I was thinking about getting personalized license plates...
Jay Dwight
I wish I shared your enthusiasm. I think you are underestimating just how deeply ingrained racism, classism, and sexism are in this country. It's taken me a while to come to this view, but Trump is the messiah for the white male power structure in the United States. He's also a representative of the 1% who want to hold on to as much of their $$ for as long as possible. You won't change the votes of people in those demographics. They are "all or nothing" for Trump. I see it in poor, rural areas here in CNY. There are more confederate flags than I can count when I ride my bike in the rural counties around Syracuse. They will vote for Trump until death. The key to the 2020 election is voter turnout from women, minorities, and new, young voters (and combinations thereof).
Greg
Dan in Oregon
---------------
The wheel is round. The hill lasts as long as it lasts. That's a fact. Everything else is pure theory.
Dan in Oregon
---------------
The wheel is round. The hill lasts as long as it lasts. That's a fact. Everything else is pure theory.
Ah, fair enough.
The one saving grace that's tough to understate is he's not running against the GOP bogeywoman of the last 30 years in national politics. As a Politico story pointed out late last week, Trump has a real problem this time around with demographic groups that suprisingly swung his way in 2016 -- suburban women for starters, the elderly, and even some evangelicals (hence the weird Bible thing in front of the Church).
His base has only gotten smaller over the last four years.
Uh....I'm far from enthusiastic and optimistic and if I'm misunderestimating the other stuff it isn't because I fail to realize that it's gye-effing-normous; It's huge. Shoot, if you're white, the virus is in you; maybe dormant for the most part but all us white folks have been exposed to it.
What I'm hoping for is that young, black and minority folks vote in numbers never before seen and that the folks who voted for Obama and then Trump wake up and smell the coffee. The True Believers are lost forever.
I'm just going to say that in some of these mask blow ups, the reaction of the individual is way out of line with the issue at hand. So I'm willing to bet that not a few of these people have experienced something that makes wearing a mask, especially when directed to do so by someone else, some sort of psychic upheaval. Some people are obviously just going for the thrill of participating in acts rewarded by their Q-Anon brethren with online kudos. But I do think there is the distinct possibility that some of these people are frightened by the prospect of putting on a mask under orders in ways they themselves may not even understand and that would require some therapy that is not going to be found in a supermarket.
The healthcare system in the US is rotten to the core, with apologies to the VS healthcare professionals. Of the G7 (perhaps even the G20) countries, I don't think there is another country that's as incapable of sorting out basic stuff like healthcare and gun control. Just to be clear, I don't think any country has them perfected by any stretch of the imagination, but they tend not to sustain and even protect a system so corrupt and buggered.
2 friends were tested for COVID. One bill was $199. The other? $6,408. | Boston.com
Chikashi Miyamoto
No need for apologies. I am a healthcare professional and agree 100% with the assertion, as do, oh, I'd say about 95% of my peers. A comprehensively broken system and if you believe otherwise you're one of the lucky few who has never been seriously ill, never had a loved one suffer a serious illness, or are just so wealthy you don't care.
It beggars belief that you have to pay for testing at all in a pandemic.
The tests are bulk billed here, meaning the practitioner charges Medicare directly, the patient pays nothing.
Mark Kelly
What really beggars belief is that we have a President who claims he has ordered his "people" to "slow down the testing" and then later claims he was just kidding.
You know, because somehow, in his atrophied, amoral walnut of a brain, "kidding" about something that has killed 125,000 Americans and counting makes the statement less appalling.
It's got to the stage where it no longer surprises me. It struck me the other day that his "policies" are an embodiment of the H. L. Mencken quote that for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
Mark Kelly
Everytime you think Trump or his followers cannot go any lower they will surprise you.
The sad thing is under normal circonstances Biden should be dismissed as a really bad prospect. It is a bit like in France where far right (Front National) gets so much support that everybody else has to stick to the lowest common denominator that is not it.
--
T h o m a s
And lots in the military still support him. That I'll never understand. Bounties on service members and Putin's Puppet goes golfing for the weekend.
Bookmarks