One thing I admire about Biden is his principles. He’s spent his life hurting little people, and something as minor as holding Congress isn’t going to make him change his ways now. Make a promise, win an election, break your promise in the most weasely and public way possible.
I’m talking about $2,000 checks. There is no question this is what Democrats promised if Georgia elected two Democratic Senators.
And Biden promised this specifically:
A day before Georgians head to the polls to decide control of the Senate, President-elect Joe Biden sought to cast the election as a choice between immediate stimulus relief or months of gridlock, promising that victory by Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff would mean $2,000 stimulus checks would be sent out “immediately.”
After Georgia did, indeed, give Biden two Democratic Senators and control of the Senaate. Biden walked this back to $1,400 — saying that the previous stimulus bill had already paid $600. Now he’s been saying that perhaps the checks should be means tested, so only some people will get $1,400 checks.
This is all weaseling. It is recognized as such by ordinary people. Biden is proving that he simply can’t be trusted to do what he says, when he makes a clear promise.
Now perhaps the bill can’t pass: perhaps. But you still do it: you bring and simple up and down bill with only the checks and make people vote for and against it. Odds are some Republicans will vote for it (Hawley, for one) so you can lose a Democrat or two.
Failure to do this will be remembered. People thought they were going to get $2k, they aren’t going to get it, and they will hold a grudge on this. No ordinary person will trust a word Biden says from this point on.
Nor should they.
Billionaires, on the other hand, will find he remains a good friend.
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GlassHammer
Each vaccine administered is a $2,000 check, that is what Washington thinks.
Joan
He is also ruining the political careers of everyone who promised this alongside him, and the people who canvassed for him will never do so again because he made them out to be liars.
Plague Species
Yes, I agree. And, like Trump, he’s ordering teachers back in the classroom and they haven’t even been vaccinated yet. A zebra can’t change its stripes and when in history has a nation restored itself to its once prominent status? I’m going with never because it’s pretty much a law of nature — there is no restoration in that equation. The Dems running Hillary and then Biden was like the former Soviet Union putting up Andropov and Chernenko when it was in its death throes after the passing of Brezhnev.
sbt42
Imagine if this scenario was flipped, and voters said to the candidates: “Pay me $2,000, and I’ll vote for you in a couple months.” What politician in their right mind would agree to such a deal?
This is what those candidates did to the voters. The big difference is that the voters thought the candidates would follow through. Big mistake (yet again?).
Plague Species
Biden is Trump-Lite.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/01/28/chic-j28.html
Ché Pasa
To be blunt, the Government of the United States is “anti working class” and has been — sometimes vehemently and lethally — almost its entire history with the anomalous exception of the period 1933-76. And even then, the government’s support for the working class was weak and could be absent.
To propose that nothing Biden says from this point on should be trusted since there will (apparently) be no $2000 checks — and there may be no checks at all given the way the sausage gets made in DC — is absurd if it only applies to Biden. In fact, nothing any president or elected representative says should be taken at face value or on faith at any time. They all lie and renege. They all say what they are told their constituents want to hear, they will follow through on little or less. It’s the nature of the game.
Biden has a record that is particularly egregious when it comes to financial benefits and rewards for the working class and the less fortunate in general in this country. He has long served the interests of the banking industry in Delaware, and that service has cost the Lesser People much.
Interestingly in his first few days in the presidency he seems to be trying to reverse some of the worst aspects of what he was responsible for as a senator, as well as doing something about the worst (ie:cruelest) aspects of the Trump regime. And who knows, he might even come around to fulfilling his promise of $2000 “checks” in the by and bye.
I won’t hold my breath.
marku52
The only thing saving the incompetent-and-corrupt-as-usual Dems is the about-to-flare-up civil war inside the Pubs. Trump supporters will primary and turn out any Pub Pol who doesn’t come to Mara Lago to kiss the ring. But McConnell and the corporate Pubs despise him and have already gotten every thing they wanted (a packed judiciary and big tax cuts) and so have no further use for the screeching toddler.
Hilarity ensues as the country burns….
someofparts
The PMC people I know are being suspiciously hysterical about the arrival of vaccinations. Anyone that presumes to express dissatisfaction about the missing checks will be accused of being ungrateful for the shots. I cringe to imagine what they will do and how they will spin it when the pandemic gets worse under Biden.
Their plans depend on being the minority party. They want enough power to grift but not so much power that their frauds and studied inaction become too obvious.
someofparts
Not only is Biden Trump-lite, but Doctor Jill is helping him implement the Betsy DeVos plan to exterminate our public schools. Once re-opening them causes ghastly outbreaks of the plague they will need to be closed again, so sorry.
Pandemic control, brought to you by the people who used to hand out smallpox blankets.
Z
Creepy Joe is just like The Head PR Man for the Point Zero One Percent Obama: they both want a Republican Congress because that makes them look like the “better” guy while they sell out the working class and poor to please their sponsors. Win-win for them. They get the benefits of keeping on the good side of the players in their socio-economic class and they don’t take the heat from the public for selling out because they were “forced” into tough decisions.
Plus, they get to take center stage and do their political drama performance art that they crave so much that comes with a Newsweek cover profile and one of the world’s best hagiographers to explain their tribulations to the world.
It’s all about the dopamine pings to these decades long amphetamine fiends. They got everything they need financially so it’s what matters most to them at this point. They can give one flying f*ck about anyone but themselves and their own.
Creepy Joe loves dishing out tough decisions on the working class and poor. He fancies himself a tough guy, but he’s a coddled fake. A conman who’s been riding on his smile, which he’s now lost due to plastic surgery, and hiding in the politically safe state of Delaware.
If any 78 year old man deserves a big-time ass kicking it’s that creepy punk. I hope he drowns in a bowl of cereal. Cornpops hopefully. It would be a fitting end for that sack of sh*t.
Biden-Harris is going to be a disaster but it’s going to be satisfying watching Biden finally get what he’s earned: majority hatred.
Z
different clue
This will provide an opportunity ” leftish progressoid” voters to vote against Clintobiden Obamacrats in primaries and elections. The goal would be to purge and burn the Democratic Party till only a Red Gingrich-type stub is left to regrow from. Or to exterminate the Democratic Party from existence step by step.
How many “leftish progressoids” are there? Enough that they could hurt a business which donates to Clintobiden Obamacrats if all of them boycotted that business until it stops funding Clintobiden Obamacrats and their party? If so, they could do that very thing and torture business after business out of supporting the Clintobiden Obamacrats.
nihil obstet
In Washington speak, “tough decisions” means decisions that are going to be very tough on you. Easy for me, but tough on you.
Willy
All Joe has to do is go for the head wound. Or at least try. Any pushback from conservatism would’ve been noted by the more aware and thinking of independents. Instead Joe continues the Democratic Party tradition of pillow fighting. I’m hopeful that Bernie will act as a bar of soap. Inside the pillow case that is.
Hugh
I see it as much more of a horse race to hell. Shifting back from $1400 to $2000 relief checks would cost about $150 billion more. Meanwhile the Republicans are shopping an overall $600 billion covid relief bill . That’s $1.3 Trillion less than what Biden is proposing. If Biden et al can straighten out Trump’s vaccine distribution mess, deliver even moderate relief, and contrast that to the Republican “let them die in the snow” attitude, the Democrats could do quite well in 2022. The only thing is the Democrats have a genius for not doing the obvious.
nihil obstet
For the most part, a majority of people vote on what closely precedes the election, not on what happened a year previously. By then, the propaganda will have obfuscated who did what. $2000 checks signed by Biden are memorable. Who made the response to covid somewhat less difficult is not. It’s subject to the argument that everything was getting better until the Democrats switched horses mainstream. Nice homey image there, offsetting the paragraphs of facts and statistics that most won’t read, proving that Biden did improve things.
Real, significant change can win. A little bit of tweaking improvement will lose.
GlassHammer
To me the lack of $2k checks is less a broken campaign promise and more a confirmation that the current neoliberal order just doesn’t want the consent of the governed.
I mean the checks were the minimum exchange required for the governed to slightly “buy in” and powerful people went “No, I think we can do even less”.
So yeah…. that doesn’t leave much meaning to politics.
Guess we just go full doomer/prepper which funny enough is an area for both left and right to interact.
Feral Finster
Charlie Brown.
Lucy.
Football.
How many time will people fall for this, and then make excuses for The Lesser Evil because at least he’s Not Team R? (That that I advocate making excuses for Team R, either.)
Feral Finster
“NOT that I advocate making excuses for Team R, either.”
No edit funkshion.
Ché Pasa
As for losing Congress in 2022: Yes. That’s all but foregone no matter what Biden/Harris does or doesn’t do.
Here’s why: something called voter suppression and gerrymandering. Dems lost numerous statehouses in 2010. It was a catastrophic failure, but one so predictable and targeted, I thought it was a deliberate decision by Rahm and the White House smart boys. Well, it led to intense gerrymandering by the R victors and the near impossibility of a Dem rebound in 2012, 21014, or 2016. Not till 2018 were the Dems able to retake the House and not till 2020 were they able to barely retake the Senate, and they lost seats in the House in 2020.
More statehouses are now in R hands, and that will lead to more voter suppression and gerrymandering, which in turn is almost certain to lead to the loss of the House and probably the Senate in 2022.
No mystery.
Unless the Rs go the way of the Whigs — and they might — this is very nearly inevitable, and everyone in DC knows it. $2000 checks or no.
different clue
@GlassHammer,
We could also lift a finger ( only ONE, mind you) towards politics at the regional and local levels as long as we see that politics yielding desired-by-us results in the regional local real world.
I suspect Survivaling and Preppering will work better among organizable social groups all helping eachother maintain a Survivalist Front against outside threats and dangers. Those lone wolves who think they will go totally off grid and take their families survival LARPing in the woods will probably lose the Darwin Sweepstakes.
Feral Finster
@GlassHammer: Team D, like Team R, can only be trusted to keep its word to us non-oligarchs if we have some kind of collateral. “Put the gun down and then we’ll talk” does not work when you are dealing with sociopaths.
In the present situation, Team D has gotten what it wanted from us (Biden in office, Ossoff and Warnock elected to the Senate) and therefore is trying to renegotiate the deal it made. Solemn Team D promises mean nothing, the fact that the voting public performed its side of the bargain in full means diddly, unless you have something Team D wants and cannot take.
Don’t be surprised if we actually get bupkis when all is said and done.
If we did not know this already, we should know it now.
Jason
Biden-Harris is going to be a disaster but it’s going to be satisfying watching Biden finally get what he’s earned: majority hatred.
No majority. A good percentage of the people who “like” the guy in reality like the image of him that’s crafted by the media they consume. That image construction won’t change.
Perhaps they’ll start reading Ian et al.
Chicago Clubs
>No ordinary person will trust a word Biden says from this point on.
Nah, plenty of dipshit NPR libs will still line up to suck his dick.
Willy
On the plus, it’s becoming common knowledge that over the past 40 years the Democrats have held themselves back. They really need to accept that the conservatism which they’ve been trying to be a loyal opposition to, is pulling them right off the batshit cliff behind them. They need to realize that declaring Obama a Muslim, or Biden a socialist, or China capitalist, or science evil, or dominionism good, or fascism is patriotism, or sexual confusion is the greatest threat to America since Stalin… is all batshit. When people like Frank Schaeffer and George Will and Frank Luntz and Steve Schmidt have left the GOP because they say it’s gone batshit, then maybe it’s time to not be such a “loyal opposition” anymore.
Makes me chuckle at how naïve I was all those times I tried to negotiate with psychopaths.
js
All the stimulus checks have been means tested so far though. He may want to add *lower* means tests, but it is simply not true that the checks have not been means tested the entire time and that they were some kind of universal benefit. They weren’t.
Means testing was a phase out at 75k for an individual on 2019 income. That’s a lot of money in parts of flyover, middling in some coastal areas. Probably not in dire need of the check unless 2020 income took a real dive over 2019 income, which given there was a pandemic going happened to many.
S Brennan
Biden is Trump-Lite…not really.
Obama was a much more effective evil than Hillary, Biden is a much more effective evil than Trump.
Trump was finished in 2024, the Biden/Harris administration has until 2032
Trump did not have support of rump-R’s and they made that known, Biden/Harris has the complete support of the DLCed DNC
Instead of punishing/purging the neoDs, “liberals”, “pregressives” & “lefties” ensured neoDs long term survival/supremacy.
As long as the vilification* strategy of neoD opponents works…”he’s another Hitler I tell ‘ya…you got to vote for Neo Liberal[D]” the neoD’s will be able to continue their enactment of gilded-age [sans mercantilism] economics and neocolonialism.
The vast majority of commenters here are active participants in the neoDs vilification gimmick, so stop whining in public in some bad parody of Claude Rains in Casablanca, you are getting exactly what you asked for…and as a result, the neoDs owe you nothing.
Never have so few…been offered so little…to have so many…go so willingly.
Willy
We weren’t much up for worshipping the Trump family, just for a change of pace. Kim-il Sung started out as a popular populist promising perpetual prosperity. Unless you enjoy force-crying yourself at public funerals, it didn’t turn out so well.
Face it. The Trump family are morons.
bruce wilder
I am increasingly curious about the way those most infused with Team D spirit seemed inclined to think the Republican Party is weak, on the verge of a fatal split, threatened by demographic trends, about to lose power, but are not concerned at about the inability of Dems to coordinate among themselves in a way that threatens Republican power.
Both Parties are assiduous in seeking campaign donations that require screwing most voters. The two-Party system is losing legitimacy with a large part of the electorate, but either Party can survive that as long as voters abandon the ballot box (or are cheated out of the franchise by “touch screens” or mail-in). Disillusion is more desirable than vengeful anger latching onto someone with a penchant for power.
Hugh
BTW the Republican plan for covid relief reduced stimulus checks to $1,000 and limited them to those making less than $40,000 a year. As bad as the Democrats are, it is always a safe bet the Republicans will be worse. Usually a new Administration has a couple of months before theyneed to start delivering, but with covid, that’s all off. The Democrats need to push their agenda now or not at all.
Interesting to see SB arguing that Trump was too big a dumbass to be evil. I think SB is underestimating Trump. He was both.
Ché Pasa
So far, Biden is being more aggressive than any Dem president since LBJ. Of course a lot of it is eyewash, reversing policies that Dems and Rs routinely reverse, etc. But as limited as it is, the COVID recovery measure is bigger ticket than any Dem president since LBJ has led with out the gate.
Thus the focus on “$2000 Checks!” may be a kind of a feint. We’ve been hearing suggestions that when the bill gets to reconciliation, the “checks” may actually be more than $2000. I don’t expect it, but then I’m not one to expect much (good or bad) from the government.
Bernie was the one to say “$2000 a month until the pandemic is ended” wasn’t he? Well, what could happen if the stars align just right is a version of a UBI, less than $2000 to be sure, but guaranteed monthly for everyone (well, except the undeserving rich.)
Would that be your typical Dem betrayal?
bruce wilder
Kim-il Sung started out as a popular populist promising perpetual prosperity.
Not really.
Some think he started as someone else altogether — assuming the name and reputation of a legendary and deceased leader of the anti-Japanese resistance, after spending the war leading a quiet life in the Soviet Red Army.
S Brennan
Hugh:
Your dishonesty knows no bounds, where oh where did I argue:
“that Trump was too big a dumbass to be evil” – Hugh
When I said:
___________________
“Obama was a much more effective evil than Hillary, Biden is a much more effective evil than Trump.
Trump was finished in 2024, the Biden/Harris administration has until 2032
Trump did not have support of rump-R’s and they made that known, Biden/Harris has the complete support of the DLCed DNC
Instead of punishing/purging the neoDs, “liberals”, “pregressives” & “lefties” ensured neoDs long term survival/supremacy.
As long as the vilification* strategy of neoD opponents works…”he’s another Hitler I tell ‘ya…you got to vote for Neo Liberal[D]” the neoD’s will be able to continue their enactment of gilded-age [sans mercantilism] economics and neocolonialism.
The vast majority of commenters here are active participants in the neoDs vilification gimmick, so stop whining in public in some bad parody of Claude Rains in Casablanca, you are getting exactly what you asked for…and as a result, the neoDs owe you nothing.
Never have so few…been offered so little…to have so many…go so willingly.”
__________________
Hugh; you are well known for your dishonesty, your deception and brazen strawman arguments but, you have outdone yourself on this lie…you are, like all neoDs, without a trace of shame, or an ounce of honor. Now go fuck yourself.
Required
you’re kind of a dumbass, ain’t ya, ian
Optional
you’re a pretty bright guy, ain’t ya, ian
Willy
bruce, I’d heard that one too. Like most authoritarian wannabes, he’d chosen the aura of a successful unbeatable heroic winner with a really good brain, who believed he deserved to be proclaimed ‘eternal president of the republic” even in death. In his old color photos he even has a bit of an orange skin color! The rest of it was just telling the countrymen he despised whatever it was they wanted to hear.
It’s amazing that had Trump been more intelligent and managed covid to at least similar death and incidence averages than other developed nations did, we’d still have S Brennan worshipping him as a god, instead of a coulda-been god who the neoDs so horribly ruined. Terminally warped, we’ll now never be hearing the end of it.
No doubts Kim Il-sung counted on that type of person as champions for his WTF? forever cause. I still think those Olympic cheerleaders were kinda cute though.
Z
Creepy Joe must have a lot of confidence in that new fence around his new house.
Must have went out front and gave it a few shakes and decided it’s sturdy.
Z
bruce wilder
I cannot say I have ever read anything written by S Brennan on these comment threads that could be fairly characterized as “worshipping Trump as a god”. I do not think he finds much to like about Trump and has never indicated political support for Trump or the Republican Party, insofar as I can recall.
I also do not see any basis for analogizing Trump with the example of Kim il-Sung, who established a totalitarian state led by an absolute and hereditary monarch.
Mark Pontin
As Bruce W. says, Kim-il Sung was essentially a creation of the Stalin-era Soviet Union and originally installed in power in North Korea by them.
Plague Species
He voted for McDonald for chrissakes. If that’s not support, I don’t what is. He could have just not voted, but no, he voted and he voted for a wannabe demagogue and unlike many Trump supporters, he knew better and still did it which makes him what? Evil, that’s what.
Plague Species
The wording of the White House statement after the meeting with the ten, telegraphs the stimulus package will be negotiated down. That, coupled with Susan Collins being happy about the meeting and claiming it was constructive and productive means Bipartisan Joe will be bipartisan again. McConnell chastising Marjorie without naming her must be part of the deal. Some deal. Politics is the malevolent art of making the possible, impossible, and Biden is quite the artist.
In other news, but in keeping with the sentiment, perhaps Robinhood should be renamed Robinettehood. What do you think?
Plague Species
This is as telling, if not more, than the $2,000 checks. It indicates the Dems are perfectly fine with losing in 2022 and 2024. In fact, they’re already taking actions to ensure it. The Dems should be doubling down, but instead they are doing the exact opposite.
https://norwalkreflector.com/news/301713/ohio-democratic-party-is-laying-off-more-than-half-its-staff/
Stirling S Newberry
OT:
Hal Holbrook has left us:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/02/theater/hal-holbrook-dead.html
bruce wilder
The established elite of each Party has in common a passionate contempt for their own electoral base as well as the electoral base of their nominal opposition. The minority in each Party establishment, who evidence any principle or awareness of a reality underlying the flood of
talking points and cantlies and propaganda, are marginalized (and utilized — note well!) but held powerless in the end.The anger and blame and hate with which each Party encourages their electoral base to regard the electoral base of the opposite Party obscures the realities with absurd exaggeration and myth, while providing a vent for the volcanic resentments building up under the reality of elite negligence and oppression and distract attention from the habitual forming of common cause among the nominally opposed elites of both Parties.
BobbyK
I’m sure when Democrats lose the Senate and HoR it will be blamed on Bernie Sanders somehow.
GlassHammer
“The established elite of each Party has in common a passionate contempt for their own electoral base as well as the electoral base of their nominal opposition.” – bruce wilder
The parties created and released “hate propoganda” as a means of capturing the masses but in time it captured the parties as well. (Which is kinda obvious that in a represent democracy all elected officials would in time believe “hate propoganda” if the public was exposed to it long enough.)
And because “hate propoganda” has no purpose other than destruction of the opposition, the elected officials that embody it can’t govern or…. maintain the system that called the “hate propoganda” into existence i.e. the greater national/economic order. The later is what we are seeing in each failure to handle crisis after crisis. Our leaders simply can’t convert “hate propoganda” into solutions for material reality despite how strongly they believe it can.
And the populace who believes that “hate propganda” should sufficiently fix things and is being told 24/7 that it should fix things, simply can’t handle the fact that it isn’t fixing anything at all. So now the public is generating it’s own “hate propoganda” independent of top down direction because they still think it should work. And thanks to social media the public can spread their home made “hate propoganda” further and faster than ever. Hell they can even monetize the “hate propoganda”.
Z
Creepy Joe is just giving us some of his tough love, just showing us who’s boss. Mind you that he has nothing but unconditional love for his sponsors.
Tears and suffering for us and a handjob across the aisle for “Let Them Eat Shit” Mitch and any other republican who will provide cover for him selling out the working class and poor to his sponsors.
He saves that tough stuff for us. Because he cares …
https://newrepublic.com/article/156994/democrats-screwed
Z
Ché Pasa
Basic Catholic teaching, Z. Something Zapatero could relate to, something a billion Catholics world wide, including Biden, had been hearing all their lives.
And… things have changed. The Pope has charted a somewhat new course for the Church and its teachings. Some Catholics are fighting his newish course, others are sighing in relief.
Where Biden stands is not entirely clear.
Z
Hope we can pass Creepy Joe’s test, though it seems to me that if he’s holding a public office that he ought to be more concerned about passing ours.
Z
Z
Ché,
Seems to me that kicking the working class and poor around while coddling the money changers is more neoliberal teaching that Catholic teaching.
Z
Plague Species
Here’s Catholic Joe’s idea of “tears and suffering,” at least related to himself. I have to admit, I’d cry too if someone gave me that Corvette. I’d cry because I wouldn’t be able to afford the insurance payments on it. Too funny the Dems and the media trying to portray Biden as a man of the working people when his dad owned a Chevy dealership and Joe always had a new car to drive to proms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP-hyDSlmUs
Plague Species
Where Biden Stands? Biden’s motto is, “let them eat corn cobs.” Very few if any will get that. I wouldn’t have gotten it before yesterday.
Lex
Z,
It’s the suffering Che’s talking about. Catholicism has a thing for suffering as a spiritual tool of salvation. Mother Theresa was an awful person to her charges because through suffering they would gain heaven. Very long history of it in monasticism and likely an unintentional tool for the public facing church to apply to the question, “if god is great and loves us, why does he make life so hard”. Now the church might have used its vast funds to make life better, but its been keen on the highlife since it cozied up to Roman Emperors. So they tell the common folk that suffering is the path to heaven. They tell the priests no wives so that they might suffer emotional loneliness to reach heaven. Suffering brings us closer to the suffering of the lord on the cross.
Z
Creepy Joe is going to talk us through the suffering that he’s dishing out to us at the bequest of his sponsors. Soft words and a hard stick. Cause he cares …
Foot massages for his sponsors, a handjob across the aisle for “Let Them Eat Shit” Mitch, and a kick in the ass for us. Thanks, Joe!
Next he’ll unleash the full-on gangnam Catholicism on us and try to guilt us into thinking we deserve it …
Z
Ché Pasa
“Suffering is good for the soul…”said every nun whoever taught a class of snot-nosed brats at Our Lady of the Assumption for God’s Sake.
Are there no Catholics posting here? ✠
Jason
Lapsed Catholic here. But I don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. On a personal level, GK Chesterton’s brand of Catholicism has more appeal to me than most secular or atheist treatises I’ve read.
anon
Anyone who was paying attention should have known that Biden wasn’t going to follow through with $2000 checks. Nor should young people believe that Biden is going to forgive student loans. I was honestly surprised he extended the student loan moratorium to September. Even $10,000 in loan forgiveness is a too much for the little people in Biden’s mind.
There are other countries giving their citizens $2000 each month, but we can’t get a total of $2000 in a year. That’s how much your government cares about whether you and your family manage to scrape by or die homeless.
Biden and the Democrats deserve to lose Congress if they can’t follow through on this single promise. That is why I would not count out Hawley just yet. If he keeps pushing for another stimulus check and attacks big tech and Robinhood, a significant number of the little people will side with him (or another populist) over Biden in 2024.
Willy
I cannot say I have ever read anything written by S Brennan on these comment threads that could be fairly characterized as “worshipping Trump as a god”.
SB resorts to bombast and extreme ad hominem against anybody he deems anti-Trump, instead of clearly and proportionately disclaiming or nuancing any of it. I disagree that my protest vote should involve somebody I see as mentally unfit.
I also do not see any basis for analogizing Trump with the example of Kim il-Sung, who established a totalitarian state led by an absolute and hereditary monarch.
Just because Trump didn’t have the support of the Soviets and similar circumstances, doesn’t meant they’re not the same type of personality. Trump was Kim, American style. Thankfully the American institutions (such as they are) prevailed.
So you’ve forgotten already how loud and proud SB got about Trump’s support of a $2000 relief payment, even calling it proof positive that Trump was to the left of neoD’s. When after two days of golfing Trump capitulated to his own “grim reaper” for $600, SB said nothing. Forgotten also was that the Dems in the House had already passed $2000, which was then nixed by the grim reaper while Trump said or did little.
Bruce or SB, please inform us of Trumps progressive policies. Shouldn’t it be easy, though perhaps a long list that’ll take some time to itemize?
Wouldn’t it be easier, to just do a line by line comparison between Biden and Trump “successes”? Obviously it’ll be a mixed bag with a fair amount of swamp, corporate socialism, and neoliberalism, but it’s an attempt to hopefully avoid all the cherrypicking you seem prone to do. With all ingredients seen together, it would give an idea of the overall flavor of each administration.
Plague Species
I’m a former Catholic and lord have I suffered.
My mother would never chew gum and when I asked why she said, “my mother wouldn’t let me because the blessed mother didn’t chew gum.” Similarly, Joe Biden is saying, in effect, “the blessed mother never had a $2,000 stimulus check.” That’s true, Joe, but she did give birth to a child who was not her husband’s and Joe, I’ll have you know, her husband Joe didn’t have a Corvette. What a story that is — the immaculate conception. It ranks right up there with the election was stolen. I love how catholics and all christians dance around it and avoid the obvious implications of it — that the blessed mother was either raped or she cheated on her husband and christ was the product of that infidelity. This is why abortion is anathema, I guess. You never know if any given child might be the second coming of christ. It doesn’t clearly delineate how exactly he will arrive. We do know one thing for sure. When christ does come again, as a newborn or as a teenager or adult, he will be white and he will be a he. Otherwise, no one will believe him no matter how many miracles he/she/undecided performs.
S Brennan
It’s this type of simplistic tribal thinking, this abject acceptance and recurring repetition of DLCed DNC talking points that has turned liberals/lefties/progressives into the neoD “liberals”/”lefties”/”progressives” of today…..
__________________
Plague Species permalink
February 2, 2021
“He voted for [Trump] for chrissakes. If that’s not support, I don’t what is. He could have just not voted…unlike many Trump supporters, he knew better and still did it which makes him what? Evil, that’s what.”
__________________
First off, in spite of the endless Trump=Hitler vilification, Trump is the most liberal R since Jerry Ford of fifty years ago.
1] Like Jerry Ford, Trump’s tax policies suck but, in an ironical twist, they actually took in more from the upper 10% due to itemized deduction being limited. BTW, this really..really..really pissed-off Schumer & Pelosi’s donor base, both have promised that restoring tax credits to the wealthy is their first priority!
2] Trump’s immigration policies are…what was boilerplate liberal thinking [see McGovern/Jordan, Barbara U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform]. Few here understand that the massive wave of immigration was engendered by LBJ’s bow to monied agricultural interests in the Immigration Act of 1965, a bill that was compensation for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.
3] Trump’s anti-war stance is the first time since Ford/Carter that this nation did not start an effen war during a president’s term in office…McGovern, B-24 Captain who flew combat missions against axis oilfields would be proud of Trump’s refusal to start wars. And yeah, four years of listening to neoDs commenters here predicting the imminent start of a war weighs heavily on their credibility.
4] Trump’s trade polices are ripped from the pages of US history were we, for over 200 years, engaged in mercantilism. Mercantilism a practice in still use today…in successful countries like Korea, China, Germany, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan…indeed, all ascendant nation states. This was bipartisan boilerplate until the shift in the mid 70’s when the US Off-Shoring Industry began buying up both political parties.
5] Trump’s policy of supporting of the USA’s large scale science & technology projects in space, energy and in the services reclaiming some weapons development from bloated defense contractors. This is certainly to left of Obama, Bush II, Clinton and Bush I, Carter, Ford & Nixon…last time we saw that spirit JFK was upright in the back seat of a convertible.
Most of the commenters on this board can not see that the hyperbolic language of the past 5 years will be likened to the mass hysteria of the “red scare” by future historians.
And almost all of you will lie about having participated in this madness. I have watched as one accusatory prediction after another has failed to materialize and I have yet to see one commenter own their failed divinations instead, all I’ve seen is yet another accusation thrown.
Returning to my first point and in rebuttal PS’s concept that you either vote D or sit on the sidelines. No, that “strategy” has failed for forty years, indeed, we are here as a direct result of that particular idiocy.
And don’t talk to me about your effing revolutions, most of you don’t even know how to use a gun much less own one, keyboard revolutionaries are a dime a dozen and worth even less when the shit hits the fan. And what’s more, the “revolutionaries” on this board would make Pol Pot’s utopian kettle shimmer like a crystalline mirror compared to some the pots that have been posted here. God help us if Ché ideas ever see more than a keyboard.
And please, your predictions of a societal collapse leading to a brighter day. Nobody here will live to see that, not that it hasn’t happened in the past but…it’s a thousand year process and on several occasions the die-off was so massive any human revival was questionable. Now Plague Species has repeatedly come here to wish for the complete dissolution of the human species…excuse me if I don’t take a shine to his political aspiration…and why would anyone?
No. What we have to work with is what we have. Ask yourself, why was the vilification of Trump so universal among elites, among 3-letter agencies, among corporate media, among well-off “liberals”/”pregressives”/”lefties” amongst the Cheney’s, the Clinton’s, the Bush’s, the Obama’s and the Romney’s? Was Trump really the Hitler of our times..or were you hoodwinked…just like when you came to believe that Obama was the second coming? Don’t lie.
I’d go into all of my lifetime votes but, most you have not been politically aware long enough…plus, most of you have shown very selective memories that support your political biases so, it’s not worth the bother. But since I have been and will be condemned as a Nazi, Russian-spy, fascist and any other [insert hate group here] that neoD commenters can think of, I’ll put my recent votes on the record and see it that jives with the omnipresent hatred directed towards those who would not vote for Hillary or Biden.
In 2000, I supported Bradley over Gore but strongly supported Gore over Bush [or really Cheney]
In 2004, I started with Clark and switched to Edwards and then gave Kerry my vote because Edwards was on the ticket and the “two America’s” platform. A side note; a very high up DNCer asked me to watch the nomination speech/speaker deliver the keynote speech. Obama’s speech was universally acclaimed, in it Obama said the ticket was full of shit, there was only one America. I had seen something similar in 1976 when Reagan delivered the keynote speech and plunged the knife into Gerry Ford’s back. From prior research, I never liked Obama and after that, “universally acclaimed back-stabbing”, I despised Obama. However, I did find it amusing when Obama talked about how much he admired Reagan as they rose to the presidency using EXACTLY the same tactic.
In 2008, I started with Edwards and as Z never tires of repeating, I switched to Hillary as less harmful than Obama. And as I have to constantly remind Z, this was before Hillary/Obama/Biden destroyed Libya/Ukraine/Syria. I withheld my presidential vote 2008.
In 2012 I withheld my presidential vote.
In 2016, I started with Jim Webb [who was also vilified by Hillarity’s media machine], I despised Bernie as another pseudo intellectual who folds [really, colludes] when faced with power but I hoped he’d get the nod over Hillary. Bernie Sanders fulfilled his role and took a dive on que. [Most here didn’t bother to read the emails that prove Sanders colluded with Hillary in 2016]. In the lead-up to 2016, I had warned all that would listen, nominate that war criminal Hillary and I will vote for the candidate most like like to defeat her…and I did.
In 2020, I started with Tulsi Gabbard [who was also vilified/ignored by Hillarity’s media machine], as I mentioned above but it bears repeating, I despised Bernie as another pseudo intellectual who folds [really, colludes] when faced with power. Bernie Sanders fulfilled his role and took a dive on que. [Most here didn’t bother to read the emails that prove Sanders colluded with Obama in 2020]. Then really, out of nowhere, Biden was selected by the DNC. Of all the people on earth…Biden? Really, Biden was a neoD quisling even before Al From’s invaded the Democratic party and turned into the enoD party of today. Biden, the draft dodger, the racist, the plagiarist, the groper of women and children, the warmonger, the guy who has repeatedly tried to kill Social Security the original anti-FDR-Democrat…you want to vote for that piece of shit? Fuck you.
So yeah, I didn’t sit this one out, I voted for the guy most likely to beat the worst D candidate since Hillary, who was the worst D candidate since Obama…and so it goes. You want my vote, earn it. You spit in my face, I spit in your face. Al From’s pedophile infested DNC can go fuck itself when it says that I have “nowhere to go”, that I either vote neoD or sit it out…as Plague Species so faithfully parroted above.
And when Al From’s neoD party runs candidate Shitona Stik [D] they will not get my vote by vilifying the “other guy”, particularly when the “other guy’s” ability to do harm is sharply circumscribed…and particularly when a lot of the “other guy’s” policies are boilerplate FDRism.
So why do I explain all this? Because below this comment I will be vilified into a Nazi, a KKK-member, a Russian-spy, [insert misogynist/anti-gay slur here] by the likes of Hugh-[sock-puppets]/NR/Willey/10-Feathers and all the other mindless minions of today’s neoD party. All an attempt to silence a voice for FDR’s once powerful message.
We, the people of the United States will not return to FDRism if we continually support Al From’s neoDs who have made it their mission in life to destroy the last vestiges of the social-economic pact that brought continual improvement into peoples lives for forty five years[circa 1932-1978]. Almost all of the good things we enjoy today are a result of the energetic outpouring of that era.
Finally, very few, if any people here have direct daily contact with Trump voters, most on this board form their impression of Trump voters through media characterizations, after reading and watching those media outlets vilify half of their fellow citizens as untermenschen in the same way that any dominate organization seeks to dehumanize those who are to be made expendable supplicants to power. Problem is, no matter how effective the propaganda of today’s Ministry of Public Enlightenment is on urban readers/viewers it doesn’t work on rural people anymore, they refuse to see themselves as they are portrayed. Try as they might, I don’t believe that the elitists techniques that were so successfully used by fascist in the take over of Europe will work today in rural America. Most people around me don’t want trouble, live and let live, but, they will tell you to pound sand when it comes to serving yet another Middle East war, taking away their rifles or selling this country out to the highest bidder. If FDR was running what was the Democratic party, he’d sweep the rural vote…think about when the media conjures an image of a Trump voter.
Hugh
πάθει μάθος, from suffering wisdom, or wisdom comes through suffering, is from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. Aeschylus goes on to say this is divine law. So the idea doesn’t have to be particularly Christian or Catholic at all.
Mark Pontin
Ian wrote: ‘One thing I admire about Biden is his principles. He’s spent his life hurting little people, and something as minor as holding Congress isn’t going to make him change his ways now.’
There exists a fine line between ‘principles’ and a belief system, on the one hand, and sclerotic mental reflexes substituting (badly) for real thought and understanding, on the other. What Biden’s got is a case of the latter, as do the corporate Dems and, indeed, most U.S. elites.
The Dems thought they were slick in 2008 when they went all in on criminal complicity with Wall Street, fed $29 trillion to finance and the world’s banks over the next decade, and screwed over the proles. In 2016, as a result they got Trump — and, ultimately, the end of U.S. global hegemony and the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Same syndrome in 2021: they think they’re being slick again. The U.S. population is 331 billion and that number, multiplied by 2,000, gives $662 billion if they lived up to their promise to send out $2,000 to each American.
That $662 billion is less than the $721.5 billion the U.S. spent on the military last year. It’s far, far less than the $29 trillion — to repeat — that the U.S. gave to the banks after the 2008 GFC.
There’ll be a similar effect from grinding the little people this time as there was after 2008. The U.S. is farther down the line towards the end-game now, however.
So the Dems — and U.S. elites more generally — are Dunning-Kruger elites. Not just scum, but stupid scum.
anon wrote: ‘That is why I would not count out Hawley just yet. If he keeps pushing for another stimulus check and attacks big tech and Robinhood, a significant number of the little people will side with him (or another populist) over Biden in 2024.’
Another example of Dems being Dunning-Kruger elites is their avidity to impeach Trump so as to ensure he can’t run in 2024. All they’ll ultimately achieve there is another own goal: ‘Trumpism’ is not going away, which means that in removing Don the Con as its head they’ll be clearing the way for a proper leader capable of strategizing and executing populist strategies to emerge.
(Might be Hawley or might not. He’s smart enough, but talks too much, doesn’t have the presentation yet, and may never acquire it. Who has the presentation? Bernie has one form of it, as in the old show-biz joke that ‘if you can fake authenticity, you’ve got it made’ — not to say Bernie’s fake, just that he’s always credible — and Don the Con has another version of it, the con man’s ability to read their audience and tell them what they want to hear.)
Ché Pasa
Ahem. Biden is very publicly Catholic. It’s more complicated with Zapatero PSOE PM in 2010. As I understand it, he was not religious and was of (probably) Jewish descent. Nevertheless, he was a Spaniard, and in Spain, especially during the Fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco, but hardly less so now, the Church predominated in nearly all things.
The Agamemnon is perhaps one of the starkest demonstrations of “suffering wisdom” — though I’m kind of partial to Prometheus Bound…
Hugh
SB is a Trumper and Trump is a fascist. SB gets very sensitive about being called a fascist because he supports a fascist. Apparently if we knew more fascists we would understand that they are the true victims and that they don’t have to accept the result of elections, unless they win them. And to this end, voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the anti-democratic nature of the electoral college and the Senate are all good. Also they aren’t racist. They just don’t want a bunch of black and brown people voting is all.
Z
My kind of girl! Don’t know exactly what she looks like, but I’ve seen enough …
https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1356709363025641476/photo/1
Z
Willy
S Brennan, so why all the 30,000 lies? Why constantly bitch about “socialists”, “fake news”, “stolen elections” and “hoaxes” all the damned time? Why not just lock her up and build the damned wall already?
All Trump had to do was make America great again, possibly by reminding us of what actually made America great once upon a time. (Hint: careful maintenance of the “The American Dream” by the PTB)
I’m family with Trump voters. Most of my clients are Trump voters. All of them, every single one, is either a dominionist or wants “freedom and liberty” from all 5 of your points. Few know what “neoliberalism” even is. All buy Harbor Freight and use illegal labor.
Maybe I’ve been unlucky. Where do I find these FDR-Trumpists?
Hugh
Mark, typo: US population: 331 million. I think those who are eligible for a stimulus check can’t be claimed as a dependent on a tax return earning below some income threshold. If you want an approximation, the US Census reported 255 million Americans 18 and older for 2019. So some subset of this.
ifhethunderdontgetya
Joe Biden doing what Joe Biden has always done. This is why Wall Street made sure he was the alternative to Donald Trump.
It was never a choice. Just a threat.
~
The Lightning Will
Indeed.
Mark Pontin
Hugh: ‘Mark, typo: US population: 331 million.’
Yeah, thanks. The actual calculation I did numerically so it’s correct except, as you say, it would be a subset of that 331 million population and therefore less than the $662 billion I arrived at.
So _substantially_ less than the $721.5 billion constituting the on-the-books, non-black budget for the U.S. military in 2020, and far, far less than the $29 trillion siphoned off to the banks after 2008.
From a ruling-class POV, the only plausible rationale for not spending that money is that taking the financial boot heel off the poors even to that extent might encourage them to not accept that minimum wage precariat job and be thankful for it. See, forex, Kalecki’s ‘Political Aspects of Full Employment’ —
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/05/political-aspects-of-full-employment-kalecki-job-guarantee
Stirling S Newberry
>πάθει μάθος, from suffering wisdom, or wisdom comes through suffering, is from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. Aeschylus goes on to say this is divine law. So the idea doesn’t have to be particularly Christian or Catholic at all.
177
Z
Prediction: Within the first six months of his presidency Fourteen Hundred Dollar and Zero Sense Joe will make at least one public claim that he fought in WWII.
He’ll keep digging deeper and deeper into his bag of tricks in some sorry ass attempt to be an inspiration. Try to turn it around so the old stage whore can have one last sad clap from a captive audience and make everyone’s suffering something that we should empathize over him about. “Look at Joe. Look how hard it is on him.”
Yeah, if we could only be as caring and tough as Joe, Joe who talks to the Spanish Prime Minister about f*ing the working class after the financial crisis as if it’s a spiritually uplifting experience, something that nourishes his soul.
He’d know, I suppose.
Z
Ché Pasa
The point about Old Joe’s Catholicism needs to be reinforced, as do the modifications of Old Line Catholic teachings by Pope Francis. Biden seems to be more in tune with the Pope than with Catholic “traditionalists” who not only oppose the Pope but want to revert the Church to some archaic version, pre-WWII at the latest.
Z pointed out Biden’s comments about tears and suffering in 2010 as reported by Spanish PM José Zapatero. Suffering and tears were supposedly recommended by Biden as “good” for the Spanish people then in the throes of the financial global meltdown. I pointed out that’s standard Catholic teaching — “suffering is good for the soul” — which Biden, of course, was brought up with, and he no doubt assumed Zapatero was too. Signs are he was exposed to it — as all Catholics are — but he rejected it as his family had rejected it. Zapatero was far to the left of the neoLiberal and Catholic Biden, as indeed he’s to the left of the current crop of Spanish “socialists” — who, like nearly all of them everywhere, have succumbed to neoLiberal economic orthodoxy.
Pope Francis has declared neoLiberalism and rampant capitalism failures. He cites the pandemic and the failure of market capitalism to stem the spread of the virus as one of many failures of the Market, and he calls for a more just and humane economic system.
This is one of Pope Francis’s most radical departures from the historic Church positions on political economics, and it’s one that is influencing more and more politicians who are beginning to see their devotion to the Market as harmful rather than helpful to their people.
It may be only rhetoric on Biden’s part, I can’t say, but his position on Covid relief and many other issues far more closely resembles the Pope’s than it does neoLiberal orthodoxy which we see reflected in the R counter offer to Biden’s plan and in the resistance to it by some Ds and many economists wedded to promotion of neoLiberal orthodoxy come what may.
I doubt we’d see that if Biden was not a Catholic and if he was not able to recognize the failure of neoLiberalism and the all powerful Market — perhaps with a nudge from the Pope.
Pope Francis’s encyclical Fratelli Tutti
Commentary thereon.
someofparts
Marco Rubio. I would vote for him over Biden if he were to run.
someofparts
Somebody behind the scenes is pushing hard – first on Trump and now on Biden – to reopen the schools. All kidding aside, maybe this is a deliberate cull of the 80% of us they don’t need anymore. It would explain the absence of a stimulus. If the object is to kill us, starvation works as well as a dose of the plague.
someofparts
Agamemnon was a jerk who got what he deserved.
Plague Species
I agree, someofparts, it’s as though the goal is to maximize the spread and the death count. The school where my wife teaches is dropping its COVFEFE-45 restrictions and going to a full classroom of 25 students as though the pandemic is a thing of the distant past.
How does Biden plan on restoring America’s good dtanding in the world with a joke impeachment show trial in the Senate where McDonald gets to turn it into a circus and free-for-all and a referendum on how the election was stolen? This circus of a trial will show, once again, that America is a joke, or better yet, that America is the Joker — an insane prankster that can do serious damage and spread chaos far and wide across a barely living planet taking its last gasps.
Plague Species
I think Jake Chansley should run in 2024. I think he could win. Do you hear that Rebekah? McDonald Trump proved it. Why not? What do we have to lose at this point?
GlassHammer
“Somebody behind the scenes is pushing hard – first on Trump and now on Biden – to reopen the schools.” – someofparts
Schools are the closest thing we have to public daycare, it isn’t hard to see why parents (and the companies they work for) would push elected officials to re-open them.
And… this is going to sound odd but schooling has a mythical status in the American mind as being the fix for numerous societal ills. (Capable of fixing generational wealth, intolerance, lack of community, etc…)
someofparts
Good point. Nothing mysterious about a push to open schools when plenty of people need them open. I guess for a lot of people, if the choice is between economic ruin or risking exposure to covid, it makes sense to choose covid. Catching covid is a roll of the dice compared to the near-certainty of irreversible economic harm if a person cannot work.
Plague Species
Yes, plenty of non-essential people need them open because they simply cannot tolerate working from home any longer if you can call what these non-essentials do work. The people staying home are “working” — they’re “working” from home. So yeah, it’s more important they get back on the road and into rush hour traffic so we can kill ourselves and the planet even quicker. It’s the American Way.
GlassHammer
“Yes, plenty of non-essential people need them open because they simply cannot tolerate working from home any longer if you can call what these non-essentials do work.”
– Plague Species
It’s unrealistic to think most employers and employees had any idea how tele-work environment would function (or not function) in this scenario, remote work was definitely poorly planned/executed for most.
“So yeah, it’s more important they get back on the road and into rush hour traffic so we can kill ourselves and the planet even quicker. It’s the American Way.”
– Plague Species
Our communication infrastructure and logistics chains are just barely able to keep up with the demand for remote work, that you have to run into the office to simply get things done e isn’t surprising.
different clue
@ Chicago Clubs,
“>No ordinary person will trust a word Biden says from this point on.
Nah, plenty of dipshit NPR libs will still line up to suck his dick.”
NPR Tote Bag liberals are not ordinary people. They are ‘special’. Very very ‘special’.
someofparts
So all those people who have to show up at a job site to work, what about them? Or what about single mothers who have to show up at a job site to get a paycheck at all?
For every yuppie who can work from home, there are many more parents who don’t have that option. If I leave my house and go anywhere in this city I see people everywhere who have to leave home and go to a job to make a living.
How can those people be invisible? Does anyone look at the cashier at the grocery or the waitress who brings the takeout and not think that this is a person with a family and bills?
Plague Species
Good point, someofparts, what about them? How have they been managing thus far? Surely they haven’t quit their jobs because their kids aren’t physically attending school, right? I’m not sure what the break-out is between essential and non-essential, but there are a hell of a lot of non-essential “workers” “working” from home. Obviously, I’m not referring to the essential workers and obviously they should be supported in finding a way to have their children minded while they perform REAL work.
js
If our communication infrastructure can barely keep up with the demands of remote work then it’s because we have a 3rd world communication structure. Real high speed internet everywhere? Go to an actual 1st world country.
S Brennan
JS;
Back in the day [circa 2009], when Obama couldn’t find anything in the country that was “shovel ready” it was suggested by an uncountable number of people that laying the thousands of miles of optical fiber in an attempt to catch up with the rest of the developed world might be a pretty good idea.
As I recall, O-bomb-ah didn’t want to be seen as some kind of FDR or IKE minded person. No Siree, FDR/IKE/JFK had it all wrong. O-bomb-ah agreed with Clinton/Bush II, what the world needed was a return to gilded-age[sans mercantilism] economics sprinkled with a little neocolonialism.
Now to be fair, Trump should have picked up O-bomb-ah’s shirked load even though he was far from having O-bomb-ah’s mandate…Trump was opposed by neoD’s and rump-Rs and would have been doomed to fail, [to the polite applause of most here], still, he should have tried, just to show what a consummate jack-ass O-bomb-ah was and is.
So here we are, incapable of competing with nations that did invest in the needed infrastructure; now those nations can offer their workforce something besides welfare or destitution.
GlassHammer
“So all those people who have to show up at a job site to work, what about them? Or what about single mothers who have to show up at a job site to get a paycheck at all?”
– someofparts
I am attempting to explain how working from home doesn’t function all that well resulting in people returning to the office, I am not dismissing the plight of others.
This isn’t about a pecking order of who has it the worst where the winner gets the entire focus of the discussion. (Sometimes it feels like I am talking to a bunch of Irish Catholics)
It’s about covering multiple aspects of a crisis. In this case our awful communication infrastructure doesn’t facilitate working from home even for those lucky enough to have the option.
And I have to say the “yuppie” and “non-essential” worker label thrown at those working from home feeds the right’s talking points about how the left denigrates anyone who has achieved a modicum of success.
Christ I primarily work from home now but none of my prior jobs would have granted that and I worked myself like a mad man to reach this point. Most of my peers went through a similar grind of low paying crap jobs to reach the same position as me.
someofparts
Well, a segment I just watched on CBS broke down the school re-opening situation locally, which probably applies to other parts of the country as well.
The word from CDC is that it should be safe to reopen if a shortlist of precautions are taken. The problem seems to be that, in practice, schools can’t afford all the precautions that need to be in place.
So I guess the story is that our schools are too broke to reopen safely, but they need to reopen so the road forward is to make them as safe as possible, open them, and hope for the best. Also would not hurt to actually fund our schools adequately, but I’m not holding my breath.
Sorry if I stepped on any toes throwing around labels. I do, however, increasingly feel that the economic objectives of my somewhat more prosperous neighbors do not line up with mine. I need affordable housing and a living wage. To the extent that the prosperity of my middle-class cultural peer depends on raising the cost of his rental units or paying his staff less than it takes to afford to live indoors, our interests diverge sharply.
someofparts
I am happy for anyone who gets somewhere when they work hard. Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking that people who struggle to survive don’t work. Work doesn’t become easy just because it is underpaid. The people who did not get anywhere have also worked long and hard. What people resent is not your success. They resent not having a tiny bit of gain themselves for all of their years of sacrifice.