Would you seriously want to hear the drivel answers?

Show me the millions of dollars from oil companies to the Harris Walz campaign which are public record. Actually provide your evidence, don’t just conjure it with words.

EDIT

Here, I’ll do your work for you since you dont seem ready to substantiate your comments.

The Harris campaign has taken 661 thousand dollars from oil interests. There’s actually a house candidate who took more, even though she’s running a presidential campaign!

And 9 of the other top 10 recipients and honestly almost the whole list of recipients are her Republican enemies. It’s clear they are funding her opponents.

So how much loyalty did they buy for their $600k? (Not “millions” of dollars as you mis-called it). I doubt very much at all.

Harris took in $47 million in donations in the 24 hours after the debate. If anything this is chump change from the oil industry to just maybe say hey don’t obliterate us. She doesn’t work for them.

No, you are wrong, her position is about swing state voters.

The fact of the matter is that the parties are arguing over a small slice of swayable or “undecided” voters in a small slice of states that are in play ie: “swing states” and each party is honestly focusing on a subset of swing states they think they can win.

The result is that their messages look really odd at times and don’t always line up with what the majority of their party want. Because the majority of their party are safe votes. They’re going after the wingnuts in the middle and on the margins, few as they are, dumb as they are.

This is a far more obvious explanation than “she’s in the pocket of Big Oil.” A lot of Pennsylvanians work for Big Oil. So there is more going on right in the light of day than the clandestine bribery which by your own admission you have no evidence for. Occam’s razor, here.

The “mass” is small and more importantly, located in safely blue states anyway. I’m extremely liberal and I accept that these presidential elections are never going to be about me. I still vote in them because I’m not a moron. But I put more of my energy into the Democratic primary, always trying to tug the D party left. And I focus on state county and city ballots where these ideas are much more in play.

That’s the adult move here. The teenager move is to vote 3rd party or not at all because the political world hasn’t rolled a red carpet out to your doorstep.

To play devils advocate on their behalf: why chase the people who are on the extreme end of your side of the spectrum? Most of those people probably live in safe blue states, and they’re never going to flip and vote R in any case. There aren’t enough far left liberals to truly worry about as most people are somewhere in the middle. For every far left radical the Democrats please, they disaffect three moderate Democrats, who then maybe don’t vote.

Yes it looks weird when they try to cater to the odd and very narrow slice of undecided / persuadable voters, but that’s exactly what they should be doing. And there is more to lose than gain by chasing extreme left voters.

Signed, an extreme left voter.

The police and army do not protect the lives and freedom of individuals and they never have. They exist to create the conditions for business to do business. The law barely cares if you rape and murder some poor, powerless individual. But cause a big business some serious property damage? Oh no we can’t have that. Time to make an example of you.

No he’s made of shit. Shit does stick to him, it just doesn’t matter.

Those guys just don’t want to see the US go the way of Europe where scorched-earth capitalism has been tamed and extreme wealth is taxed extremely. They are wealthy beyond avarice and STILL don’t feel they are free because they come up against regulations and institutions.

They capitalize on the rural Trumpism because it is the path most likely to lead to unchecked capitalism. Remember, the US isn’t like Europe - yet. And It will take a lot of work to get it there. All those rich guys need is a government that will do nothing. So not only is tax-cut Trump their friend objectively, he creates chaos. And chaos prevents action. Rancorous divisiveness means a logjammed national agenda. Which is all they want: no action. Look the other way while they rape the world.

Fun piece. I don’t know about best explanation ever.

It starts out talking about how movies idealize simple honest people from the heartlands (Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Braveheart) but then says:

the whole goddamn world revolves around them. Every TV show is about LA or New York, maybe with some Chicago or Baltimore thrown in. When they did make a show about us, we were jokes

So which is it? Does pop culture feed rural America’s sense that it is “Real America” or does it make them hillbillies?

As if explaining politics through TV and movies isn’t reductive enough, it can’t seem to keep its own story straight for ten paragraphs in row.

His debate performance was stunning because he spent 75% of his time talking about how we are being invaded by an enormous wave of criminals and insane asylum escapees who are violently claiming buildings and territory. I was like excuse me? Do I need to go check my yard for invaders? I didn’t realize we were being overrun. And yes I live in a state that borders Mexico.

I work at a company that has big offices in Japan and the US (as well as many other places) and it’s pretty interesting to see the contrasts in living standards and expectations up close.

On the one hand, when coworkers visit from Japan they are disgusted by how dirty, unsafe, and uncourteous the US is by comparison. They complain endlessly about the low quality standards of the food. I picture myself having to pick worms and hair out of everything and that’s what things seem like from their perspective.

But then some of them move to the US because they can’t handle the stuffy, oppressive attitude in Japan. Everything is about what you can’t do or aren’t supposed to do. One guy said he was so relieved to go to the US where people know how to say “we can find a way to do that.”

On top of that we’re asking a random assortment of Americans to compare where they live with the places they visit on vacation. Watch your wallet in Europe, people are saying. Duh, yeah, when you are a tourist in a tourist area. That’s universal, folks.

By the same token, people shouldn’t over-generalize about the US either. It’s a big place with massive differences from place to place.

I like the usually-better public transit systems. You have an advantage over us in that many of your biggest cities were established long before cars even came about, so they are not planned out as car-cities first and foremost. I’m in California where the automobile was a reality by the time most everything was being built. And in those days, people were excited by cars and the liberty they brought. Cars are much more fun when there aren’t too many of them and you have the open landscape before you. So the region I live in was planned as a love letter to cars and now we are living with all the downsides of that model being overloaded.

Obviously the whole picture is more complex than this - European cities have been rebuilt and replanned, sometimes after WW2 mass destruction. But still I think the effect of having an earlier establishment does make a difference in this way.

Can you document for me one case where such accusations against a high profile individual were shown in the fullness of time to be hired fraud?

There probably is some case like that out there - I’m not saying it’s impossible. But given the past we come from, where women were objects without status, I find it very believable that sexual assault is quite common. I need some reason to take your counterpoint as seriously.

So please, show me that one clear case where we found out that the woman had been paid by political enemies to create false accusations.

EDIT: 3 days later, still waiting.

That’s why he has to take on all this “masculinity” theater. Actually successful men are quiet about it.

Buses drive outside.

People tend to step outside for a smoke.

So yeah, you actually might be more likely to get hit by a bus if you smoke, your smoking spot is anywhere near a bus route, and you are ducking out there 2-4 times a day to stand there smoking while you play with your phone.

I’ve even seen human engineers’ code thrown out because no one else could understand it. Back in the day, one webdev took it upon himself to whip up a mobile version of our company’s very complex website. He did it as a side project. It worked. It was complete. It looked good. It was very fast. The code was completely unreadable by anyone else. We didn’t use it.

China’s manufacturing capability is economically important in the short term but should hardly be looked at as a stranglehold on the entire world. Different countries have previously held the crown for “manufacturer of the world’s cheap rubbish” and India and Vietnam are currently vying for their turn to wear it. China will lose their supremacy before they’re able to do anything f politically strategic with it on the global scale.

Dude what? China’s near-daily incursions over Taiwan have escalated and escalated to an objectively ridiculous level. Nobody “painting” shit.