All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[worstblogever]

President Trump's reelection campaign sues Gov. Murphy, says mostly mail plan for election is unconstitutional

Here we go again

Somebody just loooooves losing in court on obvious lawsuits he's gonna lose. Give you a hint: He has orange bronzer on and tiny hands.

[Gray Lensman]

I get Dolt45 suing Pennsylvania since we’re a battleground state, does the same hold true for New Jersey, or is just going to sue EVERY state that offers mail-in voting?

He might have to or his attempts in battleground states could fail based on that alone.

[Gray Lensman]

I expected the blocks to come from Republicans, I didn't expect it from Sanders

Bernie Sanders did, indeed, block Obama (Democratic) nominees to USPS board



Sanders, according to what I heard on MSNBC, didn't want any Republicans on the Board so he blocked all of Obama's attempts to put qualified people there....which is why Trump was able to fill the empty seats with his Republican Cronies.


Post Office loses another $5.1 billion; Bernie continues to prevent help

I'm more forgiving of unintended consequences than I am of, say, Susan Collins acting all concerned now. She was the SPONSOR of the law that put the USPS underwater by forcing them to prepay 50 years in advance for every employee.

[Steel Inquisitor]

Ummmm, Green Party? Your time has come. Please run someone and boot his ass out of here. You want political power? Now is the time!

They'd just send someone just as bad.

[ed2962]

Is Trump seriously running an ad on Youtube saying Biden being on cocaine?
Am I going crazy, did anyone else see that?
Trump is doing that. "Captain Sniffs" is running ads accusing other people of being on coke. I'm losing my mind.

Not exactly. Trump's using a clip of Biden losing his cool in an interview from not long ago. The interviewer asked him something like if he'd taken a Covid test recently and Biden got offended. Biden replies, "For what? That's like someone asking you if you took a drug drug before going on air! Are you on cocaine? Are you a junkie?"

[Striderblack01]

This is Sanders' job, this action allowed an opportunity Trump wouldn't have had had he compromised.

Sure.

Or Obama could've nominated better people.

The above paragraph is a good example of that ideology backfiring.
This is about facts, not individuals - that simply passes the buck, it's like what Fox News does by "just asking questions."
Quite the opposite, Leftists have shown how not compromising enough harms their own goals.
This is politics, not philosophy.

Voting blocs have to be wooed.
And they have to be represented in the candidates and in their policies.

Liberals have their party - the DNC.
This means that their views are largely represented - hence, smaller compromises.

Progressives have 2 parties: the DNC (competitive but in which they are the minority), and Third-Party (noncompetitive but they are the majority).
The DNC offers limited representation, but it's competitive status grants more viability to progressive policy being enacted here and now.
The Third Party offers much better representation, but it's noncompetitive status makes it unlikely to pass policy in the near future. They'd need more votes to become competitive.

How one votes in that scenario is up to the individual, but either way, progressives compromise heavily.

Take it from a puerto rican, whose Congressional member cannot vote, there's nothing philosophical about representation.

[Tami]

Susan Collins Engineered the USPS Disaster She’s Now Protesting

Collins is in a particularly precarious position; a July poll released by Colby College showed her trailing her Democratic opponent, Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, by five points. Last Thursday, Collins sent a letter to DeJoy asking him to “address” the mail delivery delays being across the nation. “I share the goal of putting the USPS back on a financially sustainable path,” she wrote. “However, this goal cannot be achieved by shortchanging service to the public.”

As it turns out, Collins is actually one of the members of Congress most responsible for the Postal Service’s devastation. Long before DeJoy started manipulating the USPS, Collins was at the forefront of a bill that crippled the agency’s finances.

In 2005, she sponsored and introduced legislation, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), that required the USPS to pre-pay the next 50 years worth of health and retirement benefits for all of its employees—a rule that no other federal agency must follow. As chair of the Senate oversight panel at the time, she shepherded the bill’s passage, along with her House GOP counterpart Tom Davis, during a lame-duck session of Congress. It passed by a voice vote without any objections—a maneuver that gave members little time to consider what they were doing.

To meet the mandate for prefunding USPS’s health and retirement benefits, the measure required the Postal Service to place roughly $5.5 billion into a pension fund every year between 2007 and 2016, followed by sizable additional payments, making it impossible for the institution to run a profit. To make it even harder for the USPS to make money, the law prohibited the agency from any new activities outside of delivering mail. In an essay for the Washington Monthly last year, New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell, who voted for the bill, called it “one of the worst pieces of legislation Congress has passed in a generation.”

That’s because it saddled the institution with debt that no other government agency—or private company—is responsible for. At the same time, it effectively blocked the USPS from taking advantage of new opportunities to provide services and garner revenue when it needed to make up for losses stemming from declines in first-class mail due to the rise of the Internet and email.

Now, the post currently has $160.9 billion in debt, of which $119.3 billion is the result of pre-funding retiree benefits. That was by design. As Pascrell wrote, “To argue that the Postal Service needs to be privatized, conservatives need to show that it is dysfunctional, and there’s no better way to do that than by weighing the agency down with impossible financial obligations.”

[Steel Inquisitor]

Sure.

Or Obama could've nominated better people.

I don't like how Bernie's responsibilities as a politician are waved away here. Obama didn't leave those positions open, Bernie did. Not everyone gets what they want in politics, including Obama. It was that or nothing, Bernie chose nothing. That's on him.

Voting blocs have to be wooed.
And they have to be represented in the candidates and in their policies.

They are. Leftists just lose more often than not because they're bad at organising and forming coalitions.

Liberals have their party - the DNC.
This means that their views are largely represented - hence, smaller compromises.

The DNC aren't a party, they're the governing body within the Democratic party who are responsible for national elections and the party platform. It's not just a party for Liberals, it has everyone from Leftists to conservatives in it. We all need to come together because if we don't the GOP runs the country. Liberals don't take compromises lightly and we compromise very much because without that compromise we have nothing. Some progress is better than none. Bernie's decision with the post office shows where that leads.

Progressives have 2 parties: the DNC (competitive but in which they are the minority), and Third-Party (noncompetitive but they are the majority).
The DNC offers limited representation, but it's competitive status grants more viability to progressive policy being enacted here and now.
The Third Party offers much better representation, but it's noncompetitive status makes it unlikely to pass policy in the near future. They'd need more votes to become competitive.

What is this mysterious Third Party? Why can't its name be said? What you're ignoring is that the left would have vastly less influence politically without the Democrats.

How one votes in that scenario is up to the individual, but either way, progressives compromise heavily.

True. However, voting isn't a activity for individuals it's about groups of people. Progressives don't compromise nearly as much as other groups do, and that's cost them severely in electing politicians.

Take it from a puerto rican, whose Congressional member cannot vote, there's nothing philosophical about representation.

Many progressives can't tell the dogma from governing. Representation is hindered when this overrides political practicality.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

She believes it, so I'm not sure calling it 'pandering' is fair. I don't see any reason to criticize her about it, personally. It's a smart way to say that she's going to carry the progressive torch, and intellectual heirs are important. Politics is generational work, and the baton has to be passed. People consistently underestimate how good she is at this.

It is part of the rules. The DNC has to have a vote and nominate everyone who got 300 votes. The DNC asked her to do it. She did so that she get a 60 second blurb about progressive politics in.

This is completely standard and happens at every convention

[Striderblack01]

I don't like how Bernie's responsibilities as a politician are waved away here. Obama didn't leave those positions open, Bernie did. Not everyone gets what they want in politics, including Obama. It was that or nothing, Bernie chose nothing. That's on him.

True.

It's a political process that failed.
I think that's on everybody that participated - not just Bernie.

The DNC aren't a party, they're the governing body within the Democratic party who are responsible for national elections and the party platform. It's not just a party for Liberals, it has everyone from Leftists to conservatives in it. We all need to come together because if we don't the GOP runs the country. Liberals don't take compromises lightly and we compromise very much because without that compromise we have nothing. Some progress is better than none. Bernie's decision with the post office shows where that leads.

True. However, voting isn't a activity for individuals it's about groups of people. Progressives don't compromise nearly as much as other groups do, and that's cost them severely in electing politicians.
Many progressives can't tell the dogma from governing. Representation is hindered when this overrides political practicality.

[GindyPosts]

There is something ironic about a guy who's famous for being a pillow manufacturer not being able to sleep at night.

"I want to help people!"

Says the man whose company keeps sending people the wrong pillows, refuses to honor BOGO deals, and promises questionable medical benefits, and now stands to profit off of yet another drug that is being peddled as a COVID cure with no actual evidence that it does help.

[Tendrin]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/u...s-as-witnesses

The U.S. Postal Service enacted a rule this summer banning its clerks from signing mail-in ballots as witnesses while on duty, a restriction that can prevent the ballots from being counted.

The Anchorage Daily News reported on Tuesday that Alaska Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai had sent the USPS a letter last Thursday seeking an explanation for complaints that postal workers in her state had been telling voters they were not allowed to sign the ballots.

“This came as surprise to the state because we know in past elections postal officials have served as witnesses,” Fenumiai wrote. “Rural Alaska relies heavily on postal officials as they are often sometimes the only option for a witness.”

In fact, Alaska’s instructions on sending in ballots state that a postal worker counts as an “authorized official” who can sign on as a voter’s witnesses.

[Tami]

Please note, over 60,000 people are employed by Goodyear. 30+mm Americans are currently without jobs & @realDonaldTrump
- The President of the United States gave his 85.3MM followers instructions that would do harm to a company founded 121 years ago in Akron, Ohio

Twitter Link

Screenshot_2020-08-19 Donald J Trump on Twitter Don’t buy GOODYEAR TIRES.jpg

[GindyPosts]

Twitter Link

Screenshot_2020-08-19 Donald J Trump on Twitter Don’t buy GOODYEAR TIRES.jpg

So... buy Bridgestone? 'Cuz if he's thinking about Firestone, they were bought by the Japanese tire makers back in 1988. Goodyear is effectively the only major American tire maker there is. Hoosier Tire Company is the only other tire company I can think of, and they only makes tires for auto racing.

On a side note, anytime there were "tire wars" in motor sports, it was one of the stupidest things to ever happen. It was stupid in the 1960s between Goodyear and Firestone in NASCAR, it was stupid in the early 1990s between Goodyear and Hoosier (again NASCAR), and it was stupid in the early 2000s between Michelin and Bridgestone in Formula 1.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Twitter Link

Screenshot_2020-08-19 Donald J Trump on Twitter Don’t buy GOODYEAR TIRES.jpg

A ban on MAGA hats which I’ve heard were made in China. As usual, it’s all about Trump.