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ZooeyModerator
ZooeyModeratorYeah. So. Chomsky is right, then?
ZooeyModeratorMackeyser posted this somewhere else:
So… my son who works at a grocery store stayed home today.
Mild fever and sore throat. He’s isolating and we’re hoping it’s any number of other things. He feels fine.
We’re a very huggy family, so it’s very hard not to hug someone in the family. Isolating folks for us is very hard.
Seems the worry will continue.
ZooeyModeratorBilly, I noticed your comments. And my thought was, “My fuck, what the hell else does this guy have to go through?”
It never occurred to me that the answer to that was “The apparent indifference of his friends.”
From time-to-time, my wife chastises me for not responding to comments that are in the same vein as yours. And she’s right. I don’t say it.
I think that – speaking for myself – I feel that, as a Leftist, my whole life is one big, open commiseration with the suffering of other people. I mean…that’s a huge percentage of what I talk about when I’m not talking on the job. So I guess I kind of feel like it’s “understood.”
It’s not, though. Sympathy with kids in cages doesn’t mean I see my friend’s suffering. I mean…my political rants are intellectual, not personal. So I know it’s NOT understood.
It’s a little bit in my genes, too. My family heritage is Cool Danish. We’re aloof. When my sisters-in-law get together with my wife, they all complain about me and my idiot brothers in respect to this.
So…your comment strikes me to the quick. I have heard repeatedly that I don’t signal empathy, and I can only say, “Yeah…I suck at that. I surely do.” But I feel it, Billy. I know that it would be a hell of a lot better for the people in my life if I SAID it. I don’t know why I don’t. I actually carry your eye situation with me when I’m not on the board. I have thought of you several times during my days. So…I am surely with you, man, and I WANT to hear what is going on with you in this respect, as well as the cancer and chemo. I can’t think of you WITHOUT thinking of those burdens you carry. You have suffered a lot in your life, and I am sorry that our apparent indifference adds to that burden. We’re a group of shell-shocked Leftists who are all just trying to deal with all the pointless suffering around us, and doing it to the best of our own imperfect abilities.
And I’m sorry you had to say this to all of us. That couldn’t have been an easy post to write.
Forgive us for this, Billy. You are completely in the right, and maybe we can all learn to do better. But I think I can safely say that every single one of us cares, and every single one of us wishes you the best. I’m sure you’re scared. Feel free to share that with us, too. We are here, Billy. For better or worse, we are here.
ZooeyModeratorThat pleases me. I made it.
Hey I didn’t realize that. Good for you.
I’ve made a few, mostly with some kind of web-based generator, but I don’t announce when they are original to me. I just post them. Memes aren’t rare, and it doesn’t take any special talent. Once in a while, an idea strikes, and that’s that.
ZooeyModeratorOkay, that last one has me laughing at my keyboard.
That pleases me. I made it. A friend of mine had that picture on her feed with something else above it, and I re-purposed it. Which is why it’s sorta ugly. I used some program on Windows I never used before, and I made a bit of a mess of it, but…it’s only a meme, so….
March 28, 2020 at 8:36 pm in reply to: Senate Democrats block mammoth coronavirus stimulus package #113128ZooeyModeratorAdditional thought…what with the new push for people to go back to work….
THAT’S why they wanted the stimulus to be low. So they can say they did it, but when the “offer” to let people “decide” if they want to go back to work…there is really no choice.
They want everybody going back to fucking work while they hang out in their vacation homes.
ZooeyModerator
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March 27, 2020 at 1:56 pm in reply to: Senate Democrats block mammoth coronavirus stimulus package #113049ZooeyModeratorNo, the Veil has not been lifted. Leftists already knew all this.
The rest of the nation will stay exactly as they were. Dems will blame Reps.
Reps will blame Dems. The game will continue.The biosphere will continue circling the drain, BT.
There will not be any ‘awakening’. You cant ‘wake up’ when youve been propagandized all your life.
Watch the next Primary election. Watch the next election cycle for Senators.
w
vAnd the politicians KNOW this. They know it so well that they don’t even PRETEND anymore. They just come out and say it. You know…”We’re going to come take your social security away, kill Obamacare, gut Medicare…all of it. We’re going to take every fucking cent you have and give it to rich people.” And a quarter of the people cheer this, and a quarter of them say, “Well, we need to put somebody in office who is reasonable and can make some incremental deals,” and the other half of the people stay home and don’t vote at all because it’s boring, or because it’s pointless to vote.
They just took $6,000 from every family in this country and handed it over to corporations that don’t need the money. Boeing is all like, “Well…I dunno if we are gonna take all that money if it has too many strings attached to it.” That’s how desperate they are. “Just give it to us, or no deal.”
Mitch McConnell must be laughing his ass off right now.
March 27, 2020 at 10:34 am in reply to: Senate Democrats block mammoth coronavirus stimulus package #113035ZooeyModeratorI hadn’t thought of one aspect of this: all this money going to Corporations is going to allow them to buy up more small businesses. That’s what they are going to do with it.
March 26, 2020 at 2:17 pm in reply to: Senate Democrats block mammoth coronavirus stimulus package #112992ZooeyModeratorGEEEZ. Whadda buncha #@)#$&.
So…$2.2 trillion, and the consensus on the thing is just…not even debatable. The only two points that held it up was the TRIVIAL amount of money given to people who ARE UNEMPLOYED, and the amount of oversight on the corporate slush fund. Those are the only things they argued about. Complete agreement on everything else, including the $500 billion slush fund.
Republicans are worried that a few people might get a couple hundred bucks more than they ordinarily would.
And Democrats fight for the pretense of oversight like they had for TARP which was next to useless.
And the Republicans…I mean…long gone is any pretense that they care about how much money the government spends. The emperor has no clothes on that, even if they cynically play that song come election season. They don’t care about the deficit. Not in real life. That’s obvious.
So…what does that SAY about their quibbling over a hundred bucks? They aren’t motivated by fiscal restraint. So…what actually motivates them to fight over this paltry sum of money?
They. Have. CONTEMPT. For. Poor. People.
Abject contempt. They WANT them to suffer. Even if that isn’t in their conscious thought – and I’m sure they would deny it. But you tell me…play devil’s advocate for me…tell me what other motive could possibly fill in the blank for why they fought over that number. Because it wasn’t about the cost to the government.
They WANT people to go back to work even though they know it’s life-threatening for people to do that, and will overwhelm our health care professionals. They don’t care. They need the engines to keep stimulating their wealth. That is their highest priority.
And Graham! Attacking nurses – NURSES! – during a pandemic!
This is the Great USA. This is Our Country.
And everybody here knows them. I’m screaming at all my friends who already know this. Fuck these people, man.
ZooeyModeratorHe certainly means the USSR, and probably China as well. The opening sentence of the essay quotes The Corporation equating communism with the church and monarchy. The American commie parties never came remotely close to any kind of institutional domination. He wasn’t attacking communism per se. We actually spoke about that opening quote, and I thought it was a great one because by acknowledging that the Communist Party (in the USSR) failed to help ordinary people, he disarmed the first and most important objection to listening to his argument which is “Oh, a commie bastard wants to attack all that is good because he hates America.”
ZooeyModerator
ZooeyModeratorYou beat me by two days. I was all prepared to walk in here and raise this question.
This board moves too fast for me.
I’m thinking the whole thing depends on when we actually get test kits. Seems to me that we have to test everybody, and isolate the people who have it.
Obviously the rich and well-connected will get tested first because they worked hard to inherit their money, and they deserve it. Then they will test their vital employees (the players), and let the ones who are negative start rehearsing their roles for the show. They’ll stick a thermometer in every player’s ear every morning before they enter the facility.
But…when are they going to produce the kits? I would think the chances of large numbers of kits by July are pretty good.
And empty stadiums are a problem, but the NFL gets most of its money from television anyway. Will we see empty stadiums on opening day?
Weird times, people.
ZooeyModeratorOkay. I expected worse.
It isn’t good, but I was braced for worse. I was also braced for fans not liking it no matter what.
I also wonder if there is going to be a football season.
ZooeyModeratorI did not have Prince Charles on my Covid-19 Bingo card.
I do have Glenn Beck, though.
ZooeyModeratorHe knew about all of this back in January and did nothing. Hid it from Americans to the extent possible. And now he’s so worried about his own finances and his own chance for reelection, that he wants us to work ourselves to death on behalf of capitalism and capitalists, regardless of how many die.
He does not care.
He sees this pandemic as a personal nuisance, not as a health crisis.
He doesn’t care about other people. He can’t even PRETEND to care.
ZooeyModerator
ZooeyModeratorWhen Dan Patrick serenely calls for the economy to soldier on even at the risk of his age bracket, he manages to forget that he doesn’t do his own shopping, stand in lines, or pump his own gas like most people his age.
March 24, 2020 at 1:50 am in reply to: Senate Democrats block mammoth coronavirus stimulus package #112881ZooeyModeratorCOpied this from some stranger dude on the internet:
Prohibit buybacks and executive bonuses for 5 years from any company receiving bailouts. Demand a limit to corporate salaries to 400 thousand ( US presidential salary) for 2 years, limit outsourcing, outlaw unjustified firings, and force paid sick leave as a condition for any US company to receive Coronavirus relief taxpayer funds. Demand full and immediate transparency to a dictatorial Congress appointed Financial Control Board about taxpayer fund use as a prerequisite to periodic scheduled partial fund disbursements (just like Republicans did to Puerto Rico). Oh!, and drug test their executives, you know, to please the so called conservatives.
March 24, 2020 at 1:49 am in reply to: Senate Democrats block mammoth coronavirus stimulus package #112880ZooeyModeratorMarch 24, 2020 at 1:47 am in reply to: Senate Democrats block mammoth coronavirus stimulus package #112879ZooeyModeratorWhy the Democrats slowed down the bill:
• McConnell’s bill includes a $500,000,000,000.00 corporate slush fund for CEOs and the ultra rich to be given at the discretion of Treasury— while leaving workers, families and children out to dry.
• McConnell’s bill has weak stock buyback language that can be waived by the Treasury Secretary; executive compensation limits only last for two years; language on worker retention is weak and includes easy outs for companies; there are no assurances in the language that workers will benefit.
• The bill doesn’t protect workers from being fired, even by companies that get millions of dollars.
• The bill provides little transparency of the lending done by Treasury (amount and to whom?).
• There are no specific provisions to protect from individuals from eviction, foreclosure or forbearance.
Other Major Problems:
• No money for state and local governments.
• No additional SNAP funds.
• No OSHA language to protect workers.
• No expanded emergency leave provisions.
• Only 3 months on Unemployment Insurance – this is an insufficient length given the scope of the crisis.
• Direct Payments are not available to the millions of people who did not file a return in 2018 or 2019.
• No money to help with the treatment of the uninsured.ZooeyModeratorHere’s what Bernie should do. He should say to Biden and the DNC…I will endorse Biden if you guys promise to enact Medicare for All.
M4A was already popular with most people, even Republicans, before the pandemic. 6 weeks from now, people will have shifted from seeing M4A as something we SHOULD have to something we NEED. Say what you will about Italy…nobody is going bankrupt due to hospital charges. 6 weeks from now, M4A will poll higher than ever, and the momentum behind it will be at its greatest peak ever. The DNC will not be able to refuse a public demand for M4A. If Sanders demands that, they have to accept that condition, or the entire party is publicly on record as opposing M4A during the biggest health crisis in anybody’s lifetime, and they will go down in flames…not just Biden…the Senate and House as well. The party will die. They will be forced to swallow M4A, or get beaten up and down the ticket with nothing to show for it, and THEIR name on the rejection of a program people will be starting to demand action on by mid-summer.
If they accept their fate, Sanders will rally his base to support Democrats up and down, and they will win the White House, get the Senate, and expand the House. They won’t really have a choice. They will have to do it. And we will have the first leftist victory since the Civil Rights Act, and we will have finally changed the direction of the country. We might even be able to draft some other legislation to get through, like paid sick leave.
But this would require Sanders to actually use his leverage. And he won’t.
So…Moses got us this far. We now need Joshua.
ZooeyModeratorShe’s also in trouble in her district.
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