is that the party has mastered the tactics of bait and switch: pretending to stand for one thing, then doing something quite different in office.
But if special elections in the Trump era are any indication, voters are wising up. Rick Saccone, the Republican candidate in a deep-red Pennsylvania congressional district that Trump won by almost 20 points, tried not one, not two, but three different bait-and-switch strategies. And on Tuesday he still seems to have suffered a hair-thin defeat.
1) At first, Republicans tried to sell their candidate by touting the 2017 tax cuts, which they portrayed as a boon to the middle class. This was classic Bush-era strategy: The Trump tax cuts, like the Bush tax cuts, did indeed offer some temporary relief to middle-class families, although they offered far more to the wealthy.
What makes this a bait and switch is the hard truth that tax cuts must, eventually, be paid for — in fact, people like Ryan barely waited for the ink on the tax bill to dry before proclaiming that social programs must be cut to reduce the budget deficit the tax cuts will do so much to inflate. And under any plausible allocation of the spending cuts needed to offset lost revenue, the tax cuts will leave most Americans worse off (while, of course, benefiting the top 1 percent).
The thing is, voters seem to have realized this. Republican groups pretty much stopped running ads about the tax cuts weeks before the election, apparently concluding that they weren’t gaining much traction. And election night polling suggests that health care — specifically, opposition to G.O.P. efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act — was a key issue in PA-18.
2) If tax cuts won’t sell, how about tariffs? In 2016 Trump portrayed himself as a different kind of Republican, an economic populist who would stand up for the little guy. In practice, he has been utterly orthodox except for one thing, his willingness to break with free trade. And it’s possible that he announced steel tariffs partly in an effort to swing a district in what used to be steel country. Or he may have been trying to steal Stormy Daniels’s thunder. With Trump, you never know.
Anyway, it didn’t work, perhaps because many Pennsylvania voters realize that steel country isn’t what it used to be, and the old days aren’t coming back. These days there are about 10 times as many hospital workers as steel workers in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area — and surely at least some voters realize that G.O.P. efforts to slash health care threaten their jobs as well as their coverage.
3) Finally, Republicans pulled out their old standby: trying to distract voters from their economic agenda by appealing to racial, cultural and religious enmity. That’s what Ed Gillespie tried in the Virginia gubernatorial race, and in this latest campaign Saccone proclaimed that Democrats are motivated by “hatred for our country” and “hatred of God.”
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, ask why is Finland happier than Indiana? It might go all the way back to WWII. If the Finns didn’t stick together, they’d all die together. www.history.com/news/ask-history/what-was-the-winter-war That’s certainly not an attitude found in America, where it is every man for himself, every state for itself, winner take all. At least that is the Texas I live in, which can be a brutal land to the losers, and wonderful beyond my greediest dreams to the winners.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
My motivation to bust my ass making somebody else money is virtually gone at this point. I see no path for any relatively meaningful upward advancement at any companies today without a college degree.
I've got plans for some personal projects I'm working on at the moment however. Just working for somebody else while I'm putting a lot of the pieces together. ;)
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Why is Finland happier than the US?
www.pri.org/stories/2018-03-14/why-finland-happier-us-0
"I've joked with the other Americans that we are living the American dream here in Finland," said Brianna Owens, who moved from the United States and is now a teacher in Espoo, Finland's second biggest city with a population of around 280,000.
"I think everything in this society is set up for people to be successful, starting with university and transportation that works really well," Owens told Reuters.
Finland rose from fifth place last year to oust Norway from the top spot. The 2018 Top-10, as ever dominated by the Nordics, is: Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia.
The United States came in at 18th, down from 14th place last year. Britain was 19th and the United Arab Emirates 20th.
One chapter of the 170-page report is dedicated to emerging health problems such as obesity, depression and the opioid crisis, particularly in the United States where the prevalence of all three has grown faster than in most other countries.
While US income per capita has increased markedly over the last half century, happiness has been hit by weakened social support networks, a perceived rise in corruption in government and business and declining confidence in public institutions.
"We obviously have a social crisis in the United States: more inequality, less trust, less confidence in government," the head of the SDSN, Professor Jeffrey Sachs of New York's Columbia University, told Reuters as the report was launched at the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
"It's pretty stark right now. The signs are not good for the US It is getting richer and richer but not getting happier."
Asked how the current political situation in the United States could affect future happiness reports, Sachs said:
"Time will tell, but I would say that in general that when confidence in government is low, when perceptions of corruption are high, inequality is high and health conditions are worsening ... that is not conducive to good feelings."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I plan to have a good amount stored away to give my niece and my brother when I'm gone. Other than that, everyone else is on their own.
Nobody has ever done anything for me in my life that wasn't some trivial, one off thing. I wasted my kindness and put myself out there for people who didn't deserve it.
I've got no fucks left to give. The rest of my life I'm living for me, and as long as I'm not putting anybody else while doing it then there's nothing wrong with that.
Great for Finland. Glad they've got it figured out. Hope the Muslims don't come in and destroy it all for them in the long run.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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