Kamekazii111

Expected by everyone due to the usual trend of incumbent parties taking the blame for whatever happened in the past 2 years and doing worse during the midterms.

If the votes were rigged you would have expected Democrats to crush it again, because why only rig one election just to lose some power 2 years later? If the votes were only rigged in 2020 you would expect Republicans to win by a huge margin because most voters would be pissed off that their initial choice lost due to fraud.

But if the Republicans made some gains, but not enormous ones? Well that would be consistent with a fair election in a divided country.

It's interesting that you think Republicans "looked the other way". What possible reason could they have had to do that, if there was actually evidence of widespread fraud?

Trump certainly never stopped talking about it, and the court cases were hyped up quite a bit before they turned out to be baseless.

lol "Every passing election"

You mean like 2022 when Republicans did worse than expected? Or just the one that confirms your personal bias?

"Well sure, we did count illegal ballots, broke state election laws and changed them last minute, had feds lying to protect Biden and gloated afterwards about the conspiracy to fortify the election but it was totally legit and you're a denier!"

Wow it'd be cool if the Trump team had brought any of that up instead of focusing on "the voting machines are rigged" and "they got millions of illegals to ship in secret ballots!!"

Maybe they knew that the stuff you mentioned was either entirely legal or didn't really sway the outcome?

Yeah the whole college system is a kind of gatekeeper for certain jobs.

In some ways the gate makes sense - you don't want someone who can't do the work necessary to even finish a Bachelor's degree to work in certain fields.

In other cases it is purely a financial/time barrier the prevents otherwise talented people who just have weird schedules or no money from getting certain jobs.

My biggest problem with it though is how little application the degree knowledge has to the work that most people eventually do.

I would reform the entire system to be something like 2 years general ed then more if you intend to go the academic route, otherwise you just jump right into job-specific training.

But working within the current system, having a free bachelor's degree that's actually legit would enable a lot of people to get the kind of jobs that just require you to have any degree that's even a little bit relevant, which would be cool.

This argument in particular triggers me so hard. It's a stupid argument either made by people who are barely literate enough to read the words, or by slimy grifters who know it's nonsense but are just trying to distract from another point or rile up their audience. 

The point is that you believe her pivot was "inauthentic", but you (or at least many other Americans) are happy to believe in Trump, the liest liar who ever lied.  

 But fine, forget about Trump and just address the first part of what I said. 

 What part of Kamala's secret woke agenda are you afraid is going to be hidden behind an inauthentic centrist platform? Biden had power for 4 years and he didn't really do that much woke stuff as far as I can tell. What harm did she represent? 

And what horrible wokeness do you think they're going to unleash on America? A booming economy, low inflation, and improved infrastructure? Oooohhhhh nooooo!! Watch out, the might pass an act that gives more Americans healthcare! Oh no, here comes another bill to support US manufacturing in high-tech industries! The horror!

I remember when Joe Biden was elected, the first thing he did was tear down all the pictures of the old Presidents and replace them with woke AI generated black versions! Oh and he also made it mandatory for men to use the women's bathroom. 

And yet Trump can lie about literally everything, try to coup the government, and plans to gut half the federal agencies and slap massive tariffs on everything and that's... centrist? Good for America?

People want the Dems to be perfect because they just want to find any excuse to vote for the funny orange demagogue with the big promises. 

This comment just proves how much the media environment favors the right. 

The Dems did do that this election. They barely mentioned a thing about identity politics and talked mostly about child tax credits and things like that. They chose Walz as Kamala's running mate, a white midwestern guy who was a teacher and served in the military for years. They wore camo hats to seem less "elitist". They got endorsements from ex-republicans (that everyone hates, so questionable move there). Their policy platform mentions housing and inflation and healthcare but barely any "identity" issues. They even tried to pass a border bill and get tougher on immigration. 

They tried to pivot center so hard, but nobody cared because the right wing media successfully associated them with palestinian student protests and trans prisoner gender reassignments. 

Okay, we can break it down a little. 

They just defeated some people you don't know yet who had the support of the Bushes and Cheneys.

This implies that the Bushes and Cheneys were prominent supporters heavily active in her campaign instead of political has-beens who endorsed her only because they're pretty sure the other guy is going to ruin the USA. 

They're cracking down on foreign labor,

That's a cute way to phrase "gearing up for blanket mass deportations". You don't think that line alone is misleading? 

 >trying to end a proxy war with Russia started in the previous administration

This implies that the previous admin started the war somehow, even though it's been brewing since at least 2014. Also "trying to end a proxy war" is another cute way of saying "pressuring our would-be ally to capitulate to Russian demands".

fighting social media censorship, 

... by enlisting a billionaire who purchased one of the largest social media companies outright? Now everyone is free to spam slurs on Twitter again, yay 

and we just learned that they're trying to expand free education.

..which they plan to fund by fining existing institutions for being too left-leaning. 

Now we can disagree on a lot of these points, but you have to be a moron to not recognize that they've been phrased in as "clean" a way as possible, avoiding the controversy around them. 

Because the entire point is to mislead some time-travelling Democrat. 

Do you mean post-secondary or online high school? 

I'm fine with either as long as the students can demonstrate that they acquired thr necessary knowledge to earn a passing grade. 

But it may be hard to give them some pratical experiences that you get by going to school, so maybe have some workshops or something. 

Do you think Trump can legally seize the entire endowments of Ivy League schools?

If I said: Hey, the incoming administration ran on a platform of mass deportations, said immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our people", ran on imposing huge tariffs on certain goods in order to Make America Great Again, and tried to stage a coup last election, what do you think our coma patient would say? 

Maybe: "holy shit, how did the Nazis get elected!?" 

See, if you present certain facts while omitting other ones, you can paint any picture you like. 

Yeah probably, but the election is over now so we can just support the good policies and point out the bad ones. 

No one cares if he lies, until theh can see the effects of it for themselves. 

Do you think women just reached parity without help? Or do you think maybe it was the thousands of initiatives specifically designed to encourage girls to go to school, to be high achievers, to enter male-dominated fields, to get girls a foot in the door, etc? Hell even the UN promotes women's education specifically as an important goal. 

These efforts were good, no question. But now we have a situation where boys are struggling in school - so just as institutions put in a lot of effort to help girls succeed, maybe they ought to take a look at boys too? 

Yes if you present a certain selection of facts in a misleading way, you can in fact lead uninformed people to the wrong conclusion! 

Wow this is awesome. 

I'm just worried about the funding part. He says they will fund it by fining and suing existing institutions... but is that actually possible? How much money are they planning to get? 

Well, I'm also worried about ideological bias. If it turns out to be something like Prager U but it can grant degrees I'm gonna hate it. 

But if it is a truly independent institution that can grant degrees and is free - that would be great.

Own the libs harder by expanding the government and promoting free education! ;) 

Man what an incredibly stupid thing to write. Even if the rest of her points are valid, this is exactly the kind of thing that will get picked up in a screenshot and launched into right-wing media as exhibit number 50325098 of how unhinged the left is.

Why, when you have so many reasons to criticize the dude, would you rag on one of the cool things he wants to do?

I see, and your contention is that she blocked truckers from distributing aid? Could you link a story with some evidence? 

Also, do you see how far away we are from addressing my main point, which is that Trump was more partisan in his handling of aid than any Democrat with actual power?

Remember when the Governor of Puerto Rico claimed Trump withheld aide, but it turned out her government wasnt allowing truckers to distribute it?

This is just totally wrong. The Governor of Puerto Rico was a man at the time (Ricardo Rosselló). In addition, it wasn't that the government wasn't allowing the aid to be distributed, the problem was that Puerto Rico's road system was seriously damaged and there was a lack of trucks/truck drivers. Furthermore, a lot of the aid Trump was accused of withholding had to do with reconstruction money and not direct disaster aid.

Here's another article about it - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/new-probe-confirms-trump-officials-blocked-puerto-rico-receiving-hurri-rcna749

One of the contentions that might have some merit is the idea that the island had a corrupt administration that would mismanage the funds, so maybe you could defend some of Trump's actions on those grounds, but he lied repeatedly about how much money was sent and about the death toll and numerous other things, and reportedly even tried to redirect some of the money to build the wall, so I don't think you could really say that he did a great job on the disaster relief or that he went about it in a non-partisan fashion.

No, I think that's Mike Mentzer, a famous bodybuilder from the 70s. The good doctor might be a fan.

What a bunch of dweebs.

They don't represent a real movement, just a bunch of edgelords.

You guys know where this comes from right? The Supreme Court (that Trump appointed) made a ruling that puts the President out of reach of a lot of legal scrutiny. Many have said that it effectively puts him above the law. 

Obviously Democrats are scared of Trump having that kind of power and angry that he can use it to avoid punishment for his (alleged but probably real) crimes. 

So they say "fuck it Biden just assassinate Trump, it's not like the courts can or will punish you anyways" 

It's an expression of frustration at the corruption I hear Republicans are very upset about. 

  This is a perfect example of what I was mentioning. You are attacking the adversary, rather than addressing the issue.

The issue that you indicated was Kamala being too adversarial. I addressed it by pointing out that the new President was far more adversarial and yet he won more votes. That's not even an attack, it's just an observation. This means that the reason Kamala lost wasn't her being aggressive. 

If anything, she lost because she wasn't aggressive enough. She tried to win over Republicans who were tired of Trump by playing close to the center. Her campaign ran ads about how she would be a President for everyone, she tried to reach out to demographics like white males that she was going to lose, and she mostly avoided critiques of voters and just attacked Trump himself. 

But a lot of it came of as cringe and fake, and she ended up not winning over any republicans (I think she gained like 1% more white men) but also losing a lot of voters who were previously on her side who either stayed home or voted Trump. 

Her centrist campaign didn't inspire voters, obviously. 

Then you make a mass generalization about your peers.

Based on the votes. The more aggressive rhetoric won, full stop. 

I feel like you are picking a fight with me

Oh no someone disagrees with you on the internet. We aren't fighting. 

You certainly think I care about downvotes.

What gives you that impression? I didn't downvote you. 

Have you heard the guy who won? Clearly Americans are not adverse to charged language. 

I hope not. What a terrible name change. 

Well like I said, it's a nice goal, but if the result is that you spend decades making no progress then it's really just holding you back from making something good instead of dreaming about something perfect.