Butch Femme Planet - 2020 Presidential Election

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Quote:

Originally Posted by cathexis (Post 1246021)

Unfortunately, I think Biden will probably get the rust belt and the rest of the Mid-West. He's blue collar relates well to that portion of the electorate. I think Gillibrand is too meek to fight in the bull pen. Kamala could survive the fight, but not my 1st choice. Got my eye on Mayor Pete. He's got his finger on the pulse on a large section of the country; because, he's skin and bone of the body of the center of America.

unfortunate?...no, i think it's cool that we have such a vivid contrast to t**** and that t**** is definitely scared..and desperate..he's not my 1st choice, but perhaps the universe is hearing the cries of the people and will give him the strength to win...he's not my 1st choice but he's an angel to me..

Quote:

Originally Posted by kittygrrl (Post 1246132)

Okay, kittygrrl, perhaps "unfortunate" was a bit strong. We'd be in way better shape with Biden than now, and he would work well patching up our relations with our allies. He is a statesman with strong experience. I just wished for someone further left.

Mayor Pete is showing colors that bear a little closer watching. He may not turn out as much of a prized peach as he was out of the starting gate. Maybe he just needs to settle down a bit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by girl_dee (Post 1246104)

I have been saying this! While it is true that companies may look for alternatives to china (one of our manufacturers at my company has already said this) the bill is not going coming out of China’s pocket. The distributors and the customers are the ones paying more.

It comes either from the firms that make, move and sell the products or from the pockets of the buyers.

To me this whole issue is just poking the bear.

It is not just consumers being hurt by the tariffs:

Is This the End of Recycling?

After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, you can be fined if inspectors discover that you haven’t recycled appropriately.

But now much of that carefully sorted recycling is ending up in the trash.

For decades, we were sending the bulk of our recycling to China—tons and tons of it, sent over on ships to be made into goods such as shoes and bags and new plastic products. But last year, the country restricted imports of certain recyclables, including mixed paper—magazines, office paper, junk mail—and most plastics. Waste-management companies across the country are telling towns, cities, and counties that there is no longer a market for their recycling. These municipalities have two choices: pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or throw it all away.

Most are choosing the latter.

This is disturbing for two reasons: one is that recycling has stopped happening in a lot of places.

The other reason is that we have to ship our recyclables overseas because preparing the recyclables is so labor intensive that it cannot be done in countries where labor has any rights.

Even without the tariffs, our recycling contributes to labor exploitation, possibly even child labor.

we should banish plastic from food products..the invasion of plastic into our air, water, and soil will eventually kill us all..the candidates who are sincere about climate change must include all the substances that are slowly poisoning us and our world.
https://image.shutterstock.com/image...1160143345.jpg

North American "recycling" is a blight on many economies and has wiped out manufacturing in several "poor" countries.
Why should any of these countries ( particularly African ) try to sustain a manufacturing industry when cargo containers full of used Gap tee shirts and old Nike runners cram their ports daily. Tee shirt for 5 cents, shoes for 2 cents....why bother trying to make it?

We , here, don't want to pay to dispose of it. We, here, want to feel good about being charitable. And ultimately we are chocking off "emerging economies" that find no where to grow cause we dump our "goodwill" garbage on them.

Happy Mother's Day, BTW. :beerfunnel:

If Biden (or Bernie) get the nomination, then Bernie (or Biden) will probably be on the ticket as the VP.

A lot can happen between now and voting day but I see this as a real possibility. This certainly isn’t a ticket I’d like to see, but I’d go for it if it meant dumping Trump’s ass out of office.

And Biden and Bernie know it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orema (Post 1246212)

Sounds perfect. They can do "paper, scissors, stone" for who should start and who would live long enough to succeed the other.

:yeahthat:

Quote:

Originally Posted by kittygrrl (Post 1246210)

I remember being like ten years old and starting to see the shift from glass to plastic food packaging-- starting with soda and then moving on to mustard and ketchup, then milk.

They advertised the packaging as "shatterproof and disposable," and even as a kid i was confused: since when was plastic disposable? And i have to wonder, now, how it was that all of the adults went "yes, good" and never hesitated at all to drop those giant two-liters into the garbage?

I mean, my grandparents lived on a farm, and had no utility service-- which means they were on well and septic for water and sewage, and disposed of all trash by burning it in a barrel.

That burn pile was always visible to us, and every time you walked past it you could see the stuff that did not fall to ash. When plastic packaging hit the shelves, that burn barrel was what i thought of.

Anyway here is some history
The Guardian: Opinion-- Plastic bottles are a recycling disaster. Coca-Cola should have known better

[...]In the past several decades, Coca-Cola has fought hard to prevent communities around the world implementing deposit systems that would require drinks firms to add a charge to the price of their products, to be refunded when customers returned the packaging to the distributor or retailer.

Deposit systems began to spread in the US in the 1970s, as throwaway steel and aluminium cans replaced the returnable glass bottles that once dominated the beer and soft drink industries.
This switch to throwaways, which started with brewers in the 1930s and matured in the soft drinks industry in the 1960s, was in part driven by a consumer culture that craved convenience. It was also driven by economics, as big beverage companies sought to achieve economies of scale by consolidating their bottling networks, and realised they could save money if they didn’t have to truck returnable bottles back to factories.

But those companies did not like deposit systems because they believed government-imposed price hikes could hit sales. Coke, Pepsi and others organised to counter deposit laws. Their campaign was successful, largely because of a promise they brought to debates: kerbside recycling. In federal and state government hearings, Coca-Cola and others argued that municipal recycling systems, if funded and supported by government agencies, would eliminate the need for deposits. By the mid-80s, this argument had won the day.

How did this system stack up against the alternatives, considering the full ecological impact of reclaiming returnable glass bottles, including washing them? In 1969 Coca-Cola attempted to answer that question by asking the Midwest Research Institute to conduct a life-cycle analysis of packaging. The firm looked at various types of throwaway containers, and compared them with returnable glass bottles on almost every measure: energy expenditure, waste generation, water pollution, air emissions and more

This study, which the investigators reproduced for the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1974, concluded that no throwaway “container will be improved to match or surpass that of [the 10-trip returnable glass bottle] in the near future”.

Coca-Cola nevertheless placed its future in the plastic bottle. Paul Austin, then company president, explained this was because Coca-Cola believed recycling systems would allow the company to reclaim much of the plastic it used.

The beauty of history is that we can look back and see if Austin’s bet paid off. Using the US as a case study, the message is clear: failure to offer financial incentives has resulted in a wasteful recycling system. Over 25 years since kerbside recycling began, 70% of plastic containers are never reclaimed. Just 30% end up being recycled.

Basically, we trashed our oceans to preserve one company's profit margins.

So, who failed? Was it the company who shifted half its responsibility to "municipal recycling systems, if funded and supported by government agencies"?

Capitalist rhetoric says we have to blame the consumer. Governments would have better-funded and more successful recycling programs if consumers demanded them, or even used them, but they didn't and they don't.

That is a tactic for maintaining the status quo. Anytime the rhetoric can shift the blame to a million end-users of a product instead of tracing a problem back to its root and holding the original decision-makers responsible, change becomes less possible.

I mean, the lag time for my family between all products shifting to plastic and the arrival of our first curbside bin was at least a decade. Shouldn't someone have required Coke to shift their packaging gradually, market area by market area, as recycling became available in each area? We should not have had plastic on our supermarket shelves until we had bins on our curbs.

Not sure who will end up being the Democratic nominee but if it's Biden I hope he can persuade Harris to take the Vice Presidency or if not her then Klobuchar ....i hate to say this...............................but it's our turn:praying:

Let's not let our guard down. We still have to Get dt out of the White House. Not referring to the election, necessarily. Who's to say that he will give up the power without a fight. Would not be surprised if he pulls an advance Executive Order, carefully worded, to give the President additional power or he even ignores the election.

He might require force to get ejected. The US has never encountered a President who behaves this way, stomping all over the Constitution. We need to remain vigilant.

Remember, Hitler was initially elected to office.

Beto did fairly well and seemed coherent last night but anyone can seem to be for a few minutes at a time...i'm hesitate to believe power will not eventually corrupt even those who seem the most ethical choice in our minds..gosh, i think, i still have GOT dust on my thoughts:rant:

Hate to be guilty of schadenfreude, but this strikes me as funny as hell.

Not 'born to be in it': Beto O’Rourke strikes more humble tone as buzz fades

Https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...eboot-campaign

He's apologizing. He hasn't done anything wrong really. People just aren't responding to him or his middle of the road message. Apologies won't help. I can see why he's embarrassed though.

I don't know why people like Beto and Pete Buttigieg think they have the right to run for President of the United States. I don't have anything against either one of them but I don't see how either one of them has enough experience. I sure wish we had actual job requirements for the position - that would have ruled out the orange monstrosity who is obviously in no way shape or form qualified. There are stricter job requirements to be a manager at a fast food restaurant than to be president of the United States.

Joe Bidens' mishandling of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings is enough for me to disregard his candidacy. Allow me to recap for some here who do not recall or needs a jog of the memory.

What did Biden do during the hearings?

He did little to almost nothing from stopping the committee members from attacking Professor Hill. The Republicans were the most relentless. Arlen Specter asked her why she didn’t report the behavior to HR and said that discussing “large breasts” at work was common. Howell Heflin asked if she was a “scorned woman” and if she had “militant attitude relative to the area of civil rights” or a “martyr complex.” Charles Grassley accused her of lifting the pubic hair story from The Exorcist.

Second, Biden failed to call additional witnesses who could have corroborated Hill’s testimony. One of those women, Angela Wright Shannon, told Roll Call in 2016 that it was probably a good thing that she didn’t testify. “I don’t think I could have maintained the grace and dignity of Anita Hill,” she said. Hill, in 2014, said Biden declining to put the other witnesses in front of the committee was “a disservice to me” and “a disservice more importantly, to the public,” as allowing those women to testify would have “helped the public to understand sexual harassment. He failed to do that.”

You want to talk about hubris when it relates to IQ 45, I personally see similar hubris in Sanders and Biden albeit much less detrimental to society. It is time for the old white men to sit down.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BullDog (Post 1246299)

Obama wasn't all that qualified, either. Or Reagan.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dark_crystal (Post 1246303)

Obama wasn't all that qualified, either. Or Reagan.

Reagan was governor of California for 8 years so technically he did have experience. I still don't think he was qualified necessarily and he was a horrible president but he was governor for a long time.

We have had a lot of presidents who were governors and didn't really have any experience in Washington. Personally, I want someone who has worked in DC because that place will eat people alive, but there have been plenty who haven't.

Quite frankly, my top choice, Kamala Harris, is only on her first term as senator. Before that she was Attorney General of California. She does serve on important committees like the Intelligence and Judiciary committees. From my own point of view, her experience level is a little on the light side.

Obama - yes absolutely. When he first ran I was like who is this and why is he running. He doesn't have enough experience. I supported Hillary. When he beat her I did think it was all fair and wasn't upset but I was still highly skeptical. I started to really come around on Obama when he did the foreign policy debate with McCain. Everyone said going in he would be at such a disadvantage against the seasoned statesman, but I thought Obama was really good in that debate and I was really behind him ever since.

I don't think Obama did have enough experience going in but was a good president anyway based on intelligence and strength of character.

There's a lot of people who want someone who isn't an insider or politician or whatever to be president. I'm definitely not one of them. I want someone who knows how things work in DC for the slim chance that things can get done. I think the less you know the more at a disadvantage you are. But yes there are still other factors and Obama is a good example of that. I think he is also quite the exception to the rule.

I am still annoyed about Beto and Buttigieg running. It's like hey I was an intern at a company and now the CEO is retiring so I'm going to apply for the job.

Could it be something as simple as getting your name out there so people might recognize it next time?

yes..although true Biden is not my first choice.. At least I know what I get when it's Joe. I have no clue about the others really, i've only heard rumors and formed opinions .. At least with Joe, you know although he's not perfect, he has experience, he's not a racist, or a billionaire, and he cares:tea:

I think Joe Biden by far has the best chance to beat Trump and I have no objection to him either. He is also the only one who just might be able to sway a few Republicans in the Senate to get things passed. It's still a long shot because of how they tow the party line, but he is the one who possibly could do it. He has working relationships with some of them. People act like that's a bad thing. Do you want legislation to get passed or not? I don't think he is going to sell us out to some right wing agenda.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BullDog (Post 1246313)

I have problems with Biden for the reasons Ace listed and more. I also remember the bussing issues in the late 1960s and 1970s—my father fretted over that for a long time and ended up sending me to a private school to avoid the haters that were stoked by politiicians like Biden. Still, I'd rather have Biden in office than Trump or any other Republican for that matter and that's what it boils down to for me.

I'm committed to voting for the Democratic nominee whether it's Bernie or Biden.