[Newfie]

We pay just under $4,000/year for health care insurance outside the USA, for two. Or about $1,900/year/person. $2,000,000 aggregate cap. Just need to stay outside the USA 10 months/year. No medical required, no pre existing conditions.

I think that says a lot.

[Cog]

I've looked at his other positions in other interviews and town halls.

Pro-choice but believes abortion should be rare and not in the 3rd Trimester
Want to ban "weapons of war" and supports universal background checked(i.e) no private sales of guns without involvement of a FFL
Supports amnesty of DACA people and a full amnesty and path to citizenship for everyone here illegally

Based on his views of gun control and amnesty for illegals I could never vote for him. He wants to split the difference between the far right and far left and appeal to the center. I don't think that will work for him as most Trump people I know won't abandon Trump to pursue moderation. He might peel off some moderate Democrats and never-Trump Republicans but that is not enough to win IMO. His entry into the race, as an independent, would be an interesting dynamic though. I think it hurts Democrats more than Trump but we will see.

He is very well spoken and logical in his arguments and has a certain amount of gravitas and charisma. You need those to win too.

[vtsnowedin]

As I was playing a computer game this hour I had MSNBC on the TV in the next room Morning Joe show where I could hear it. They had on Kristen Gillibrand and were feeding her softball questions between gushing over her. After just a couple of minutes of her spouting off her talking points I had had enough of her to last a lifetime so got up and turned off the set.
I suppose she makes Bernie look plausible by comparison but other then that I can't see any use for her.

[Newfie]

On Joe Biden

I have watched expectations rise around Biden with trepidation. A lot of Democrats have set their hopes on him. They anxiously eye Bernie Sanders’ strong standing—as a candidate they believe to be too far left. They see a Biden candidacy as a way to recapture the white working-class part of the Obama-Biden magic and win back those Obama voters who turned to Trump. All the while, there’s a nostalgic appeal to a Biden presidency: His folksy ways feel like a tonic, an assurance that things can return to “normal.” A President Joe Biden, the thinking seems to go, would reduce President Donald Trump to a bad dream. Now, suddenly, nothing about a Biden candidacy seems inevitable, including whether there will even be one.

http://time.com/5564152/jennifer-palmieri-joe-biden/

[Plantagenet]

This has been a banner year for the Ds. So far the D governor of Virginia has been revealed as a racist who wears blackface and dresses in confederate uniforms. The D Lt. governor or Virginia is an accused rapist. But no problems say the Ds.

Now Joe Biden has shown us all that its OK to grab, kiss and fondle women without their permission. All you have do is say, "I'm old fashioned" and its all OK.

Thanks Ds, for your support of D rapists and D racists.

How cool are you now!!!!

[dissident]

https://twitter.com/nickmon1112/status/ ... 9838161920

Democrats are complete swine. Look at this Liu clown and his attempt to smear Candace Owens as a Nazi by taking her words out of context. This POS was even too chicken shit to question her directly about it.

Look also at the Chairman clown. He twists Owen's words to make it out like she is "disparaging" these Grand Inquistor wannabes. What a circus. And this is modern day America's "due process".

Really, Americans, time to wake up and smell the coffee. Your system has gone off the rails.

[lpetrich]

Mia Love's ominous warning for the GOP

Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah), the GOP's first African-American woman in Congress, conceded defeat in an incredibly close re-election campaign this week. But in her concession speech, she delivered a bracing post-midterm analysis of the Republican Party's shrinking footprint, calling on President Trump and the GOP to pay more attention to minority voters, or risk more defeats like hers in the future. Republicans would be wise to heed her advice.

...
When it became apparent that Love was in trouble, Trump put the blame on her arms-length treatment of him. "Mia Love gave me no love and she lost," Trump said in a post-election press conference. "Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia."

...
The problem for Republicans isn't a lack of rallying around Trump, but a lack of appeal beyond a relatively narrow party base. Love drove this point home in her concession speech, arguing that both Trump and the Republican Party take an exceedingly disingenuous approach to people, especially those in minority communities.

Yet more evidence that the Republican Party has become the party of Jefferson Davis.

[lpetrich]

As to Abraham Lincoln, much of his presidency makes him look like a good Democrat by present-day standards. Let's see...

• Having his political base in the northeastern and west-coast states
• Raising taxes, including enacting the first income tax
• Fighting the southern states
• Creating a national banking system
• Creating the Department of Agriculture
• Supporting the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad
• Supporting the founding of land-grant colleges
• The Homestead Act: large amounts of land could be purchased at low cost
• Abolition of slavery

Present-day Republicans could easily find things to disparage about his achievements. They would say that he is guilty of:

• That horrible crime against humanity, raising taxes
• Expanding the power and scope of the Federal Government
• Giving away free stuff: the Homestead Act, land-grant colleges
• Crony capitalism: the Transcontinental Railroad
• Granting special rights and confiscation of property: abolition of slavery

[dissident]

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04- ... sri-lankan

Obama and Clinton are PC nutjobs. I guess all those Christians that they left to the mercies of the takfiris in Syria were just a bunch of cross worshipers.

[Plantagenet]

When you do a google search for "Joe Biden website" the top hit is......

joebiden.info

A website that shows pictures of Joe groping touching numerous women and presents Joe's positions on the issues........with quote from Joe in the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc.

Its pretty funny stuff.

[Plantagenet]

Oh-oh.

Joe Biden just claimed Maggie Thatcher phoned him because she is so concerned about Trump.


Has Joe Biden lost his mind? --- Maggie Thatcher died six years ago!!!

[Cog]

Joe is losing it badly.

[lpetrich]

I don't think that Joe Biden is all that great. In particular, he dismisses Donald Trump as an aberration rather than as someone enabled by nearly half a century of political trends.

Elizabeth Warren: Americans don't need cliché financial advice. They just need to be paid more - CNN

Chase Bank fired off a tweet last week staging a hypothetical conversation between one of its customers and her bank account. The customer asks why her account balance is low, and the bank tells her not to go out for food or coffee when she can make it at home instead, or to spend money on a cab when she can just walk. The customer pretends not to listen. "I guess we'll never know," she says, brushing off her low balance and the bank's "advice" on how to manage her money.

She responded: Elizabeth Warren on Twitter: ".@Chase: why aren’t customers saving money? Taxpayers: we lost our jobs/homes/savings but gave you a $25b bailout Workers: employers don’t pay living wages Economists: rising costs + stagnant wages = 0 savings Chase: guess we’ll never know Everyone: seriously? #MoneyMotivation… https://t.co/wyRlXaFev8"

Here's the thing — I grew up on the ragged edge of the middle class in a family with a tight budget and no room for error. My parents worked hard and did the best they could, but when I was 12 years old, my Daddy had a heart attack. Everyone thought he was going to die. He came back home, but he couldn't work. There was no net to catch my family. We lost our station wagon and would have lost our house if my mother hadn't saved our family by going out and getting her very first job outside the home — a minimum wage job answering phones at Sears.

It wasn't until later in life that I realized how lucky my family was. After I became a law professor, I started studying what drives families into bankruptcy. I poured through records in courthouse after courthouse, and found that most of the families who ended up in front of a bankruptcy judge were just like mine. They worked hard and did everything right, scraping by until an unexpected medical bill or a divorce pushed them over the edge.

In the years since I started immersing myself in this topic, things have only gotten worse for working families. For 50 years, the price of housing, education and child care has skyrocketed while wages for most workers have barely budged. The economy has grown and workers' productivity has increased, but their share of corporate profits has fallen. The gap between incomes and costs is so gaping that 40% of Americans can't come up with $400 in an emergency. Hard-working families have become adept at stretching their paychecks to the breaking point, skimping on necessities just to make ends meet.

Great. So great. Good that she actually did the research instead of outsourcing all her research and analysis to a political talk show -- she has a MUCH better work ethic than the one whom she hopes to replace.

[Cog]

Fake Indian Pocohauntas that Trump will demolish in their first debate. The memes will be glorious.

[Newfie]

Why are we not saving money? Complicated question and Warren certinally has some of the answers. But an additional answer is that because we spend a lot of money o. Superfluous stuff and comforts we don’t really need and which don’t make us healthy or happy.

Why do we do this silly behavior? Because we have been programmed since birth to be consumers, to seek lifes fulfillment in acquisition. To be good and obedient consumers.

It’s one thing to blame the government or whatever, it’s another thing to take personal responsibility for oneself. Once we do that on a personal level then we will become adept at seeking the same behavior from our government and we will have change. But this change needs to come from the bottom up.

[KaiserJeep]

Meanwhile some of her "facts" are in error. The price of consumer goods has increased modestly, not skyrocketed. Some stuff like computers and HDTVs is way cheaper than it used to be. Cars, energy, healthcare, and food cost more, thanks in no small part to meddling from the various legislators.

Wages have actually slightly more than kept up with consumer goods. Modest increases in the quality of life across the board have resulted, for those still working. The problems we actually have are the result of jobs going overseas, baby boomers retiring, baby boomers over stressing our healthcare, and so forth - nothing the POTUS has much impact on.

In fact, most of the 20 prospective D candidates are legislators who caused such problems with pay-for-play legislative corruption. Do you think they will be either changing behaviors or punishing themselves for this corruption?

[Plantagenet]

Joe Biden has just released his 2020 campaign song. Its entitled "Old White Joe" and is sung to the tune of that old antebellum ballad, "Old Black Joe."

Old White Joe

Cheers!

[Cog]

Biden can't check any of the victimhood boxes. Sorry Old White Joe, the party has no use for you. Just an old white Cis scum lord.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Meanwhile some of her "facts" are in error. The price of consumer goods has increased modestly, not skyrocketed. Some stuff like computers and HDTVs is way cheaper than it used to be. Cars, energy, healthcare, and food cost more, thanks in no small part to meddling from the various legislators.

Some things like cars only cost more because people want fancier stuff, but not because they actually cost more.

In 1995 and 2003 and 2017 I bought new cars, which were middle class mid-sized sedans. Nice, but nothing especially fancy. Prices were roughly $20,000, $22,000 and $22,000, respectively. (The main reason the cars got cheaper after inflation, was technology like extra airbags, ABS, etc. got cheaper, and then free. In each case, the actual "level" of the cars was about the same, except for the things that technology added automatically into the price like backup cameras which are now in ALL US new cars as of model year 2018).

But $20,000 in 1995 was worth more than $24,000 in 2003, and $32,000 in 2017.

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

So I don't think cars actually cost more, when inflation is factored in. I'd say they cost meaningfully less. What has changed is people want/expect larger, fancier cars with more features, more powerful engines, which look "better", etc. And complain they're "deprived" when they can't afford them.

To a large extent, the same thing is true for housing. A small ranch which people were happy to have for their family in the 50's or the 70's would now practically be considered a "slum" by many in the US.

So I think a LOT of the "everything costs too much" complaint in the US is really about unrealistic expectations.

Somehow, it was normal for me as a college graduate with a decent job at IBM in 1981 to live in a cheap apartment, buy some furniture and clothes at garage sales to save money, etc. But now, if it's not top of the line right away, people are supposedly "deprived".

Does "food" really cost more? Well, avacado toast at some fancy bistro will be expensive. So will high end Starbuck's coffee. OTOH, Folgers coffee still exists, and is just fine, and can be bought cheap on sale. And I still get generic Kroger black tea for about a penny for a large cup (I use a bag twice, and buy it on sale and heat it up in my $60 fifteen year-ish old microwave). So I think with such examples in mind, we need to be careful what we're measuring -- and what the political motivations of the measurers are.

No doubt, things like medical costs, college costs, and real estate in some cities have skyrocketed. But overall in the US, what has really skyrocketed, IMO, is expectations for what is "normal" and "fair" for MANY of the supposedly "unaffordable" aspects of American life.

[Cog]

Very true on the food Outcast. I eat well and healthy now because I control the cost and the quality by doing my own cooking. I eat out occasionally but in connection with some sort of event. I brew up a gallon of ice tea every few days and it costs me pennies as you said. Buy that ice tea already made in a store and you are simply wasting money. Frugality is something to be embraced and it doesn't cost you taste or quality.