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[Hanslanda]

The official said Republican lawmakers made a mistake by hiring a woman out of fear of the optics of Ford being questioned by an unbroken line of old white men.

To be fair if they had done that it could have become a rallying point for left-leaning and moderate female voters.  This is a tense election season, officials on both sides are walking on eggshells.

The whole fucking country is on eggshells I feel.

[Max™]

So, Ford slips into a damn near natural vocal fry and I hate everything about it because she was awesome with the captions on and it was just her doing her goddamndest to avoid breaking down or running in terror because she "felt it was a civic duty to bring [her story] before the committee" as it is important to know shit like this about a potential lifetime supreme court nominee.

You could see how the atmosphere in the chamber got more somber and dare I say it respectful due to the honest and credible presence she put forward.

I wouldn't even be surprised if the prosecutor was being deliberately picky and badgering her because she believed Ford and wanted to pre-emptively wring the juice out of all the weasely conniving bitchmode bullshit attacks she could cover, because it definitely didn't help the GOP side of things having her asking questions... I mean, 11 hateful old fartsacks glowering and bitching at this uppity young chippy who doesn't know her place would not look good and provide endless clipbait to hound them with... but there is no way they expected a prosecutor to end up making Ford look more and more trustworthy and real.

Pretty sure she out-presidential-behavior'D Trump there, doesn't that mean she gets his job, or does she get Kavanaughs?

Well, assuming he has one after inexplicably ranting about all the sexual assault victoms he's friends with (dear god what, is that how you pick 'em?) how important keeping calendars are to him (SIMPSON'S DID IT) especially because there are no "sexually assaulted someone today" notes in there, see, totally off the hook right?

Then things start going downhill, rambling about loving beer, drinking beer, having friends drink beer, beer drinking games, games involving beer, and uh... farting?

Then I guess he thought he saw a beer on the ground or something and when he bent to pick it up his v-card slipped out so he brings it up and notes that he was supposedly a virgin through high school and into early college, which is an amazing defense for someone being accused of sexual assault during high school, I guess?

So much to unpack between the scared but brave victim and the angry ranty former drunk who was a good kid in high school and has lots of women who think he's basically a decent guy in the right light and lots of women he hasn't sexually assaulted or anything, for serious!

[Folly]

I would think that virgin's would have the most incentive to sexually assault someone.

[smjjames]

That'd better be sarcasm

[misko27]

So the day ends... and where do we stand? Well, the most important person on the Senate Judicial Committee right now is Jeff Flake, and despite being at that hearing for eight hours, the man only spoke for a minute and a half, at the very end. He is, if we are to believe the reporting, deeply conflicted.

The moderates Collins, Murkowski, Flake, and Manchin (a red state democrat), all got together after the hearings. The only one who spoke to reporters, Manchin, said the others were undecided. People are presuming that the vote will still occur tomorrow, and the second vote will be on Saturday, assuming the first succeeds (if it doesn't, it will likely still go to the Senate, but the timetable will likely change). The Saturday vote is actually strictly procedural, and the real vote will be on Monday, but the Saturday vote is seen as the test of whether it'll go forward (which isn't always true; remember the Healthcare debates?). The GOP is relying on continuing at ramming speed and projecting confidence, in the hopes that the confidence will be self-justifying; which has always worked out well for them (remember the Healthcare debates?).

The future hangs in the balance, and the actions of a few will determine our fate. Again.

[Reelya]

So Elon Musk is being put through the wringer by the federal government for one clear joke tweet. Seems disproportionate given the behavior of Teflon Don then Tweeter In Chief.

[wierd]

The SEC might think he was trying to alter stock prices by making a false statement of intent.

However, if he really did intend to take the company private (which I could well see), his assertion of that is hardly what I would consider nefarious.

It was only after investors shat a purple cow out of their collective asses that he retracted on the plan to do so.

Oblig sauce
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-says-has-funds-to-take-tesla-private-investors-asked-not-to-2018-8

[Cathar]

So...at the last UN summit, America implied that Germany would rely on russia for its energy. As Germany has began a full transition toward renewable energy, that made them smile. Congratulation on making Germany smile America.

[wierd]

I hate to say it, but the conservatives in the US have an almost axiomatic aversion to renewable energy.  They see it in the same light as the tooth fairy, or santa claus. As such, they systemically look away from it as not being serious. (except the truly evil among them that see it as an evil competitor to their many investments, the world be damned) 

Naturally, Trump is not intelligent enough to be a truly evil conservative, and thus sees renewable energy as a farce.  As such, the roadmap from Germany concerning how it intends to solve its energy generation problems with renewables just makes him go "ahhh.. Yeah--- tell me how you REALLY intend to fix it? *wink wink*"  to which Germany simply repeats "Renewable energy (idiot.)"

It is a failing on both major fronts over here in bizzarro-land USA;  Both major political fronts have an aversion to unpleasant truths, and a love affair with boogey men, evil menace, and the like.  (no, I really do mean both fronts.  The left is just less overt about it. No, this is not false equivalence, the right is quite a bit more heavy handed, but that does not absolve the left either; I am not giving out free passes on wrongdoing, just because the other side is "Waaaaay worse!".) You can see it all over in how our media spends its time doing coverage, and in the narratives presented by the collective mouthpieces of both axis of us politics.  Conservatives treat renewable energy sources with disdain (at best), or actively torpedo them and jump to prevent their rise in prominence while doing everything they can to make it look (at least on paper) that such resulting market failures are because they are just inferior to fossil fuels economically (and nothing whatsoever to the absurd amount of added bullshit that they threw on the table that pulled them under like a millstone. --At worst) all so that they can then reinforce the prior view. (that renewables are a farce.)  The left likes to spin the narrative that they are the godseat of moral decency in the US, despite being anything but in many circumstances, and bends over backward to engineer outrage, and to foment hatred as a valid means of resolving differences of opinion. 

Trump is a symptom of these problems. 

For all the horror that his administration has caused as it blusters about like a bull in a china shop, that administration was elected on what is predominantly a pitiful desire for something *OTHER* than the two flavors of the day. (It was a vain hope, and one not founded in good conscience, but that hope was real, and was a strong driver in Trump's election, which just about every pundit seems hell bent on not addressing.)

Dangerous nationalists are the most dangerous, because they are at their most desirable, when there are strong feelings of disenfranchisement by the populace. People are the most vulnerable to having those feelings used against them when there is real feelings of being abused by their government. People who would otherwise never consider somebody like Trump for office in a million years, would attempt it out of desperation when such things are in motion. 

The constant denials of reality from both sides of the aisle do NOTHING to resolve that problem, and resorting to "Seee see!! THEY have  BOOOGEY MAN! *A BOOGEY MAN!!*" as the main reason to keep THEM in power, is more of the *PROBLEM*, not the solution.

So yeah.  We have an orange idiot in power.  He has another 2 years before his license to be dumb on the world stage expires.  Rather than sing and dance, and make a big show about how dumb he is, let's address why we elected an orange idiot in the first place, to assure it does not happen again.

But no. That does not sell eyeballs, does not empower an established political base, nor does it do anything but actually help the public.  Naturally, it wont happen.

[Cathar]

Some seven years ago, when I worked in standardization, I had a document in my hands describing the cost for a transition to renewable energy. Full transition was calculated, with everything from 30 to 100%. The question was not "is it possible ?" but "at what cost ?". It's a question of money mostly, and public order secondarily because the population will pay the kilowats at the end. But in seven years, technology on renewable progressed. Technology on petroleum and nuclear power too, but much, much slower and renewable energy is (last I checked) getting close to the cost of nuclear energy.

As for the orange idiot... I haven't mentionned him because he's not my issue. If you want my honnest opinion, america has abandonned its working class long ago, during the red scare. Mentionning unions and workers rights is not something I see in american TV, and certainly not in the left wing medias, who are more interested in issues of gender and race than talking about the destitutes.

In the end ? Waiters are paid with tips. It's not a cultural trait, it's a sign of the US work market is so deregulated that you can hire someone make them work and not pay them. The solution in any other western country is to regulate the market, but left and right alike are adverse to the idea. So they find other scapegoats. It's not the lack of protection, it's the migrants. It's china. It's anything, but god it's not us, the firm owners. US opinion gets agitated with political shows that are made with candidates yelling at each other so as to excite aggressive electoral behavior, issues are never discussed.

So you have, indeed, a growing disinfranchized lower class, coal miners, farmers, factory workers, who are totally abandonned by the establishment, overexcited by the trumpets of electoral elections, with no way out within the usual system of representation, who tried to send a message.

And be very assured that the message was not heard. I've remained on the lookout for any discussion within the left circles about how to remedy the fact, to do their conscience check. Never happened. In two years things will restart and nothing will have been learn

[Frumple]

Minor point, most places waiters are paid minimum wage-ish, they just get to use tips to supplement it. Legally places that use a tip system are required to meet that minimum standard if the tips don't. Least last I checked. It's still pretty crap on a number of fronts, but it's probably a good idea to characterize it correctly. _{amusingly(?) there's actually been a few cases of restaurant workers unionizing in the last year or two that made it to the news, somewhere out west iirc}

If you're looking for go-fuck-yourself deregulation on that front your better example is probably contract/temp work, where there actually are fairly widespread loopholes allowing for people to not get paid. Farmers are also kinda' shitty to talk about on that front, since they're basically fellated by the government when it comes to support. Discussion on the rest is also more complicated than "they're being ignored", since a damn lot of the problem on that front is "they're refusing actual solutions" when they're presented -- for years now dems have consistently been playing up the legitimate answers to the problems the groups mentioned are having, only to be told to sod off. Never mind you have fucking literally disenfranchised folks dems have been going to bat for, especially more recently.

Any case, personally I see discussion of union issues and worker's rights fairly often in left wing circles. Doesn't seem to hit major media particularly often 'cause FTFE, but it hasn't completely left the table so far as consideration goes. You see some discussion in right wing circles, too, really... just more as a stalking horse or scapegoat or whatev'.

[SalmonGod]

Economic inequality and workers rights are very popular political topics among millennials, who got screwed over the most by the recession, and many of whom have still never seen a recovery.  The passion around Bernie wasn't because he was anything particularly amazing.  It was because he was the only political figure people my age or younger have ever witnessed who treated this as a priority, from a point of strong national visibility.

So yeah. That stuff is here. Its just actively suppressed by our politics, media, law enforcement, etc.

[sluissa]

Both sides want cheap labor. The right wants to eliminate unions and make Americans work for shit wages. The left wants to bring immigrants in "to do the jobs Americans don't want to do." When often people would be willing to do them if they paid anywhere near decent wages.

That's not the whole story, as there IS in fact some token dog treats thrown towards unions by parts of the left (and even some moderate right in the right areas of the country). And unions in some sectors are still a force that have to be accounted for even if they're not as strong as they once were.

Trucking is also an industry that gets away with screwing over employees. It's the perfect combination of "a lot of our workers are independent contractors" and "We're not paying you by the hour, we're paying you by the mile" plus some extras usually for cases where you're stuck somewhere or otherwise held up from driving for an extended period. Granted, if you can do it right and get lucky, you can make some good money, but trainees often get screwed with low wages and often being teamed up and having to share with a codriver.

This is a prime example of how drastically things have changed in a few decades as the teamsters union used to be one of the most powerful unions out there. (And was often an example of unions who had gotten a bit too powerful. And admittedly they had a point at times.)

[Cathar]

Before I write this message I feel I should preface it by saying that this is just the opinion of an outside observer, with no horse in the race. I don't hate Trump, I find him funny and I consider the way he destroy USA's international standing to be a benefit for my country, especially since I had the confirmation that my country and its allies are not intimidated at all by his antics. But mostly, and more importantly, this is just my modest opinion.

The left wants to bring immigrants in "to do the jobs Americans don't want to do."

Franckly all that jazz on immigration makes me roll my eyes. It's the oldest trick in the book to redirect legitimate popular anger toward non issue. It's the heat sink of politics. Immigration only sinks wages when it is not regulated, if your policies make hard for them to work legally, because if you are forcing them into clandestinity, they will still have to work, for low wages without paying taxes on their labor, and hence will compete unfairly with local workers dragging the price of labor down. Here's a neat idea : just raise minimum wage and make legal work for immigrant workforce easier. Problem solved.

But even tho it's an issue that is so marginal, and so mediatically overinflated, that would not warrant a margin in a local paper. The "migration issue" was agitated consistantly, in the US and in other countries, to shut off people's ability to think about what causes their misery by putting them into a frantic and constant rage. Litterally all the nations of earth were used with that trick. It's the irish, it's the haitians, it's the cubans, now it's the mexicans but really it's a trick so old you'd think people would notice the pattern...

With that said :

Both sides want cheap labor.

That's the bottom line I think.

[Rolan7]

Immigration only sinks wages when it is not regulated, if your policies make hard for them to work legally, because if you are forcing them into clandestinity, they will still have to work, for low wages without paying taxes on their labor, and hence will compete unfairly with local workers dragging the price of labor down. Here's a neat idea : just raise minimum wage and make legal work for immigrant workforce easier. Problem solved.

Pretty much what I've been saying, except it's mostly just an issue of making minimum wage apply to currently undocumented immigrants.  The most reasonable way to do that seems to be to grant them documented status.  It betrays the trust of those who waited in line, but there's no good solution when the problem's festered for so long.

But even tho it's an issue that is so marginal, and so mediatically overinflated, that would not warrant a margin in a local paper. The "migration issue" was agitated consistantly, in the US and in other countries, to shut off people's ability to think about what causes their misery by putting them into a frantic and constant rage. Litterally all the nations of earth were used with that trick. It's the irish, it's the haitians, it's the cubans, now it's the mexicans but really it's a trick so old you'd think people would notice the pattern...

There's a difference between being threatened by immigrants, and being threatened by illegal immigration which effectively floods the workforce with scabs.  Documented workers aren't scabs, they're merely fair competition, and culturally we accept that challenge.