Life Events Thread

[JohnnyJ]

3 hours ago, AxB said:

Can anyone actually give us an estimated date on which America originally became great, and a date on which it stopped being great, neccessitating someone to make it great again? Because there's only 524 years of history to consider as a time frame (assuming you pretend nothing happened there before Columbus, which isn't true, but it's like why the history of the Royal family usually starts with the Norman conquest, even though there were Kings in England for Centuries before there was an England).

It really depends on how you would define great. Today we are a far more equal and fair society than we've ever been in our history. By that measuring stick, we have never been as great as today. 

When Trump supporters long for the days when America was great, there is definitely a degree of nostalgia for a less inclusive society. However, I think more of it has to do with remembering the days when the challenges they now face didn't exist.

In the late 60s under 10% of American wealth was concentrated in the top 1% (now it's over 20%), unemployment was in the 3s, GDP was often between 5-10% per year (this year they'e forecasting 2.9%), approx. a third of the work force were in unions (approx. 10% today), college degrees were not required (only approx. 10% had them vs 33% today). The costs of college and health care were nothing compared to what they are today. The costs of each have lapped the costs of living increase several times during that period. 

It is not their imagination that for that segment of the population, life used to be easier. 

What makes Trump so dangerous is that instead of coming up with real solutions to today's societal problems, he engaged in a campaign of finger pointing and his supporters lapped it up. 

 

 

 

 

[Kuetsar]

Trump doesn't scare me as much as Paul Ryan and the rest of the whackos in Congress. . . .

[NikoBaltimore]

32 minutes ago, JohnnyJ said:

It really depends on how you would define great. Today we are a far more equal and fair society than we've ever been in our history. By that measuring stick, we have never been as great as today. 

When Trump supporters long for the days when America was great, there is definitely a degree of nostalgia for a less inclusive society. However, I think more of it has to do with remembering the days when the challenges they now face didn't exist.

In the late 60s under 10% of American wealth was concentrated in the top 1% (now it's over 20%), unemployment was in the 3s, GDP was often between 5-10% per year (this year they'e forecasting 2.9%), approx. a third of the work force were in unions (approx. 10% today), college degrees were not required (only approx. 10% had them vs 33% today). The costs of college and health care were nothing compared to what they are today. The costs of each have lapped the costs of living increase several times during that period. 

It is not their imagination that for that segment of the population, life used to be easier. 

What makes Trump so dangerous is that instead of coming up with real solutions to today's societal problems, he engaged in a campaign of finger pointing and his supporters lapped it up. 

If Trump or anybody brought up sensible ways to try and get it back to that ballpark then I can see that as a focus of that slogan.  But instead he used that under the guise of separating people and taking away rights.  Heck, a Democratic candidate could have used that to their advantage also.  Keep the rights and be more inclusive, yet try to make life "easier" like people used to remember it.

[Technico Support]

40 minutes ago, JohnnyJ said:

When Trump supporters long for the days when America was great, there is definitely a degree of nostalgia for a less inclusive society. However, I think more of it has to do with remembering the days when the challenges they now face didn't exist.

 .....

I disagree.  I never heard anyone on the right talking about America going in the wrong direction until the black guy was elected.  The economy, jobs, GDP, our security, terrorism, all that shit was just getting worse under Dubya.  None of these worthless excuses for human beings thought things were that bad then.  Not until we had someone who didn't look like them take over the white house.  This entire movement is about the craven masses living in fear of a world they don't understand, where straight white men only hold 90% of the power instead of 100, and striking out to put things back in their "natural order."  A political commentator called Trump's election a "blacklash" by whites.  That's pretty much correct.

[Dewar]

6 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

Speaking of shitty things, I am trying to figure out if I concussed myself the other day. I passed out for no good reason I can determine, and hit my head on my desk. Once I woke up, there was a fair amount of blood everywhere as I hit my nose on something, and I had a big mark on the side of my head. Plus a cut lip among other things. I am not as concerned about the nose, it could be broken but if so its a minor break as I can still breathe out of it, but I don't know if I did something to my brain. Since then I haven't been able to sleep more than four hours at a time, and twice I have spaced out at my computer and lost several hours. Like I glance down at the time and its much later than it was the last time I looked at it, but I have no memory of doing anything during that time.

But I am not sensitive to light and I have still been functional at work, and don't have a headache, so maybe I just knocked myself a bit loopy. This happened the same morning as my email issue so it was a rough day.

As someone who fainted enough times sitting at his work desk, get checked out, if you can afford it. Passing out for no reason usually has an underlying reason.

[NikoBaltimore]

7 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

I disagree.  I never heard anyone on the right talking about America going in the wrong direction until the black guy was elected.  The economy, jobs, GDP, our security, terrorism, all that shit was just getting worse under Dubya.  None of these worthless excuses for human beings thought things were that bad then.  Not until we had someone who didn't look like them take over the white house.  This entire movement is about the craven masses living in fear of a world they don't understand, where straight white men only hold 90% of the power instead of 100, and striking out to put things back in their "natural order."  A political commentator called Trump's election a "blacklash" by whites.  That's pretty much correct.

Van Jones called this a whitelash, which given his explanation makes sense.  Definitely feel for the guy.

http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/11/09/van-jones-emotional-election-results-sot.cnn

[JohnnyJ]

11 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

I disagree.  I never heard anyone on the right talking about America going in the wrong direction until the black guy was elected.  The economy, jobs, GDP, our security, terrorism, all that shit was just getting worse under Dubya.  None of these worthless excuses for human beings thought things were that bad then.  Not until we had someone who didn't look like them take over the white house.  This entire movement is about the craven masses living in fear of a world they don't understand, where straight white men only hold 90% of the power instead of 100, and striking out to put things back in their "natural order."  A political commentator called Trump's election a "blacklash" by whites.  That's pretty much correct.

There are plenty of non-urban, largely Caucasian counties in Mich, Wisc. & Penn that went for Obama in 2008 & 2012 and flipped to Trump this election. If race was the key factor, why would this be the case? Did Trump tap into racism where it wasn't present before?

 

 

[supremebve]

1 minute ago, JohnnyJ said:

There are plenty of non-urban, largely Caucasian counties in Mich, Wisc. & Penn that went for Obama in 2008 & 2012 and flipped to Trump this election. If race was the key factor, why would this be the case? Did Trump tap into racism where it wasn't present before?

Racism is a cause, not the only cause.  There are a lot of people who flat out hate Hilary Clinton, and people refusing to vote for her had a lot to do with Trump winning.  I had a conversation with a friend of mine, who loves Obama, hates Trump, but told me how she couldn't look herself in the mirror if she voted for Hilary.  Ultimately, she wrote in Obama as president when she voted.  She is the exact voter that the democratic party needed to inspire to vote, and they failed.  The thing that wins elections is not getting the people who are always going to vote to vote, you win by inspiring the people who would have stayed home to vote for your candidate.  A whole lot of people stayed at home for Hilary, and that is why she lost.  

[Niners Fan in CT]

Jeff Sessions, a known racist, is our new attorney general it looks like. What could possibly go wrong?

[OSJ]

5 hours ago, supremebve said:

Racism is a cause, not the only cause.  There are a lot of people who flat out hate Hilary Clinton, and people refusing to vote for her had a lot to do with Trump winning.  I had a conversation with a friend of mine, who loves Obama, hates Trump, but told me how she couldn't look herself in the mirror if she voted for Hilary.  Ultimately, she wrote in Obama as president when she voted.  She is the exact voter that the democratic party needed to inspire to vote, and they failed.  The thing that wins elections is not getting the people who are always going to vote to vote, you win by inspiring the people who would have stayed home to vote for your candidate.  A whole lot of people stayed at home for Hilary, and that is why she lost.  

We (and I mean the Left) not only lost, we gave it away. You want to talk about horrible candidates? Dukakis wasn't horrible, he was pretty weak, but he wasn't horrible. Mondale was pretty blah, but no one really hated him. John Kerry is as inspiring as an onion (and nearly as smart), and Kerry/Bush was really the douche vs. shit sandwich scenario, but neither candidate was really hated, they were just sort of pathetic. So that brings us to Hillary Clinton, a woman with an annoyingly fake laugh and a huge sense of entitlement. We were arrogant enough to think that despite all her flaws, people would hold their noses and vote for her rather than the reality-tv buffoon; and here's what happened...

So let's spend the primaries looking the other way as she attempts to demonize and use dirty tricks on a good and decent man whose only real weaknesses as a candidate were his rather advanced age and the fact that he might be too progressive. Then let us spend the actual campaign where we should be trying to win over the 2%-5% of the undecideds (which would have translated to a landslide of the sort we haven't seen since LBJ kicked ol' Barry's ass), by calling these folk "a basket of deplorables", "racists", "hillbillies", "mouth-breathers", "idiots", "morons", etc. Yeah, nothing works to bringing people over to your side like calling them names and/or pretending they don't matter. DNC take note, the rust belt matters, the deep South matters, the interior Western States matter, Texas matters... Did we suddenly forget that there are 50 States and they all have electoral votes?

The bottom line is that as overjoyed as I was that it appeared that we might actually elect a woman as POTUS, I can easily think of fifty women I would prefer in that role to the DINO,  "Hawkish Hillary", but that's who we ran, foolishly thinking that people would overlook all of her baggage.   

[Jiji]

I'm concerned with the divisive language the media is using in talking about where the Democrats go from here. Like the NYT is saying they have a choice to make between the "Obama coalition" and white rural people, as if there isn't a message that speaks to both parties. My main issue with Sanders' campaigning in the primaries was he didn't make specific points that his policies would help the majority of Hispanic Americans and African Americans. He did near the end but by then it was already too late.

[Tabe]

9 hours ago, NikoBaltimore said:

Van Jones called this a whitelash, which given his explanation makes sense.  Definitely feel for the guy.

http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/11/09/van-jones-emotional-election-results-sot.cnn

It wasn't a "whitelash". That's a false narrative. Trump got a lower percentage of the white vote than Romney did. 

[Ryan]

20 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

So basically, a few months ago through gmail I got the email address [email protected], with joshicity.com being my domain. To do that, I just logged into Godaddy through gmail and they changed the MX records/took care of the back-end. Simple enough, and that automatically made all my emails a "business account" since I now had my primary email through my domain name. So my hosting has been fine, but since google already knew I had the domain, I guess the easiest way to prove that I was who I said I was was to make a CNAME at their request that they could verify. But that is why I lost all my email, google drive, google hangouts, etc. as they were all under the Gmail App umbrella under my joshicity.com business account.

I got access back a few hours after the phone call, the annoying part is they again said they don't know why it got disabled. The guy I talked to said he didn't have access to it due to privacy/security reasons but that it was likely due to suspicious behavior. So I may go ahead and just ditch the @joshicity.com email and go back to being a regular gmail user, as if they weren't all under the business umbrella I wouldn't have lost everything.

[email protected] sounds more business-like.

[Ryan]

In more what the hell is wrong with us news, Hillary's popular vote tally is now well over 1.5 million votes higher than Trump and will probably keep climbing. She's roughly matching Obama's vote total in 2012.

[The Natural]

On 17/11/2016 at 8:05 PM, Kuetsar said:

Sorry in advance if this is to whiny, but I need to try to vent. The whole election has thrown my depression(and I'm on meds that usually work pretty good) from a 2 or a 3(I would qualify it as yes I am in pain, but I am used to it) to a 7 or 8, with at least two panic attacks(or meltdowns, I don't know how to qualify them). Nothing has yet changed, but I just have a ton  of fear of the GOP fucking up this country beyond repair. I don't have much of a social or spiritual life, and I am only close to my mom(who needs obamacare), and my brothers and his young sons.  I'm pretty nihilistic right now, and have a lot of trouble having hope. I am seeing a counselor(free at ISU), so I'm not doing nothing, I'm ust really, really scared right now. Apologies to those of you who have real problems. . . 

Best wishes, pal.

On 17/11/2016 at 8:18 PM, Brian Fowler said:

Don't fall into the trap of acting like mental issues aren't "real problems" please. Don't dismiss your own pain. 

This.

On 17/11/2016 at 8:50 PM, Craig H said:

And I'm also scared. The Klonopin has, I think, helped me think a bit more rationally. On election night, I probably had about 3 or 4 panic attacks. The last panic attack I had before that was with Fukushima when I thought the world was ending. The one before that was on 9/11 when I thought the world was ending. Nothing scares me more than nuclear weapons/nuclear war and the first thing I jumped to was that Trump would get us into a world ending war in his first year and we wouldn't even make it to midterms. I'd see others fear the same or even joke about it and it was like my fears were legitimized. But confirmation bias isn't legitimate and thinking clearly when you're spiraling out is the hardest thing you can possibly do. Put it this way. I was raised Catholic, lapsed, and figured I was an atheist. I started praying again in the last 2 weeks. Praying to what or who, I don't know. But that's where I was.

Like I keep saying, I'm hoping for the best and preparing for a worst that at least still allows us to vote in 2018 and again in 2020. I'm also hoping that for you and anyone else with these struggles, that you can find some peace of mind. I understand you're scared and while what you're scared of may not be rational or legitimate, the feeling definitely is and the feeling makes it seem like the worst is real. 

If it helps, you're not alone and you have people here who, while we may not know you if we passed you on the street, we still care about you. My heart goes out to you, just like it goes out to Brian and the shit he's going through, and anyone else who is dealing with some real shit lately. Let's hope for some peace of mind.

This too. I have my own mental health issues mainly with losing my Mum. Few truly know and now you do.

[(BP)]

I'm really concerned that people are going to stay outraged at Trump's tweets and ancillary stuff like Pence seeing Hamilton while ignoring his policies beyond the obvious civil liberties concerns. His infrastructure plan will probably pass with bipartisan support even though it's just tax credit/handout scheme for investors and contractors. 

[Robert C]

My wife went to a church service downtown today.  Called me when she got there asking me to figure out what the hell is going on down there.  Turns out she wandered into a white supremacist rally.  And she's not white.  Fortunately shes her skin is light enough that I don't think the fuckers noticed, and shes out of there now.

[Robert S]

12 hours ago, Ryan said:

She's roughly matching Obama's vote total in 2012.

Wikipedia (yeah, I know) says Obama had 65.9 Mio. in 2012 while Clinton has 62.5 Mio (last number is by the APA). It's more like Trump is matching the Romney number from 2012 (Trump 61.2 Mio, Romney 60.9 Mio.). By tjhe way: how is Michigan still too-close-to call 11 days after the election?

[Control]

Hunter S. Thompson, as usual, said it best:

"This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose... Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?"

[Matt D]

15 minutes ago, Control said:

Hunter S. Thompson, as usual, said it best:

"Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?"

That goes back to the whole "Hawkish Hillary" thing. She, like Christie and McCain and Romney and most of everyone else who tried to be President over the last  fifteen years, did everything possible in the years previous to set themselves up to become President. That's why she was so hawkish, so that she'd seem strong and tough because everyone knew it'd be a big criticism of her as a female running for president. And even after all that, the entire Republic National Convention was about how America was in danger and Hillary couldn't protect it. So much blemishing of the soul for nothing.

[Brian Fowler]

Jae was transferred to psych at a facility much closer to home today. 

Starting by trying to treat his insomnia, which both he and his parents think is the first thing to trigger his anxiety issues.

There's a long way left to go, obviously.

[Ryan]

9 hours ago, Robert s said:

Wikipedia (yeah, I know) says Obama had 65.9 Mio. in 2012 while Clinton has 62.5 Mio (last number is by the APA). It's more like Trump is matching the Romney number from 2012 (Trump 61.2 Mio, Romney 60.9 Mio.). By tjhe way: how is Michigan still too-close-to call 11 days after the election?

Misleading headlines may have done me in on that one, I think it was speculation she might approach it after all the votes are tallied.

[Casey]

It's really amusing to me that Trump's main thing during his campaign was to blast Hillary every chance he got over her private email servers, and here he is, the President-Elect, and he's having phone conversations with world leaders on his personal cell phone.

[Control]

I really don't understand how Mitt Romney could be under consideration for a cabinet position. Wasn't he the highest profile Never Trump guy?

[piranesi]

1 hour ago, Control said:

I really don't understand how Mitt Romney could be under consideration for a cabinet position. Wasn't he the highest profile Never Trump guy?

That's actually good politics.  Like Reagan bringing Bush into the fold.  I'm disappointed that all Trump's republican opponents are now getting bound to him.