A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Even though GDP grew at 5.7% last year, the highest rate since “Morning in America” 1984, and job growth was the largest ever for the first year of a presidency, fully 29% of the population recently declared that we have been seeing job losses, with only 31% somehow aware that we have seen job gains, with many declaring the economy “bad,” although that is explained by the public listing inflation as their biggest concern. But how people can turn stories about “worker shortages” into job losses is beyond me. I also observe that people worried about “worker shortages” are also likely to be worked up about blocking illegal immigration, so consistent.
https://angrybearblog.com/2022/05/major-economic-confusion
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The actual topic is the mental illness...
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Nope. Vaccines aren't the topic here.
Try again.
Nope. This is the topic:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Tucker Carlson has been calling blacks niggers all his life. Tucker gets angry that anyone would think he is a racist just because he hates niggers. Niggers earned Tucker's hatred according to Tucker. To Tucker, the real racists are the people who call Tucker a racist in Tucker's opinion. Whatever, but Tucker is a complete nutjob on the subject of race, which appeals to certain Americans who watch his show.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Save it.
Nobody wants to hear from the racists at the dying NYT.
Pathetic.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Hey look.
Not black Second decides yet again that he's virtue-signaled enough this week to earn him the right to throw the word around half a dozen times.
Archived.
NOTE: There's a special place in your archive for these moments.Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What does Tucker Carlson signal?
Nah. Fuck that.
You just threw around the N-word like you owned it.
I want you to show me NOW when Tucker Carlson said it even once, let alone a barrage that you feel that you're entitled to do, you "rich" white racist fuck.
Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
You're done here.
Try again.
--------------------------------------------------
Me: "Remember Covid?"
Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I have tried to persuade Trump-voting construction workers who are crazy to behave slightly more sane. It never works for long. Sometimes a month. Other times a day. When I fire them, usually they either threaten to kill me or whine about needing the job or both. Few leave quietly because crazy people are talkative and lack the insight that their problems are caused exclusively by their crazy fool behavior. They vote for Trump because he loves the poorly educated mentally ill. He has their behavioral problems, but has transcended them because he can afford the best lawyers, thanks to an inheritance that Trump didn't pay all the taxes on. Trump is to them a bigger crook and nutjob, which his voters admire. He is them.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Try again.
Donald Trump’s family avoided taxes, but did they evade them? We asked an expert why the difference matters.
Yup. That's what I thought, bitch.
You're lucky there aren't any black people on this site or they'd have run you off of it long ago.
--------------------------------------------------
Me: "Remember Covid?"
Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"
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Ethics Watchdog Sounds Alarm
https://conservativebrief.com/ethics-group-62615/
Ethics Watchdog Sounds The Alarm On The Biden Administration And Its New White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Over Her Relationship With CNN Journalist
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Quote:6ix, too bad you can't see yourself from outside. The Confederates couldn't see themselves and they started a war because, in their heads, they were the good guys fighting for their freedom. The Nazis were just as blind as Confederates when they looked in a mirror. In their heads, they were good people, but maybe you remember what those good people did because they couldn't see themselves as others see them. The Russian Communists were the good guys who just so happened to starve 4,000,000 Ukrainians to death because those Ukies, as Signym has called them, did not understand the beautiful ideas motivating the Communist party. And then there are today's Trump voters who haven't grabbed absolute control, yet, but when they do, the beauty of their ideas, not different from Confederate ideas about what freedom is, will sweep across America, transforming everything. Too bad Trump voters can't see themselves as non-Trump voters see them. But they can't see, which is precisely why they vote for Trump.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Yup. That's what I thought, bitch.
You're lucky there aren't any black people on this site or they'd have run you off of it long ago.
By the way, 6ix, that blindness Trump voters have about themselves is why they don't prosper in America between elections. They cannot see what they did wrong, what is keeping them down. They are also blind to Trump's tax cheating, adultery and his constantly being sued, all which keep his life in turmoil. If he hadn't inherited his wealth, to afford lawyers to clean up after his unnecessary adventures, his life would be as sorrowful as his voters' lives.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The philosopher who warned us about loneliness and totalitarianism
A podcast revisiting Hannah Arendt’s ideas about social isolation and mass resentment.
Hannah Arendt writes about loneliness as a distinct modern problem. She looks both to Nazi totalitarianism, which had just ended, but also to Soviet totalitarianism, which is still going strong at the time. And she also looks toward her new home in America.
What she sees everywhere she looks is that loneliness is the result of a lack of a common ground of experience. This is what she’s getting at when she writes, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, in other words, the reality of experience, and the distinction between true and false ... people for whom those distinctions no longer exist.”
In her book on totalitarianism, Arendt talks about the emergence of “the masses,” which is distinct from what we might think of as classes or interest groups, because those are groups that are by definition fighting for some common interest. She’s talking about the rise of an “unorganized mass” of “mostly furious individuals” with nothing in common except for their contempt for the present order. She calls this “negative solidarity” and it’s the raw material of totalitarianism, because it’s a world without connection and friendship, where the only basis of collective action is some kind of awful combination of anger and desperation.
How did the world get so lonely in the first place? Was it just the rise of capitalism and individualism? It’s that, but also much more. When I was re-reading Origins of Totalitarianism a couple of months ago, I was astonished by how often the word “hate” came into her conversation about the creation of the mass. She noticed that it’s really easy to work with people’s anger and whip up a mob, and she has this great statement in the book about the alliance between the mob and the elite and how the elite are quite good at spotting and using the hate that’s already there.
She says anger is things like unemployment. It is things like not being able to keep your home. And when you look at the early 20th century and look at those rates of inflation and unemployment, and then you have the World War and the civil wars across Europe, and then you have mass migration and so on, we’re not just talking about some kind of ennui here. This is raw, real anger. It’s easy to raise a mob in these conditions. You’re starting with real anger.
This is the creation of the mass and it isn’t just fascism. This isn’t just populism. This is totalitarianism proper in Arendt’s mind. She says at one point, and this is a quote that’s resonated with me for a few years now, that “the masses’ escape from reality is a verdict against the world in which they’re forced to live.” Often the question is, well, how can people be so stupid? How can anyone fall for this? That’s the wrong way to think about it. Totalitarian politics is a verdict against the world in which people are forced to live. It’s a slap in the face. It’s a middle finger up against the real conditions of existence.
People will often refer to the masses as if they’re gullible and stupid, which on the one hand is just terrible politics. But on the other hand, it’s actually stupid. I mean, people aren’t stupid. A term that’s just as important as loneliness is cynicism. Totalitarianism works through cynicism. It’s crucial because it allows people to say, “They’re all the same, it’s all bullshit, isn’t it? It’s just politics, isn’t it?” What cynicism allows you to do is be gullible and disbelieving at the same time.
Arendt thought that before a totalitarian ideology could overwhelm reality, it had to first ruin people’s relationship with themselves and others by making them so skeptical and so cynical that they could no longer rely upon their own judgment. Without the ability to think, there can not be any judgment. She saw that when she looked at the Nazi office
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2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner
The Houston Chronicle Editorial Board on Monday won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing for a series on voter suppression in Texas.
The top honor was awarded to writers Lisa Falkenberg, Michael Lindenberger, Joe Holley and Luis Carrasco. Mostly published in a series called, "The Big Lie," their winning work examined and debunked GOP-driven falsehoods about voter fraud that have persisted for decades.
Jurors who decided the award wrote that the Chronicle won for a "campaign that, with original reporting, revealed voter suppression tactics, rejected the myth of widespread voter fraud and argued for sensible voting reforms."
The articles are here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220224095908/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/opinion/editorials/big-lie-series/
EDITORIAL
How Texas steals your voting rights while you're sleeping
The GOP's heedless rush to pass voter suppression gives up the game.
EDITORIAL
The GOP's not listening, but voter suppression is bad for business
EDITORIAL
What happens when a GOP state tells the truth about voter fraud?
EDITORIAL
For 20 years, the GOP has groomed their voters to believe in fraud
EDITORIAL
Texas has been crying 'fraud' since it blocked ex-slaves from voting
EDITORIAL
Is Crystal Mason proof of Texas election fraud — or a political ploy?
EDITORIAL
If voter fraud is an epidemic, why can’t Texas find it?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner
https://unherd.com/thepost/the-new-york-timess-worst-pulitzer-prize-wi
nners/
Nobody cares.
--------------------------------------------------
Me: "Remember Covid?"
Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"
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The Smash-and-Grab Economy
Private equity billionaires are looting the country, leaving everyday Americans to clean up the mess
Jerome Kohlberg Jr., Henry Kravis, and George Roberts, friends from their time engineering deals at Bear Stearns, had started investment bank KKR. They presented Saltarelli with a plan that they said could check all the CEO’s boxes: a leveraged buyout, or LBO. Saltarelli had to admit he’d never heard the term.
KKR arranged a meeting with Houdaille in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where they explained how an LBO would work. Institutional investors would lend them money based on Houdaille’s healthy cash reserve, enabling KKR and partners to buy up all the company’s shares and take it private. Houdaille would easily pay that debt back in four to five years, they said, thanks to the magic of corporate tax write-offs: Through some clever accounting, they could help Houdaille push off paying almost all corporate income tax for years, savings the company could use to pay off the debt it would incur during the buyout. By the time Houdaille had to pay Uncle Sam, the debt would be under control, and KKR would take the company public again, but at a much higher share price. Thanks to this plan, they could immediately offer Saltarelli and investors around $40 per share, about double what Houdaille was trading at. Not only would Saltarelli get his wish, but he’d make a hefty profit.
When Saltarelli agreed to KKR’s terms, it was historic: At the time, leveraged buyouts had only been applied to a few smaller companies worth less than $100 million. The Houdaille deal was worth almost four times that. Both Houdaille executives and the KKR financiers were set to come out of it nicely: According to journalist Max Holland’s 1989 book about LBOs, Saltarelli got around $5 million in cash ($20 million in today’s dollars), plus a retirement package, and new CEO Phil O’Reilly’s salary reportedly almost doubled. Baked into the deal were also annual management fees that Houdaille would pay to KKR (ranging from $646,000 to $1.3 million in today’s dollars), plus 1 percent of the total transaction cost for putting the deal together, and 20 percent of any capital gains accrued by KKR’s partners in the deal, which the industry calls “carried interest.” KKR kicked in as little as $1 million toward the buyout, which cost around $380 million, nearly all of it financed with debt that Houdaille alone would be responsible for repaying.
Within a few years, however, the American machine tool business went south, and Houdaille found itself drowning in its debt. Soon, KKR divested seven divisions of the company, eliminating 2,200 jobs. Then it borrowed even more money, put the debt on Houdaille’s tab, and used it to engineer a handsome buyout for the LBO’s initial investors who now wanted out. A year later, KKR sold Houdaille to a British firm, which sold all but one of Houdaille’s remaining divisions back to KKR, which used them to form a new company, IDEX. Houdaille died, yet the investors who’d killed it walked off with millions and called it a success: “All of the Houdaille ‘constituents’…fared well in the LBO,” declared a report commissioned by KKR. Just like that, a new kind of financial monstrosity was born.
Houdaille “was a wake-up call,” says Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Wall Street firms, she says, were giddy at the discovery that they could load companies up with debt they’d never be responsible for paying down themselves and take an ample cut of the proceeds that came from stripping a company bare—and it was all legal.
More at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/private-equity-buyout-kkr
-houdaille/
Just so you know why LBO is still legal, Democrats have written laws to make this illegal but Republican Senators always filibuster those laws because slowing down the biggest business crooks would be Communism. It was lobbyists for KKR, the big crooks' investment bank, that told Republicans it was Communism.
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Let's get full transparency on every US FEDERAL politician's stock portfolio and we'll see who's really against us.
Remember the vote on abortion that just happened, dummy?
The one that they knew never was going to pass?
We've got one party in America. It's the party of Money and we're all fucked.
Open your eyes, stupid.
--------------------------------------------------
Me: "Remember Covid?"
Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"
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Quote:There are two parties and they are very different. Every vote in the Senate makes it absolutely clear where each Senator stands. Most recently every Republican in the Senate and conservative Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (West Virginia) voted against a bill to guarantee abortion access in the U.S. In a tweet clearly aimed at Manchin, Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote: “If you can’t stand up for a woman’s right to choose, for voting rights, for an economy that works for all, why are you caucusing with the Senate Democrats? We need a Democratic Majority where all members believe in economic, racial, social and environmental justice.”
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Let's get full transparency on every US FEDERAL politician's stock portfolio and we'll see who's really against us.
Remember the vote on abortion that just happened, dummy?
The one that they knew never was going to pass?
We've got one party in America. It's the party of Money and we're all fucked.
Open your eyes, stupid.
https://truthout.org/articles/sanders-asks-why-manchins-a-democrat-aft
er-his-no-vote-on-abortion-bill/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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