FondrenRoad

But both of those folds were actually to Mitch. So I guess I was inaccurate about Trump never folding. It was really just Mitch.

Mitch didn't really want to repeal the ACA. But I guess that was Trump folding to Mitch.

When did they ever fold? Mitch passed everything he wanted to and killed everything he didn't. He killed an impeachment twice. Once he even voted no on removal and then immediately made a statement implicating Trump for the exact thing he voted no against. Mitch even still has his Senate team in lockstep.

I'm not disagreeing on the current state of affairs. What I am saying is that it is absolutely the fault of the Senate if this or any other covid relief bill doesn't pass. And you have already given the Senate a free pass on it.

Probably, but the "no uncertain terms" are a bluff designed to make Chuck and the WH fold. And they did fold just like they always do. Now imagine instead that the Senate was told this is the only bill they are going to get. "Not only does Manchin not want you West Virginians to have a fair wage, he also doesn't care about how you've been suffering economically during the pandemic." You know how often Mitch and Trump folded? 0 times.

Of course they are. Dems always fold. Its why the GOP always doubles down even with a shit hand.

Perhaps. Or perhaps the Senate's bluff finally gets called. The attitude you have here is the problem. You are blaming the House for the Senate not doing something. The Senate is a failed institution, and the only way to even start to fix it is to hold it accountable. And popular bills like this are the best way to do that. The Senate will pass this bill if they know there is no alternative and if they actually take heat for it.

Interesting that you believe the House would be playing hardball when it is the Senate who is actually doing that right now. Maybe there is a post from you somewhere here complaining about Senate hardball tactics. Not gonna go back and look. But if one team plays hardball, the other team has to as well. If a minimum wage increase is ever going to happen, it has to be part of a bill like this, and pressure needs to be placed on the Senate to pass it. And blame needs to also be placed squarely on the Senate if it doesn't pass. The house already passed this bill. The Senate could have already done so as well. It could be already signed, but for Senate hardball.

In that case, they should reject it and send the same one back to the Senate. Don't bend.

So if min wage is removed, it will get a full house revote?

Is it getting a full house vote?

The Senate should not be able to modify bills passed by the House at all. Vote yes or no. If no, send it back to the House. The Senate has too much power as it is. They dont need to steal additional power.

My grandma has a pension from AT&T and lives comfortably off it. She was an operator. Nothing fancy. In today's job market, she'd be making minimum wage as a phone customer service rep, and would not be considered an employee so would have no benefits. Now she votes all Republican and wonders why kids don't save. But a couple of the solutions are right there. Bring back pensions. Add profit sharing for all employees. Ban long term contracting for low wage work.

Rather than a wealth tax, which is difficult to implement, regulations to slow or prevent wealth consolidation should be implemented. The real issue is that wages have largely stagnated while revenues and profits have risen. For public companies, you could mandate a pay scale that doesn't allow C suite employees to makes 100s of times the amount of low wage employees, and 10s of times the amount of key production employees. It is more difficult for privately held companies, but something can be figured out there as well. Owning things is not a "job" nor is it particularly productive and the "reward" of income needs to be better distributed. Once we made a national goal of using money to make money without regard to what happens in between or what truly gets produced, it is easy to see how we ended up where we are with closed factories and poor job prospects for many. Those with existing capital just want to make more capital. The industry is irrelevant. Employees are expenses.

Everything should be either 18 or 21. Hardship work if you need it before that. If you think someone is not competent enough to drink responsibly, then they certainly aren't competent enough to sign up for the military.

Exactly. That's what happens when you wait too long to pull someone's voting card.

All this is dodging the real issue. There needs to be a maximum voting age. Adding incompetent left leaning voters in early life to balance incompetent right leaning voters in later life is a bad idea. It is true that not every 70+ year old is incompetent, but neither is every 16 or 17 year old. We have been happy with a bright line for one so why not for the other? But its also true that the 16 and 17 year olds have to live in this world that fearful old people try to burn down on their way out the door. When a coach is about to get fired, you don't let him burn the team to the ground. You keep him corralled until his time is up.

Stress is a big killer too. Since he doesn't give a fuck about anything, he is never really all that stressed. He will make 90 unless he has an accident or something. Melania may not even be his last wife.

Dammit. Which hand?

1. Black Lives Matter was a branding error that made it easy to attack. It should have been called Black Lives Matter Too. Instead, opponents of BLM managed to convince enough low info white voters that it meant Only Black Lives Matter which led to bullshit like All Lives Matter. Not everyone on the cusp of white victimhood sided with the police initially, but eventually they were swayed that way by negative messaging. For the same reason, we see police reform falling apart because of Defund the Police branding. 2. Dems also fucked up pandemic messaging. A pandemic is the perfect time to rely on socialism. It is not the time for bootstraps and kill or be killed. Nobody in America should have had to risk their lives to survive the last year. Since socialism is a dead end word here, it needs to be rebranded too. But they also needed to attack the fuck out of Republicans the whole time and they didn't. "We want to keep you safe. Republicans want you to die for their stock value." And both of these things point to the larger issue. Republicans never have a plan. Their entire purpose is to attack the Dems plan. Dems can still be idealist. They just need to make the branding airtight. The vast majority of people support Dem plans. They also support police reform and want police to stop killing innocent black people. The left shouldn't care what things are called if they get the job done, so use terms that are palatable to the middle instead.

Parts of industrial Brooklyn and Queens look like RV parks these days. Parking is free in most places. One of the reasons that traffic sucks.

I agree, somewhat. But it has become problematic that red states get to eat from the federal trough in both GOP and Dem administrations. While blue states are told to get fucked when there is a GOP administration. The just solution would be for future GOP admins to treat all states equally, but since that isn't going to happen, some "turnabout is fair play" needs to occur. You are going to keep electing the same types of people and we need to stop turning the other cheek. Texas will be taking in a massive amount of federal money in 2021 while electing people that don't offer aid to cities and states in distress in blue states. Texas wanted to be separate. Be separate. Pay for your own shit including the vaccine.

Why kill the mask mandate? There's an economic argument for opening everything, I suppose. But the mask mandate does not cause any economic damage while still working to slow the spread. Personally, I'd like to see us follow the Asian model going forward after this is over. If you're sick and have to be out, wear a mask. But we are going to go instantly back to inconsiderate asshole mode instead. Whenever we catch the flu, we should legally be able to punch the people who had the flu the week before but came to work with it.

Not to mention, the euro was a mandated in-place replacement for legacy currency. It was not a currency exchange. They were pegged so that they would be functionally the same, and the conversion sent the legacy currency to the shredder, both the physical and the virtual shredder. At no point was anyone in danger of total loss. Even if a country decided to opt out late, every single person in that country would have had their euros converted back at the pegged rate. This is simply not what occurs with bitcoin. One doesn't just convert to bitcoin and the dollars magically disappear. The dollars go to the other side of the transaction. And there is no guarantee or mandate that you will be able to convert back because there is no entity guaranteeing that bitcoin will be spendable within its borders.

Okay, start entering into installment contracts where the prices are denominated in bitcoin. Find a vendor that is selling a subscription you want at a monthly rate. Offer to price that in bitcoin instead based on today's exchange rate. And by price in bitcoin, I don't mean the floating exchange rate each month when your bill is due. I mean your bill is for X btc per month and that is what you pay. You can find plenty of vendors willing to accept that deal, but you won't do it. Approximately 0 people are willing to enter a contract with future payment dates denominated in bitcoin. And that's because you are valuing bitcoin as it relates to the dollar and not as a currency in itself. Most bitcoin holders won't even pay a dollar denominated bill today in bitcoin even though they can, much less enter a bitcoin denominated contract. And what are you talking about with the euro again? The euro was absolutely accepted in the eurozone. It is fiat money backed by government and enforced as legal tender. There is no comparison.