Pay Raise for Congress? Where's my Veto Chisel?!

Totally agree.
Many are willing to believe narratives over facts.
52 former CIA and FBI (The best, most qualified experts) signed a paper saying that Hunter Bidens laptop was Russian disinformation, but the fact of the matter is they knew damn well it was real and belonged to Hunter Biden, and they knew it wasn't Russian disinformation.
Then they censored anyone telling the truth about the facts on all social media sites.
Talk about chronic voter supression. They did this right before an election.
Let's not get it twisted, though. Voter suppression in the classic sense is making it difficult for targeted voters to get to the polls and vote. This can be done by physical intimidation at the polls, outright BS about needing certain forms or documents that aren't really required, deliberately making polls inconvenient to reach by place or by hour, and yadda yadda. Actually various Southern states seem to have made a big effort since 2020 to add legislation again making it harder for target voters to exercise their rights. I understand a number of red states have also passed legislation allowing themselves the possibility of overturning the official results of an election.

If that stuff's not yikes, then I don't know what is.

Anyway, what you're describing above at best seems to be some kind of fact-manipulation conspiracy, but at this point I'm still unclear of what the real significance of Hunter Biden's laptop really is. So far it sounds a lot like drummed-up narrative without anything of substance being at the core, not unlike "PizzaGate," "Bengazi" and "Hillary's emails."

It seems that maybe both sides are dug in to their own narratives, rather than the clear view of facts and reality.

I don't trust any politicians, left or right.
I agree; politicians should be carefully watched, and do have the potential to cause enormous harm, left unsupervised.

That said, I believe that treating them all the same is a terrible mistake. Instead, I think one should start by judging their voting records and their campaign promises versus what they actually work to accomplish while in office.

I don't know how the 'two sides thing' works for other people in the States, but what I see is ONE party that generally votes for the health & welfare of the body of American citizens, and ANOTHER 'party' that does it's best to automatically kill any & all such legislation, to increase the wealth divide between the haves & have-nots, to reduce or kill social services across the board, to increase corporate welfare, to support or turn a blind eye to Russia's activities, to resist universal healthcare (even tho it's bottom-line cheaper than the predatory system we have now), to reduce taxes on the wealthy, to use and abuse the environment as if it was a source of endless resources that automatically cleans up our messes, to increasingly bring religion in to govt, directly discriminating against a range of minorities in a variety of ways, to resist bringing wages in line with actual cost of living, to allow corporations to buy up large swathes of housing, making rents artificially higher, to reduce regulatory bodies' ability to properly set caps & controls on corporations' ability to pollute indiscriminately, and so many other terrible, self-destructive things.

Just like man-made climate change, these things aren't narrative but fact. How do we know that? Because we have their voting records in hand, as I exampled at the beginning of the year.

Just for the record, if I sound "liberal," I'm really not. I consider myself a first-world centrist, meaning I want the same sorts of rights, checks & balances that average people in first world countries want, but I also realise that the economy is the economy, and one must be realistic. Unfortunately, what's been happening in the States since around the time of Nixon is an increasing portrayal of the far-right as the 'center-right,' and the centrists as 'liberals' or even 'far-left' liberals. One way you can check this is simply by comparing these standards against other 1st-world nations, where our labels make little sense.

Indeed, people like Biden & Clinton were essentially centrists, and look at all the nonsensical faux outrage the right whipped up against them, which I do believe helped shift public opinion to an extent. As in-- repeat a lie enough times and eventually it becomes the truth to many people, a bona fide Trump specialty. And look what's going on now with this puttering attempt to impeach Biden, seemingly without any real cause. No wonder it seems like a sunk stone, already.

Meh, sorry for all the pontificating today.
I doubt there's much use, but as a person who's laid up most of the time, regularly reading a wide variety of news, opinion & analysis, it's hard to keep quiet sometimes.

There's also one last thing that I think it important for everyone to realise, if they haven't already. It's that living today is arguably much harder than it was even a decade or two ago. The world is simply more complicated today, and even speeding up in its complications. But more specifically, disinformation is rampant, and getting a nuanced, fact-based understanding of any particular issue requires real work & patience IMO. Meanwhile, people have limited free time, need peace of mind, and it's no fun being stressed out about complicated issues that are difficult to understand. So I don't blame anyone for reaching the wrong conclusion about anything in particular based on those realities, but even a dumbass like me feels it's important to speak up sometimes when I know better.
 
Let's not get it twisted, though. Voter suppression in the classic sense is making it difficult for targeted voters to get to the polls and vote. This can be done by physical intimidation at the polls, outright BS about needing certain forms or documents that aren't really required, deliberately making polls inconvenient to reach by place or by hour, and yadda yadda. Actually various Southern states seem to have made a big effort since 2020 to add legislation again making it harder for target voters to exercise their rights. I understand a number of red states have also passed legislation allowing themselves the possibility of overturning the official results of an election.

If that stuff's not yikes, then I don't know what is.

Anyway, what you're describing above at best seems to be some kind of fact-manipulation conspiracy, but at this point I'm still unclear of what the real significance of Hunter Biden's laptop really is. So far it sounds a lot like drummed-up narrative without anything of substance being at the core, not unlike "PizzaGate," "Bengazi" and "Hillary's emails."


I agree; politicians should be carefully watched, and do have the potential to cause enormous harm, left unsupervised.

That said, I believe that treating them all the same is a terrible mistake. Instead, I think one should start by judging their voting records and their campaign promises versus what they actually work to accomplish while in office.

I don't know how the 'two sides thing' works for other people in the States, but what I see is ONE party that generally votes for the health & welfare of the body of American citizens, and ANOTHER 'party' that does it's best to automatically kill any & all such legislation, to increase the wealth divide between the haves & have-nots, to reduce or kill social services across the board, to increase corporate welfare, to support or turn a blind eye to Russia's activities, to resist universal healthcare (even tho it's bottom-line cheaper than the predatory system we have now), to reduce taxes on the wealthy, to use and abuse the environment as if it was a source of endless resources that automatically cleans up our messes, to increasingly bring religion in to govt, directly discriminating against a range of minorities in a variety of ways, to resist bringing wages in line with actual cost of living, to allow corporations to buy up large swathes of housing, making rents artificially higher, to reduce regulatory bodies' ability to properly set caps & controls on corporations' ability to pollute indiscriminately, and so many other terrible, self-destructive things.

Just like man-made climate change, these things aren't narrative but fact. How do we know that? Because we have their voting records in hand, as I exampled at the beginning of the year.

Just for the record, if I sound "liberal," I'm really not. I consider myself a first-world centrist, meaning I want the same sorts of rights, checks & balances that average people in first world countries want, but I also realise that the economy is the economy, and one must be realistic. Unfortunately, what's been happening in the States since around the time of Nixon is an increasing portrayal of the far-right as the 'center-right,' and the centrists as 'liberals' or even 'far-left' liberals. One way you can check this is simply by comparing these standards against other 1st-world nations, where our labels make little sense.

Indeed, people like Biden & Clinton were essentially centrists, and look at all the nonsensical faux outrage the right whipped up against them, which I do believe helped shift public opinion to an extent. As in-- repeat a lie enough times and eventually it becomes the truth to many people, a bona fide Trump specialty. And look what's going on now with this puttering attempt to impeach Biden, seemingly without any real cause. No wonder it seems like a sunk stone, already.

Meh, sorry for all the pontificating today.
I doubt there's much use, but as a person who's laid up most of the time, regularly reading a wide variety of news, opinion & analysis, it's hard to keep quiet sometimes.

There's also one last thing that I think it important for everyone to realise, if they haven't already. *******It's that living today is arguably much harder than it was even a decade or two ago. The world is simply more complicated today, and even speeding up in its complications. But more specifically, disinformation is rampant, and getting a nuanced, fact-based understanding of any particular issue requires real work & patience IMO. Meanwhile, people have limited free time, need peace of mind, and it's no fun being stressed out about complicated issues that are difficult to understand. So I don't blame anyone for reaching the wrong conclusion about anything in particular based on those realities, but even a dumbass like me feels it's important to speak up sometimes when I know better.
Isaac.....last paragraph line 1.......>>>>>It's that living today is arguably much harder than it was even a decade or two ago.
The world is simply more complicated today, and even speeding up in its complications.>>>>>
maybe in some ways life is harder today then way back as in the first half of the 20th century.
way back there was little or no help for low income and middle class.
if low income and needed medical help you had to make a deal with the provider for some kind of
payment plan...
*****i do believe life is harder today in the sense that inflation has destroyed the world economy making it more difficult.
wages was much less and inflation was not nearly as bad way back but we always seem to be fighting inflation.
it has always been like that but worse now because the inflation gap is a runaway.
we have technology now to make our lives a little easier.
the invention of the transisitor in @1947 changed the world paving the way for a lot of all the great things we have now.
your PC is just one example of the technology we have now because the transistor blazed the trail for all the great
technology we have now making our lives a little more easy.
here are some things that might be interesting reading if you want.
 
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