I agree 100 percent sir. Thank you for articulating it better than my post haha

Casual Observer wrote: Wed Jul 03, 2019 4:57 pm Too bad white people probably won't elect a hard hitting woman of color because Kamala Harris would kick ass as president.

That's not true! They were, for a couple weeks there, talking themselves into voting for Oprah!

Nobody thought Obama had a chance at this point in his first run. The Democrats, with their bullshit "super delegate" system (an aside: can you imagine the shitstorm if the Republicans organized their decision making process in that way and the Dems didn't) had the cards stacked from the get-go of anyone actually trying to run a campaign. And certainly nobody thought Trump had a chance 18 months before the election. She very much has a chance. I think she did every other person a favor by attacking Biden - before the debate it would not have occurred to me that Biden, when challenged on his 40 years+ record, would default to "states rights." I mean, it's easy to attack the guy that's been getting elected for five decades when you don't have any record yourself, the old guy has to either have the humility to say that MAYBE his views have changed in four decades (I guess they haven't) or the mental agility to give some shit back. He didn't do either of those things, so a lot of people are like, Christ, well, I'd vote for him but please let me know who else is out there.

Casual Observer wrote: Wed Jul 03, 2019 4:57 pm Too bad white people probably won't elect a hard hitting woman of color because Kamala Harris would kick ass as president.

Oh go fuck on with that bullshit, mate.

Too bad white people probably won't elect a hard hitting woman of color because Kamala Harris would kick ass as president.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Tue Jul 02, 2019 2:53 pm I guess I like Bernie the best out of any of them. I dunno.

I hear this a lot! But of course if you turn on the news they'll say Joe Biden or whomever they want the puppet to be lol

I thought, before the debates, hey the thing we gotta do is get the leader of a compromised criminal syndicate out of office. Let's work together as a team and do that.

And then hey, the debates were apparently a bunch of them shitting on each other. Awesome.

I guess I like Bernie the best out of any of them. I dunno.

"Oh, wow." -- Joan Didion

I had no idea that debates were starting. Even though it ended in nominating a disgusting traitor that even Iran is calling mentally handicapped, the debates between those fucking losers 3 years ago was some of the best TV ever made.

- Student Loan Forgiveness / Free College - Lets set aside the fact that it's obviously a bullshit pipe dream that would never in a million years get passed. Reparations would be more fair and have a better chance and that's nil. Blanket student loan forgiveness is not fair. Ok, it would save me approx. $96 a month if they cancelled the last $5k of my debt which would help a bit I guess. How is it fair that my debt is cancelled when the last generation worked their butts off to pay theirs. How is it fair that a stupid millennial gets $60k cancelled for their private school debt and I only got $5k cancelled. Warren's plan at least takes income into effect but Sanders is an asshole who thinks that by telling people lies that they want to hear like he's going to cancel everyones debt no matter what will get him ahead in the polls.

My idea for this is a little different but I'd be surprised if anyone had an issue with it. My take is - once you've paid off the principle plus three percent, you're done.

My wife was sending me some numbers the other day about her student loans. She is going to end up paying off twice what the principle was. I left college with ... god, now I don't remember. I either took out 10K in loans and paid 20K or I took out 20K and paid 40K back. I should know this, I paid every last red goddamn cent of it.

That's the fucking thing that is crippling. Don't get me wrong, if all student debt was canceled that's good although I'd like to think that maybe we can cancel some debt that people who didn't go to college accrued as well. But the fact that a bank can work the numbers so you end up paying off twice what the principle is? Fuck off, it completely reasonable to think that once the initial principle is paid off, plus a small fixed interest rate (no matter how long it's taken to be paid off) then the debt is clear. Everything else is predatory greed.

Sorry, you said Elizabeth Warren wants to break up tech companies, not Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris is either lying or is unaware of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act. Under this law, if your company is either buying a large company or the purchase would turn your company large, you have to get FTC and Justice Dept. approval. This amount is about $65 million purchase or so if your company is worth or would become worth over $120 million. You send in a filing fee which ranges from $41,000 to $280,000 depending on the size of the transaction. You also provide information about the business into both agencies but only one will respond. The government has 30 days (15 days for all-cash deals) to respond or the merger or purchase is automatically approved. The buyer can ask for expedited approval if there are no serious antitrust problems.

If Harris knows anything about business she should be aware of this law. It also means when these large companies made purchases of other companies they provided the government with complete details and their transaction was approved.

I'm aware of this because I wrote most of the Wikipedia article on the law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart%E2%8 ... ements_Act

I did not know there was to be a debate until now. Very nice. Not watching unless there's hand-to-hand combat.

THE
TRYOUTS!
AARDVARK

I probably won't watch, not at this stage. I'm so burned out on politics that I'll be waiting until later in the game to follow things more closely, and to be honest, last time the presidential debates made me so mad that I may just skim them and view the highlights the following morning.

I don't understand why the tech monopoly is such a big issue, and especially not at this point in the game. Are there really people walking around thinking how much better their life would be if Facebook didn't own Snapchat?

I have a hard time with the student debt thing too, but I'm trying to let it go. I took out loans for my AA and BA and paid them all back, and paid out of pocket for my MA. Should I get reimbursed for that money I spent? Probably not, but it's still a tough pill to swallow. I get that the intent is not to pay back people like me who are fortunate enough to be able to pay for school and instead quit crushing kids with dreams who need a degree to be competitive in the work force (or worse, got that degree, didn't get a high paying job, and are now being double-punished). I realize life ain't fair and if this passed there would be a lot of people getting a "get out of jail for free" card but whatcha gonna do.

I have always contended that in 2016 the Dems felt "it's now or never" for Hillary and put up a weak (and in many cases, reviled) candidate up. I hope this time around they have the sense to squelch the infighting early on and put the best person forward.

(And then have that person be Biden's running mate, hah.)

I meant "racing so hard to the left", oops.

Ok, here we go. I'm starting to think that only the democrats can fuck up an election against the worst president in modern history. As of today, I can think of exactly one thing that I agree with Donald doing which is not attacking Iran last Thursday. But. . . some of these dems are racing so hard to the right that they're going to turn off anyone in the middle. I'm pretty liberal but I'll rant about a couple issues that they seem intent on pissing off people about:

- Student Loan Forgiveness / Free College - Lets set aside the fact that it's obviously a bullshit pipe dream that would never in a million years get passed. Reparations would be more fair and have a better chance and that's nil. Blanket student loan forgiveness is not fair. Ok, it would save me approx. $96 a month if they cancelled the last $5k of my debt which would help a bit I guess. How is it fair that my debt is cancelled when the last generation worked their butts off to pay theirs. How is it fair that a stupid millennial gets $60k cancelled for their private school debt and I only got $5k cancelled. Warren's plan at least takes income into effect but Sanders is an asshole who thinks that by telling people lies that they want to hear like he's going to cancel everyones debt no matter what will get him ahead in the polls.

- Tech company break up - I have a running argument with my wife about Elizabeth Warren. We both agree that she's a shrill whiny speaker but we disagree about Warren's "plan" to break up the tech companies. It's not just that I couldn't find my way to work without google maps, my entire income for the last 20 years has depended on the tech economy and my wife knows this. Warren wants to break up Google by splitting off things like Waze (crap company) and splitting off Instagram from Facebook. What a fucking idiot she is, she has no freaking clue how these companies actually work or what would happen if she were to break them up. Would it help me get better directions if Google split off from Waze? No, worse. Would it matter to anyone anywhere if they had to go to a different url to get their fucking Kardashian pics on Instragram? Nope. Warren doesn't get that at anytime someone could put together a company that actually does an intelligent job of directing me around traffic without sending me to dead ends and no right turn lanes. Google is no more an insurmountable monopoly than AOL or Microsoft was and for her to talk about breaking up things that she doesn't understand pisses me off.

I'll vote for anyone except Trump of course but for the primary I'm going for Kamala Harris (even though there's no way she'll win the nomination because white men and women are probably too racist to vote for a strong black woman).

No, for obvious reasons

I was texting my sister since she's busy and doesn't want phone calls.

I mentioned the Democratic debates and asked her if she was going to watch. Essentially she said she'd wait for the reviews.

I said, "Personally I think there are too many candidates. Choice is good but this is ridiculous! Its like the candidate selection was made by Baskin-Robins! After the top six I think selection fatigue sets in. "

Let's hear your opinion and don't forget to vote (in my poll, I mean,}