True but learning is hard work.

And fuck, I hated homework.

This happens with everyone. Remember the “blue dog democrats?”

Once power is to be had, everyone wants their piece of it for their provincial agenda. And when a party is on the defensive, they all band together to survive.

This is frankly one of the healthy checks and balances that keeps any one group from achieving hegemony.

If the whole country went overwhelmingly red or blue for any period of time, we’d see a third party emerge to destabilize it. Exactly as happened with Perot after the Reagan Dynasty.

Look everybody, it’s a dick punching an asshole! Anal sex in the chambers of congress should be illegal!

They have nothing to advocate for because they got everything they wanted a long time ago with the dismantling of the public trust and all the tax cuts. Killing Roe was a lark they only did for PR value but hey they got that too.

I wish people would realize that US politics isn’t a marketplace of ideas. It’s not about competing philosophies. There are some dug in motherfuckers who live only to consolidate their own power and wealth further and further.

It’s impossible to win a debate with an opponent who doesn’t even put forth an argument. Something something you just get dirty wrestling a pig and the pig enjoys the romp.

In a word: we can take our country and future from these assholes, or let them keep it. They don’t share.

It’s an outrage 100 different ways, but one of those is: this is an amazing job that a person could do SO much with. Policy is intensely interesting and massively important. There’s a huge variety of issues and so much to learn and fix.

For someone to seriously propose themselves for the job without having the decency to know what they even want to do with it… it’s just insulting.

You may right that there are exceptions. It is simple to craft legislation in such a way that it only applies to large companies. Or foreign companies. Or gives the niche guys 20 more years to comply. This isn’t moral philosophy where things need to be absolute. It’s trade regulation. It can be applied however it needs to be. But do we see Republicants introducing specific revisions like this? No.

Let’s say we’re right about that but there are actually two smallish American companies that would be hurt by this. It’s easy to modify a law so that it applies only above a certain threshold. It’s also perfectly okay to favor domestic companies and fuck over foreign ones, if that’s the issue.

Republicants…

small business fan manufacturers

Is this really a thing? Small businesses that manufacture fans?

Yes, that too.

+1 to everything you said

Agreed. It’s what’s called a cheap shot.

It’s kind of an obvious joke about the border and immigration. The storm made landfall in Mexico and is now moving into the US. Conservatives think Biden just lets everyone in Mexico come over the border, so that’s the joke. Meanwhile liberals are laughing because they take it literally and think conservatives believe a storm can be detained. Come on folks. You need to be able to get a joke that was crafted for someone else or you are really stuck in your perspective.

I can’t speak to other markets but in California, the housing bubble is in part supported by investment from around the world. Chinese and Russian nouveau rich are buying homes in CA because it’s a safe place to keep their money relative to their other options. They might even just leave them empty and watch them appreciate. It’s disgusting, when people are struggling like hell just to live.

Perhaps the state could regulate this and ban international purchases or empty homes but I highly doubt it since the horse has left the barn decades ago and this would deeply impact many rich people, and those people have influence. It would also tank the home values of many average Americans, which would be deeply unpopular as many of those folks are banking on taking that value with them to Mexico or Ecuador to retire on. So this regulation would be bad for the rich and unpopular at large. It would help the young and the poor, the two chronically underrepresented groups.

So unless we can change the entire world order, I don’t see this wholly going away. Can we make it better? I think so. We need more supply, and it needs to be high density and low cost. Those are not insurmountable. But right now, private developers and the government don’t have what it takes to do anything.

I know someone who works for a low income housing non profit and they manage 8 big apartment buildings that their non profit built or bought and they operate them as homes for low income people. They are funded by philanthropists large and small as well as some public money.

If we could find a way to direct more money to such things, we could make a real impact. Perhaps a wealth tax that goes directly to such housing.

But even then, it’s like MediCal - it will only help those in abject poverty. It wont help my cousin who is making $125k and still can’t afford to buy a home. Middle class will never get help, basically, and this is why you see them moving elsewhere.

Peace & Freedom party all the way. If you’re going to throw your vote away on a 3rd party, make it one that actually has principles. The Greens are just full of weirdos these days.

There have definitely been periods when polls were quite skewed because they were conducted by phone and they over-represented people with landlines. I guess because it’s harder to get a “phone book” of cell numbers. This skewed actual outcomes of the polls.

I think they still have similar issues. They probably underrepresent people who change phones often or just don’t use the telephone to communicate. Sometimes they’re conducted online and recruited over email. There are all different ways that that can skew more to one type of person.

And when they say they have such and such a confidence interval, that does not mean they are that confident they’ve controlled for all the biases. It’s just simple statistics math about sample sizes.

I think we have seen very clearly in recent presidential elections how unreliable polls are. Not only do people answer them differently than they fill out ballots, there just isn’t a perfect way to be sure you’re polling people who will actually vote.

The thing is that they can be 95% sure they are within 3% of what they’d get if they polled everyone. But that’s it. The way people answer polls doesn’t always translate to the way they vote or do anything else.

I agree with you. Virtually everything l, even random totally trivial matters of taste/opinion come out 50/50 these days. The country is deeply polarized. For anything to come out with a 2:1 margin is a landslide. Trump is a huge loser. I just hope he stays in the race long enough to sink the Republicants.

36% is enough to elect, if they all vote.

I’m from Oakland, fool, so you can kiss my ass. And you mean “inner city” which is a conservative dog whistle like “ghetto.” At least spell your racist jargon correctly if you’re going to open your mouth in public.

Who the hell said black people never harm each other, anyway? Not me. It doesn’t change the reality of systemic racism. In fact when you put people in harsh circumstances they tend to hurt each other more.

He can’t afford a whole bag.