A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Trump recently agreed to a defense budget of $750 billion for the coming year, reversing his plans to shrink a $716 billion defense budget allocated in 2019 that he thought was too much money, calling it "crazy."
Trump's decision came out of a meeting with Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, the chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, along with Defense Secretary James Mattis and the chairman of the House Armed Services committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas.
A week after the meeting, Inhofe purchased thousands of dollars in defense stock after successfully pushing the Trump administration for more Defense Department spending.
www.cnn.com/2018/12/12/politics/james-inhofe-purchase-raytheon-stock/i
ndex.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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I bet he wuz counting on the nonstop hurricane uv corruption blasting outa the Wite House to keep anybody frum notising.
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
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The billionaire founders of Microsoft, Google, Tesla, and Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson see a future where Americans work far-far fewer than 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year because of high tech making work easier.
None of the billionaires predicted what decade that future arrives.
www.cnbc.com/2018/12/13/richard-branson-the-9-to-5-workday-and-5-day-w
ork-week-will-die-off.html
The billionaires also see the Federal government making Americans' take-home pay higher-and-higher despite working far fewer hours. I think the GOP will fight against that high pay future as the GOP fights in the present against higher minimum wages.
If you google 'Does the GOP oppose raising the minimum wage?' you will find all the highly imaginative ways the GOP fights against it, but you will also find that even Democratic voters in the upper 50% of incomes are not willing to pay much more, either. The higher income Democratic voters start feeling very uncomfortable with the idea of people who now work in jobs that pay minimum wage getting pay increases that move these people into the lower range of the middle-class.
On a personal note, my mother was paying for a home health care worker who was making minimum wage. That is all my mother was willing to pay. I secretly paid the worker an extra $700 per week, totally unconnected to what my mother paid. The worker was instructed to absolutely NOT let my mother know. I also had the worker's 21 year old Toyota Camry repaired, too. It was leaking oil all over my mother's driveway. Her speedometer was repaired because it always read zero MPH and the worker was getting speeding tickets she could not afford. Fixed the CV joints, A/C, heater, radio, broken door handles, windows that won't roll up, even bought hubcaps for it. And I kept paying $700 per week until the worker died. She was in almost as bad health as my mother, dying at 59, 13 months after my mother.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Youre a good guy. Thanks for existing.
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DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
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Quote:What is fascinating about Democrats who are in the upper 50% of income brackets is that they don’t want to pay much more than the minimum. The woman who cared for my mother used the nickname "Surely" because you could depend on her. The day Surely died, she was getting ready to look after two rich little old ladies. The ladies were living in the same house and were paying Surely just $2 more per hour than minimum wage, but Surely was doing twice as much work because there were two ladies. The rich ladies believed it was perfectly fair to work a woman to death because a Surely is easy to replace.
Originally posted by JO753:
Youre a good guy. Thanks for existing.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
The two old ladies were not interested in coming to Surely’s funeral or helping to pay for it. That would have been an unnecessary expense that they did not want to take upon themselves. That is why many things don’t make it out of Congress. Some large percentage of voters don’t want to pay. Both the GOP and Democratic politicians know that about their voters in the upper 50% income brackets. The Democrats just don’t have as many voters in the upper 50%, so the Democratic politicians are more inclined to do something about raising the minimum wage, but not too much higher or else there will be a backlash -- from your own voters resenting the higher cost.
www.cnbc.com/2018/12/11/house-democrats-will-push-for-15-per-hour-fede
ral-minimum-wage.html
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:
Originally posted by JO753:
Youre a good guy. Thanks for existing.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
lol
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:6ix, I wouldn't give you even a dollar. I did it because I liked "Surely". You better pray that in a few years from now Elizabeth Warren eventually succeeds over the objections of every GOP Senator and Trump. That is your only hope for more dollars.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
Youre a good guy. Thanks for existing.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com .
lol
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Top House Democrats join Elizabeth Warren’s push to fundamentally change American capitalism.
www.vox.com/2018/12/14/18136142/pocan-lujan-warren-accountable-capital
ism-act
The proposal would have drastic consequences, redistributing trillions of dollars from rich executives and shareholders to the middle class — but without involving a penny in taxes.
The plan starts from the premise that corporations that claim the legal rights of personhood should be legally required to accept the moral obligations of personhood.
“Throughout our country’s history, the well-being of our workers has been directly linked to the prosperity we have achieved as a nation,” Luján says, but that’s changed somewhat in recent decades as corporate managers have had a singular devotion to enriching shareholders.
The core idea of the Accountable Capitalism Act is to alter that balance of interests in corporate decision-making. Luján argues that “Elevating the voices of workers in our corporate boardrooms will help restore balance in our economy.”
The Accountable Capitalism Act focuses on how to prioritize workers in the American economic system while leaving businesses as the primary driver of it.
The legislation would sharply reduce the huge financial incentives that entice CEOs to flush cash out to shareholders rather than reinvest in businesses. Warren wants to curb corporations’ political activities. And for the biggest corporations, she and her co-sponsors are proposing a dramatic step that would ensure workers and not just shareholders get a voice on big strategic decisions.
The hope is that this will spur a return to greater corporate responsibility and bring back some other aspects of the more egalitarian era of American capitalism post-World War II: more business investment, more meaningful career ladders for workers, more financial stability, and higher pay.
And as much as accountable capitalism is about curbing inequality, it’s fundamentally about saving capitalism itself.
. . .
My late grandfather, who was an old-line communist in his day, used to tell me with mixed admiration and regret that FDR had saved capitalism by entrenching institutions that guaranteed broadly shared prosperity. Those institutions, fundamentally, are what was undone in the shareholder value revolution.
Warren and her new allies are betting is that at a time when the political right is increasingly not even bothering to pretend to offer economic solutions anymore, America can pull off the same trick a second time — offering the public not a huge new expansion of government programs, but a revival of the midcentury stakeholder capitalism that once built a middle class so prosperous that the idea of surging mass interest in socialism was unthinkable.
More at www.vox.com/2018/12/14/18136142/pocan-lujan-warren-accountable-capital
ism-act
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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It’s a Wonderful Life is parodied as
It’s a Wonderful Trump, a world where Trump lost to Hillary.
The real Trump was offended. He may sue for defamation and libel!
(But probably not, once he talks to a competent lawyer, not Rudy Giuliani.)
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?
5:58 AM - 16 Dec 2018
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1074302851906707457
The cameo that seemed to really get under the real Trump’s skin was Stiller’s Michael Cohen, who as well as being in unusually high spirits in this alternate reality, rattled off (now ironic) affirmations of their “close” relationship. “I would never ever flip on you,” said alternate-reality-Cohen, who in this reality flipped on Trump and then did an interview about it. “You’re my best friend.”
“And since it's Christmas,” Stiller said meaningfully. “I just wanna say that you taught me everything I know. Every single thing I’ve done is because you directed me to do it.”
The Cohen jokes seemed to really affect the president, who tweeted:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Remember, Michael Cohen only became a “Rat” after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE! Why didn’t they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked’s office?
6:39 AM - 16 Dec 2018
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1074313153679450113
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 the 2018 Vote Say About 2020?
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/12/what-does-the-2018-vote-say-abo
ut-2020/
If Democrats nominate someone who’s nothing more than as popular as the average Democrat, they’ll probably win the White House. If you convert the votes for the 2018 election into the equivalent number of Electoral College votes, Democrats get 314. They only need 270 to win.
Trump was something of a fluke and Republicans know perfectly well they can't keep winning the Presidency. It’s true that a lot of people have been saying this for a long time, and it’s continued not to come true. So why should it come true now? That’s simple: Trump has now irreparably identified Republicans as the party of white racism. It’s hard for me to see him winning in 2020. Somehow the GOP needs to reinvent themselves as a conservative party sans racism, and that’s going to take more than the next two years.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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A new theory for why Republicans and Democrats see the world differently
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/18/18139556/republicans-democr
ats-partisanship-ideology-philosophy-psychology-marc-hetherington
“Of the many factors that make up your worldview, one is more fundamental than any other in determining which side of the divide you gravitate toward: your perception of how dangerous the world is. Fear is perhaps our most primal instinct, after all, so it’s only logical that people’s level of fearfulness informs their outlook on life.”
That’s political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler, writing in their book Prius or Pickup, which marshals a massive trove of survey data and experimental evidence to argue that the roots of our political divides run deep. Our political divisions, they say, aren’t about policy disagreements, or even demographics. They’re about something more ancient in how we view the world.
Hetherington and Weiler call these worldviews, “fixed” versus “fluid.” The fixed worldview “describes people who are warier of social and cultural change and hence more set in their ways, more suspicious of outsiders, and more comfortable with the familiar and predictable.” People with a fluid worldview, by contrast, “support changing social and cultural norms, are excited by things that are new and novel, and are open to, and welcoming of, people who look and sound different.”
What’s happened in recent decades, they argue, is that politics in general, and our political parties in particular, have reorganized around these worldviews, adding a new, and arguably irreconcilable, difference into our political divisions.
The ideological conflict that used to divide the parties was the size of government. The Democrats said bigger, the Republicans said smaller. Importantly, most Americans didn’t have intense commitments on this question. In addition, party elites could compromise across it. Hence, the political conflict spawned by it wasn’t rancorous most of the time.
That changed in the late 20th century, accelerating into the present day. The dividing line between the parties was no longer a philosophy about governing (a political ideology — more or less government). It evolved into differences in philosophy about life (a worldview — is the world a basically safe place to explore, or is it a dangerous snake pit to hunker down against).
If you think the world is dangerous, safety is always the No. 1 concern. When it comes to physical safety, letting your guard down against adversaries could be disastrous.
A worldview isn’t an identity. It is a way of understanding the nature of the world. Is it safe or dangerous? Should we protect traditional ways of doing things, or is it safe to challenge them?
Today’s political acrimony results from Americans’ worldviews becoming married to their partisanship. Because people’s worldviews organize their whole life — not just the political part of it — a party identity defined by them produces intense conflict. Opposing worldviews have always existed in America (and probably since humans have been around). What is new is that they are now mapped neatly onto Americans’ party identities.
Evidence is everywhere. The clear theme of the 2016 GOP convention was that life in 21st-century American is perilous. “American carnage” was central to Trump’s inaugural. His recent statement on standing with Saudi Arabia literally began with, “The world is a very dangerous place!”
Much more at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/18/18139556/republicans-democr
ats-partisanship-ideology-philosophy-psychology-marc-hetherington
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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