I keep hearing how Kamala would be worse than Biden, and I have my doubts. Yeah, she did basically the worst in the 2020 primaries and the democrats have done almost nothing to promote her since then, but I assume she didn’t beat medicare and can speak in clear and complete sentences.

I’m going to qualify this with the fact that I would vote for a corpse before I vote for Trump, I’m just frustrated the Democrats are actually making me.

Nobody’s worried that he had a bad debate. It was a massacre. Trump would loudly answer some unrelated question with how we have to murder/deport all Latinos, and on Biden’s turn, he’d just say “I’ve never heard such Malarkey”, take a breath, mumble three words, take a breath, mumble three words, take a breath, mumble three words, and then get lost. That’s not a bad debate performance, that’s somebody’s lost grandpa. They’re worried- I’m worried- because he seems unfit to be a Wal-Mart greeter, let alone president. I keep being told that we have too much at stake this election, and it’s true, so I’m currently bewildered that we’re staking the whole ass future of our democracy to a man who might no longer be fit to even drive. This is the time to bring the best we have to offer, to go as hard as possible, because I’m reading Project 2025 right now and it reads to me that the republicans intend to enforce what they determine to be social norms with murder. Instead, we’ve got a guy that can hardly make a campaign ad without sounding out of breath with the DNC basically flashing back to Hillary and saying shit like “no, YOU’RE out of touch” and “well, you don’t have any choice; what are you going to do, vote for that Bozo?” And we all saw how that turned out. People have already, in fact, elected that Bozo once before. There’s no reason to think it can’t happen again. If the folks at the DNC aren’t already white knuckling the wheel, then they must be the most delusional people on the planet.

Dude, there is just no way on earth that automakers are making razor thin margins on $80,000 F250 extended cab super duty pavement princesses that are basically just minivans in a trenchcoat.

Fucking embarrassing tbh. We’re going to decimate the global north because somebody said no to our ethnostate pal.

So here’s my question: what happens when Israel finishes swallowing Palestine and there’s no more land left to steal? What then? Are they going to start shit with Jordan or Egypt to steal their land next? At what point does the US let them know that we’re not going to let them drag us into WW3 just because they need to steal some land.

I remember that the big remedy that free market evangelists propose to replace regulation is lawsuits. So people take them up on that, and suddenly it’s “NO, NOT LIKE THAT”. Go figure, who could’ve seen that coming, etc.

California has, for a while now, required that tipped workers be paid the same minimum wage as anyone else, period. Tips are extras on top of minimum wage.

Thanks for sharing that. Biden’s done a lot of things I agree with, I was actually pretty impressed with him until the Palestinian genocide. I wish that this is what the Biden camp was talking about. Instead, all of the messaging seems to be “the economy is fine, actually, you’re complaining about nothing” or “well, at least he’s not Trump”, and I don’t think that kind of messaging will carry the day.

I’m not both siding. I’m in disbelief that in an election as important is this one, the democrats have decided that the best strategy they can use is “you don’t really have a choice, you have to vote for me because I’m not Trump.” Which, at best, has a track record of a 50% success rate, and arguably has a 0% success rate. I say 0% because, the way I remember it, that wasn’t the strategy the Biden camp ran with in '20; they hadn’t forgot that people actually did vote for Trump before. This was basically HRC’s messaging in 16, “suck it up, vote blue no matter who, because, I mean, are you really going to vote for that Bozo?” And they found out the answer to that question the hard way. I don’t want the democrats to learn already learned lessons at the expense of the entire country. It just feels like they’re playing stupid games for themselves to win stupid prizes for everyone.

So this is really where we’re at. Team Biden is really going to take the HRC 16 strat of just fucking giving up on promising anything meaningful and going “what are you going to do, vote for that Bozo?”

That’s a bold strategy, Cotton.

Thanks, I appreciate it

It’s called Lazarus Syndrome. I was exposed to a case once at a large ER while waiting for a bed for my own patient (hello, am paramedic). Not too much to say about it, the ED staff were working a code, like they do, and called it. About twenty minutes later, some staff was in the room cleaning up when they noticed the patient breathing and told the nurses. Staff came running like hell and worked them for another 15-20 minutes before calling it again. Weird shit, and pretty unusual in my experience, AFAIK we still don’t understand the mechanism behind it.

You know, the funny thing is that nominally, the point of PE is to take a struggling asset, get it back on its feet, and sell it for more than you bought it for. It’s flipping for businesses. That honestly doesn’t sound bad, it sounds like probably a good thing when you put it like that. IRL, though, it just ends up being vulture capital all the way down.

Is there anything private equity hasn’t made objectively worse?

TLDR; Bowlero buys up local lanes and either closes them or renovates them into a new Bowlero. Then they cheap out at every expense, raise prices, and push expensive drinks and food.

That’s private equity for you.

Calm down, satan

In a healthy housing market, there’s enough competition that renting is much cheaper than buying. Indeed, I remember it being that way when I was a kid. Over the course of my life, landlording went from something that retired people did for a very small additional income stream to a get rich quick scam.

True. I sometimes fantasize about a livable future

I’m 35. We took out a refi and paid off our credit card debts in 2019, and we were doing financially great for probably the first time in our adult lives. In the course of the last year, we’ve nearly maxed out most of our credit cards on living expenses. It’s not only that the cost of living jumped up, but that our wages haven’t gone up with it and our combined student loan load is like $1000/mo. There’s also the creeping understanding that we’re one big unexpected expense from disaster. I was really looking forward to taking the kids on their first real trip or something, but I guess we’re just going to stay here and play Vidya until they’re adults. But hey, glad to hear that the economy’s doing great.

Or that people who paid attention in history class don’t plan on explaining why they did nothing to their grandkids.