A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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The Life in The Simpsons Is No Longer Attainable
The most famous dysfunctional family of 1990s television enjoyed, by today’s standards, an almost dreamily secure existence.
The 1996 episode “Much Apu About Nothing” shows Homer’s paycheck. He grosses $479.60 per week, making his annual income about $25,000.
Adjusted for inflation, Homer’s 1996 income of $25,000 would be roughly $42,000 today, about 60 percent of the 2019 median U.S. income. But salary aside, the world for someone like Homer Simpson is far less secure.
www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-270.html
The purchasing power of Homer’s paycheck, moreover, has shrunk dramatically. The median house costs 2.4 times what it did in the mid-’90s.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
Health-care expenses for one person are three times what they were 25 years ago.
https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Tr
ends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical
The median tuition for a four-year college is 1.8 times what it was then. In today’s world, Marge would have to get a job too. But even then, they would struggle. Inflation and stagnant wages have led to a rise in two-income households, but to an erosion of economic stability for the people who occupy them.
Last year, my gross income was about $42,000—the amount Homer would be making today. It was the second-highest-earning year of my career. I wanted to buy a home, but no bank was willing to finance a mortgage, especially since I had less than $5,000 to make a down payment. However, my father offered me a zero-down, no-interest contract. Without him, I would not have been able to buy the house.
I finally paid off my medical debt. But after taking into account all of my expenses, my adjusted gross income was only $19. And with the capitalized interest on my student loans adding thousands to the balance, my net worth is still negative.
I don’t have Bart, Lisa, and Maggie to feed or clothe or buy Christmas presents for. I’m not sure how I’d make it if I did.
Someone I follow on Twitter, Erika Chappell, recently encapsulated my feelings about The Simpsons in a tweet: “That a show which was originally about a dysfunctional mess of a family barely clinging to middle class life in the aftermath of the Reagan administration has now become aspirational is frankly the most on the nose manifestation of capitalist American decline I can think of.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20201231175050if_/https://www.theatlantic.
com/ideas/archive/2020/12/life-simpsons-no-longer-attainable/617499/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The runoff elections for two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia next Tuesday have the potential to inject volatility into a high-flying stock market that has mostly looked past political turbulence in Washington this year.
Market participants say any complacency among investors could be misplaced, since if the Democrats win both senate seats, then the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden would have control of both chambers of Congress and may move to reverse the corporate tax cuts of 2017, putting company earnings and stock prices under some pressure.
However, a Democratic victory could also boost equities by raising expectations for more aggressive fiscal stimulus measures next year, on top of the billions of dollars deployed already by Congress.
These are reasons why the Georgia runoff elections could turn into a “big deal” for Wall Street, Michael Reynolds, investment strategy officer at Glenmede, said in an interview.
“If we get a shot in the arm with a larger fiscal package, you need to balance that out with the specter of increasing corporate tax rates,” said Reynolds.
Most analysts are forecasting a victory for the incumbent Republican senators from Georgia, and Betting market PredictIt gives Republicans a 65% chance of staying in charge of the Senate as of Thursday.
www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-why-the-georgia-runoff-elections-for-t
he-u-s-senate-could-turn-into-a-big-deal-for-markets-11609443446
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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All that shits above my pay grade two.
T 
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Quote:If either Democrat running for Georgian Senator loses the runoff election, then Mitch McConnell will be majority leader in the Senate. Why is that important? You will possibly lose $2,000, THG.
Originally posted by THG:
All that shits above my pay grade two.
Mitch McConnell introduced a bill Tuesday linking $2,000 stimulus checks to a repeal of Section 230 and the creation of a new commission to study election fraud, a move likely to doom the increased direct payments.
If Republicans actually disagreed with Mitch, they'd replace him as majority leader. McConnell is nothing more than a scapegoat shielding the party from wildly unpopular policies.
Thank you Mitch McConnell for making it explicitly clear that if Georgia votes in Democrats Ossoff and Warnock, most everybody, but not me, will get $2,000 in 3 weeks, and if they do not then we will get nothing for the next two years because Mitch will remain in a powerful position that allows him to kill just about anything President Biden might want to do, such as mail out $2,000 checks.
Joe Biden, who has promised to deliver more economic relief to Americans in the early days of his administration, has endorsed sending $2,000 stimulus checks to qualifying individuals and households.
www.newsweek.com/what-joe-biden-has-said-about-2000-stimulus-check-ame
ricans-1558107
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 second:Quote:If either Democrat running for Georgian Senator loses the runoff election, then Mitch McConnell will be majority leader in the Senate. Why is that important? You will possibly lose $2,000, THG.
Originally posted by THG:
All that shits above my pay grade two.
Mitch McConnell introduced a bill Tuesday linking $2,000 stimulus checks to a repeal of Section 230 and the creation of a new commission to study election fraud, a move likely to doom the increased direct payments.
If Republicans actually disagreed with Mitch, they'd replace him as majority leader. McConnell is nothing more than a scapegoat shielding the party from wildly unpopular policies.
Thank you Mitch McConnell for making it explicitly clear that if Georgia votes in Democrats Ossoff and Warnock, most everybody, but not me, will get $2,000 in 3 weeks, and if they do not then we will get nothing for the next two years because Mitch will remain in a powerful position that allows him to kill just about anything President Biden might want to do, such as mail out $2,000 checks.
Joe Biden, who has promised to deliver more economic relief to Americans in the early days of his administration, has endorsed sending $2,000 stimulus checks to qualifying individuals and households.
www.newsweek.com/what-joe-biden-has-said-about-2000-stimulus-check-ame
ricans-1558107
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
What I mean by above my pay grade is what the stock market will do. I understand how Moscow Mitch operates and what is at stake in the senate runoffs in Georgia. I sent money. In fact for the first time I sent money several times this election period and am not disappointed I did.
I agree with the gist of this post. I just avoid going into the weeds concerning some topics. That's because we have posters here who distort even the most basic of truths, which then becomes the foundation of their debate. I focus on that.
T
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‘Illegitimate’ president claims against Biden harken to 1868, the first Presidential election after Lincoln's assassination
Historians say there’s no equivalent for Trump’s response to his loss.
Trump has spent the weeks since the election trying to undermine the results, claiming without evidence the election was “stolen” and repeatedly calling Biden an “illegitimate president.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s failed attempt last week to convince the Supreme Court to overturn election results in four battleground states was widely supported by the state’s Republicans, including both Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick .
Stephanie McCurry, a Columbia University historian specializing in the Civil War and Reconstruction, said the moment parallels the response from white southerners to Ulysses Grant’s election in 1868.
Southern Democrats never accepted Grant’s presidency as legitimate because they believed it was based on Black votes, she said. That same view was taken toward Black senators, congressmen and members of state legislatures. The Republican Party was viewed as “the enemy’s party,” she said.
“It’s like what we’re hearing now — that the vote was illegitimate,” she said. “This is what worries me now. What happens now? We’re heading into a period that’s looking increasingly like there’s a chunk of the population that won’t concede the legitimacy of the election of Joe Biden.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin beat many Texas Republicans to acknowledging Biden’s win, including more than a dozen Texas congressmen and Sen. Cruz, who had agreed to argue Trump’s case before the Supreme Court.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/As-American-po
litics-grow-still-more-divisive-15812248.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Good post SECOND. I'll sum up what Trumps doing in two words; attempted coup. Between the two of us I'd say we nailed it.
T
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Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert sued to empower Vice President Mike Pence this week to throw out electoral votes against Trump when he presides over the congressional session. So ridiculous. If Gohmert were right -- if the vice president could, at his own whim, simply discard certain electoral votes while accepting others, then on January 6, 2017, Vice President Joe Biden could have decided to install President Hillary Clinton, rather than Donald Trump. And on January 6, 2001, Vice President Al Gore could have named himself the winner of the 2000 election. You can see the absurdity here.
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 second:
Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert sued to empower Vice President Mike Pence this week to throw out electoral votes against Trump when he presides over the congressional session. So ridiculous. If Gohmert were right -- if the vice president could, at his own whim, simply discard certain electoral votes while accepting others, then on January 6, 2017, Vice President Joe Biden could have decided to install President Hillary Clinton, rather than Donald Trump. And on January 6, 2001, Vice President Al Gore could have named himself the winner of the 2000 election. You can see the absurdity here.
The Consistency of Trumps allies relying on alternative facts is still at 100%. It reminds me of what jack=ass Polish Russian collaborators kiki and sig do. They're learning the hard way you cannot be right if what you say is based on lies and subterfuge.
T
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