SectionC3

Also he's a temperamental jerk. Don't forget that.

I'm good with Whitmer/Wes Helms in no particular order. I can live with Kamala/Beshear or Mark Kelly. Trump is an awful candidate and the fact that he hasn't pulled away from Biden speaks for itself. He can't run away from a corpse.

That’s good. Use the sacred right to vote to upset internet randos and to work against your own interests. Classic MAGA.

Now just add the military to the list. Those suckers and losers. And law enforcement. And democracy. I really wouldn’t have a problem with MAGA of it just admitted that J6 was wrong, that they don’t care about anyone but themselves (including soldiers and police), that they’re actually socialists (Medicaid, social security, free COVID bucks, no repeal and replace), and that their approach actually is one of selfishness mixed with a little stupidity (huge tax cuts for the rich and ballooning deficits). A little truth and I could hold my nose and tolerate the movement for four more years. It’s just the lying and the deceit and the unadulterated selfishness that makes it hard to understand. Or respect.

If that’s true, it’s wrong. No doubt about it.

At least somebody admits it. This is a point I can live with. This guy is the friggin golden calf. Not the least bit religious. He pandered to and used the evangelicals just like he uses everyone else. Only they’re too oblivious to see it. Maybe they’ll figure it out when he flips on abortion soon.

It’s capped at 40k seats, I believe, and it was extremely busy last year. Parking has been a headache there for a couple of years. Be early for this one.

It's what happens when you have pent up demand, labor shortages, and free money given away during the butchering of COVID by the prior administration. Unless you're a commie, this sometimes happens in a free market (or close to it, at least) economy. That's shortsighted, and again explains when it makes no sense for the working class to vote Republican. My stock portfolio is through the roof in the last several years. Those gains FAR outpace inflation. Republicans measure the economy by stock market performance, that is, top down performance. Democrats view the economy from the ground up. I'm doing great right now. But average laborers and paycheck to paycheck people? Not so much.

This is one of the things that is so comical to me about working class Trumpers. The guy is a businessman, for sure. And there’s this constant tension between the businessman/management and the worker. That’s the nature of capitalism. Those guys aren’t for you. They’re for them, and they use—exploit—you to help them. It’s how it works. As far as the balancing of the checkbook goes, didn’t that guy declare bankruptcy a couple of times? That, of course, ultimately involves stiffing creditors. And didn’t Trump approve about twice the borrowing that contributes to the national debt than did Biden? I appreciate that some of those monies were handouts during COVID, but that in turn not only constitutes socialism—the very thing of which Trump has accused more or less everyone else—but contributed to inflation. Speaking of exploitation, how about the tax cuts? Cutting corporate taxes was great for me. The market was up under Trump and is probably up even more under Biden. What if you’re not in the market? It’s tougher to get in, your buying power is reduced, and you’re paying a greater portion of the collective tax burden. Same thing with income taxes. Who benefitted far and away the most from the TJCA? Not you, but the rich folks who want to exploit you and your vote.

Didn’t the blue and red sell out last year? It’s not as easy a ticket as you’d think.

Ukraine is (mostly) free, and Iran and Israel aren’t shooting at each other. Meanwhile, my stock portfolio is smoking hot. Master class.

So let me get this straight - homelessness is a byproduct of federal borrowing? I’m not terribly conversant with the federal budget, but I believe that the borrowing supports such things as military spending (a Trump prerogative of convenience), and subsidized housing (maybe not a Trump issue, unless he’s getting the check, but apparently now an issue for Trumpers). I believe in capitalism and, if you’ve squandered your money and time on booze and cigs and four wheelers and other crap you didn’t need, then later in life you pay a guy like me to put a roof over your head. And I squeeze you, because it’s a business and that’s how things work in our economy. If you’d like rent control and affordability, maybe public housing is the way to go. Or you can just be a socialist. Either one. But I like where I’m at right now, and I believe in capitalism. Also, it sounds a lot like you’re blaming other people for your problems. It doesn’t seem like you paid too much attention in school. So you had to do blue collar work. No shame in that. But you’re also beholden to the white collar folks for the intellectual piece of your economic puzzle. And, it seems, they screwed it up by scrimping on labor costs. Fair enough. In the meantime, you’ve overlooked the idea that maybe if it wasn’t these “illegals” the folks who ran your company would have hired non-union, unskilled, cheap labor and reached the same result perhaps a little more quickly than they did with the illegals. (Maybe if it wasn’t for the lazy white people there would have been no market for the illegals, but I digress.). You’ve also overlooked the point that you apparently saw all of this happening and, instead of looking for a new job and getting out ahead of it, you rode the ship to the bottom and now are blaming other people for your lack of foresight. I’ll add that, if all of what you’ve said is true, then it should be pretty easy for you to pick up other work given your description of your work ethic and your immigration status. I sincerely hope it works out for you, and I’m sorry about the job situation. You and I just disagree on who to blame (accountability is a piece that I think most Americans lack) and how to fix it (hint: if you’re working class, it ain’t Trump). I imagine Jim Clyburn’s present support accounts for the George Wallace issue, and I have a hard time believing that Jim Clyburn would support a racist.

Sounds like your problem really is with capitalism and free trade. Which makes it surprising that you’re a Republican. But I guess that party is different nowadays.

And yet Jim Clyburn supports him. I can’t speak to his showering habits - I don’t know what you’re talking about there. But the plagiarism thing hardly makes one a bad person. Of course it was a mistake. Life, however, is a matter of degree, and that issue pales in comparison to other mistakes made by others in public life.

I don’t disagree that the educational system is not without its warts. But the biggest problem with that system is that we have a generation—maybe two—of lazy, drug- and video-game addled, soft students who don’t want to put the work in. It’s not just “suburban elites” who are fat and lazy and out of shape. The rural Trumpers are front and center here, too. Want to shoot guns and drink beer and not pay attention in school? It’s just as bad as wasting time on Halo or Fortnite or Twitter or whatever. And, eventually, it all catches up with people. In this country, we have two different kinds of lazy whiners. The liberal elite kids who want their loans forgiven and guaranteed basic income or whatever it is because things are hard and difficult and they’re in a jam financially but unwilling to sacrifice. Then, on the other hand, we have the fat, lazy Trumpers who think the libs are soft but who didn’t pay attention in school and who find later in life that physical labor isn’t all its cracked up to be and who then want to enact tariffs and have the right wingers (who allegedly aren’t socialists) take control of the economy and lower the price of steak and the friggin diabetes medication that they wouldn’t need if they put down the ho-hos and Jack and said no to a sausage once in awhile. That’s only after they blame other people (Mexicans, libs, China, etc.) for their own lack of foresight and intellectual laziness. It’s those Mexicans who made them drown in Crown on the weekends, screw around in high school or community college, and buy some massive pickup truck they can neither afford nor need. It’s sad, really. To get to your point about immigrants, none of the aforementioned Americans wants to pick a strawberry or milk a cow. So there’s a market for the inglorious manual labor that many of the migrants do when they get here. And, as far as the intellectual immigration to this country, I’d rather have them than not. The sad reality is that there’s a market for them, too. Building walls and keeping them out only deprives us of the benefit of the best and brightest who did the stuff that the bozos in trailers with Trump flags and the liberal whiners with nothing to show for their degrees from Bucknell didn’t want to do. America 2024.

Cool idea. Any idea how much it costs to make that t-shirt you’re wearing? Probably next to nothing because it was manufactured in Indonesia or Vietnam. I don’t disagree about manufacturing tech here - we can’t be reliant upon Taiwan for chips, or on China for iPhones. But the world is interconnected, and the harsh reality is that our best path forward is to educate our populous, perform white collar tech, education, design, and high-end manufacturing here, and exploit third-world labor for most consumer goods. Quite honestly, we’re stupid to make, as you said, toilet paper here, because it’s cheaper and better to exploit labor elsewhere to get it done. I understand the frustration of the uneducated who are stuck with a declining manufacturing base. But blaming Mexicans and others for taking “our” jobs is not only factually incorrect, but ridiculous. Do you want to pick strawberries? Me neither. Do you want to grind it out six days a week in front of a sewing machine making Nike t-shirts? I don’t. The world moved on while you and others were grinding it out in a factory, and the path forward is to let “them” grind it out manufacturing most of the disposable crap that “we” don’t need and to orient our workforce such that we remain the world leader in tech and in design. Manufacturing, coal, you name it. It’s not what it used to be, and taxing Americans to save those dying sectors is not the way to go. Trump is a lying, immoral, unprepared goof. Biden is a good man who lived a good life but who is looking at the peak of the hill from a distance in the rear view mirror. A moderate from either side would win this election cycle going away.

I think the culmination of a lot of domestic drama the night before the Bengals game was sort of the last straw in all of the emotional insanity of 2022. It was a combination of all of those factors and then one little chef's kiss the night before the game.

You're dating yourself. But it makes sense. A 1950s reference from people with a 1950s approach to economics. Let's slap massive tariffs on everything, they say. Let's even replace the income tax with tariffs, they say. Sounds like an outstanding idea, until one realizes that the economy is now global and that replacing the income tax with tariffs shifts the burden for funding the government from high-income earners to the peanut-earners like everyone who reads this board. Not a good plan at all, unless you want to pay more in taxes.

Steeling. Outstanding stuff. Tell me more about macroeconomics.

That is a well-stated, articulate point. Hoax.

Hoax. There really should be a flood of people moving from Cali to Alabama and Mississippi. In those lands of the blind even the dumbest among us can be kings.

Winner winner chicken dinner. The trick to this election is not to keep arguing with lower class Trumpers about how their candidate of choice doesn't care about them. It's to tell them about the good things that others have and will continue to do for them. Andy Beshear has it figured out. Hoax.

Interesting. What's going on right now that's "unconstitutional governing?" Do tell.

Like generic HCQ, right? I think he's going to focus on winning those trade wars, taxing American through the imposition of tariffs, repeal and replace, and the federal abortion ban, first. The wall thing will come later.

See TJ Watt re: holding in. “Decent QB on a budget” these days is either Kirk Cousins, a rookie contract, or a relatively young castoff (e.g., Mayfield). The Cousins contract is exactly what they should have been looking for under your scenario. $25m cap hit in year 1; $40m in year two, and then he’s history with Penix taking over and balancing dead cap against rookie QB contract. As for the market value, Tua’s options to unlock that value include playing and staying healthy, holding in/out to extract it from the Dolphins, or becoming a toxic jerk and demanding a trade. Otherwise, he has to play enough games this year (not sure if it’s 6 or 7) to accrue a year toward FA.