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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
'Pollution, pollution! Wear a gas mask and a veil! Than you can breath, long as you don't inhale!'
Edited by kkhohoho on Apr 9th 2019 at 12:36:39 PM
Highlights from Kirstin Gillibrand's townhall tonight:
She knows Chinese
Gillibrand said she learned Chinese in college and traveled throughout the country.
"We struggled just to get through because it was really hard. You're in a very different country with very few rights. Very few rights for women, very few rights for people in general. We bought bikes and biked all around Beijing, and we explored every weekend. We went all across China and then I spent a second semester in Taiwan,".
On her about-face on immigration
"And I think for people who aspire to be president, I think it's really important that you're able to admit when you're wrong and that you're able to grow and learn and listen and be better, and be stronger. That is something that Donald Trump is unwilling to do. He is unwilling to listen, he is unwilling to admit when he's wrong. He's actually incapable of it. And I think it’s one of the reasons why he is such a cowardly president."
"I did not do that as a House member, I was ashamed. And so now as a senator for 10 years, I know I'm in the right place."
Healthcare
She then added that "part of the corruption and greed in Washington" is traced directly to the "insurance industry as the middleman for health care."
"Because they don't necessarily care about which surgeries you need or which medicine you need or how many days in the hospitals you need. Ultimately they're for-profit companies, and they ever to care about their bottom line and their shareholders. I think that's the misalignment in health care today."
And what for the private insurance companies?
"You have to see if they want to compete or not. I don't think they will... If the insurance industry wants to continue to participate to offer some kind of coverage for some kind of things, they'll have to compete for those customers. But if you let Americans choose basic medicare which is affordable, I don't see that most Americans wouldn't choose it."
Anti-Vaxxers
Gun Control
Gillibrand, a mother of two, also said the way to reach conservatives on this issue is to make it about family and children.
"I think I can walk into any voter in a red state or a purple state or a blue state, gun owners, NRA members, and say, you do care about a four-year-old dying on a park bench in Brooklyn, don't you?" Gillibrand said. "And the humanity of each person in this country should kick in."
She added: "And you are going to ask them to imagine that happening to their own child, their own loved one, and their own family. And I think you can change hearts that way."
Gillibrand said earlier this year that she was "embarrassed" by her past positions on guns.
Faith
Favorite Movie
She's rather too soft on anti-vaxxers IMHO and the NRA thing is also iffy (I fault Sanders on similar grounds). But for the most part, I can see myself voting for her in the primaries if she gets that far.
But the immigration thing could admittedly be a deal-breaker for many people even if she did admit she was wrong.
Still not quite as bad as some of the other candidates' issues like Biden's grabbiness.
Edited by M84 on Apr 10th 2019 at 1:46:01 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedYeah, it's nice that she's saying vaccines are important but IMO she was a little too...diplomatic? A sterner condemnation of them would have been nice.
She's that way on a lot of things, and it's my biggest issue with her. She keeps saying that things need to be talked out, but in many cases I just don't think that's viable. The Republicans aren't going to compromise. Nor the NRA, the anti-vaxxers... Things are too polarized these days. If she's actually serious about this I don't think she'd make for a very effective president
Edited by Hylarn on Apr 9th 2019 at 11:09:27 AM
Well, it's not an unreasonable thing to say that coming at anti-vaxxers as hard as you guys want would immediately put them on guard and do the recently mentioned thing of doubling down on their ignorance. Sometimes a gentler hand does get the results you need.
(Main point being, don't just zero in on one option because if you do that you blind yourself to other possible solutions that might work better.)
She's not wrong about needing to really inform people about what vaccines are for, though. I mean, yeah, for a lot of people facts don't matter, but at some point the facts really do matter and its' more about how to deliver those facts.
Dems accused of seeking revenge for 2013 vote on hurricane relief
. I am just going to be quiet on this point.
Nielsen’s allies trying to rehab her image for life after Trump
Schumer claims the sticking point is the GOP refusing to send more aid to Puerto Rico after Trump said no more aid.
A senior Democratic aide said Shelby initially agreed to provide more disaster funding for Puerto Rico in exchange for more money for GOP-represented states in the Midwest and Southeast, but then did a U-turn after Trump accused Puerto Rico of using up too many federal resources.
Schumer on Monday blamed Trump for turning Republicans against the disaster relief package by making Puerto Rico aid a political football.
“President Trump went to a Tuesday lunch, banged his fist on the table — figuratively, I suppose — and said, ‘I don’t think any aid should go to Puerto Rico,’ ” Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday.
“Did our Republican friends, especially those from states with disasters and who needed the aid, say, ‘No, no, we’re not going to do that, we’re not going to let you divide us?’ No, they went along with it, hurting their states,” he said.
When looking at the candidates, I prefer to focus on their current plans rather than past actions, which is why I feel tropers are being too harsh on Harris. The results of her progressive platform would help her to redeem her past actions.
Life is unfair...Past actions are pretty much the ONLY way to judge a candidate. Okay, if someone was anti-gay in 2008 and was voting for gay rights in 2012, then I would say "yeah, it's in the past, clearly this person changed her mind". But forgive me if hanging a pride flag in your office isn't enough to convince me of a deep change of heart there.
That metric is much less reliable than it sounds
.
I am only a little surprised by the disaster aid debacle. At some point even the patience of a politician is going to run out at being mistreated (both themselves and their voters) by Trump and the Senate unmentionables.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanCongress is likely to pass a ban on the IRS from creating free tax filing software.
The so-called Free File Alliance argues that their companies already offer free tax filing to lower-income Americans (<$66,000 per year). Except very few Americans actually use it since it's deliberately underpromoted. It also has data privacy concerns.
The bill is bipartisan, so it also includes things such as restricting the IRS' use of private debt collectors to people above a certain level of income. So no more shaking down poorer people for money.
Edited by M84 on Apr 10th 2019 at 6:38:14 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised![]()
What I’d like to see, is when the democrats have power, is politicians who straight out say that some industries are bad, period. Tax filing and health insurance couldn’t profit nearly as much, if at all, without lowering quality of life compared to if they didn’t exist.
Sanders wants to rebuild national alliances, friendly relationships, and economic interdependence with traditional allies. He's also said that the improvement of American economics internally is his primary goal but to undo most of what Trump did pissing everyone off.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
x4 for that, we only need a bifecta, and I say we can go higher than 51. DC and Puerto Rico are both pretty close if I recall.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Apr 10th 2019 at 7:07:10 AM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer

Trump really is a Captain Planet villain.
Disgusted, but not surprised