Senator Tuberville voted against the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law while promoting how infrastructure funding has helped his home state of Alabama. He's a typical political idiot and there's a name for it that many ET members seem to have embraced (name at the bottom of this long-winded message post). It's a common problem in the South not just among its Republicans...the Democrats under Biden seem to be in "waiting mode" until politics begin heating up when both parties select their front-runner next year to get ready for the 2024 U.S. Presidential Elections. It's not just a problem with the infrastructure improvements that Americans seem to be blinded about... it's the same with a dozen other key topics that impact how voters vote especially with the growing level of polarization in politics. Inflation is another symptom of the problem in America with the polarization in politics...if Americans think they're so bad off (economically) under President Biden...the same people have record level higher pay, minimum wage rising all over America and they're spending more at record levels while bitching about inflation. It's comical and what politicians like Senator Tuberville and their supporters of Trump and Democrats against Biden want (needs) America to believe that Americans are suffering...will be better off with a Republican President. The federal minimum hourly wage is just $7.25 and has not increased since 2009. The Raise the Wage Act of 2023, introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate on July 25, 2023 under President Biden with hard fought for bipartisan support...would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour by 2028. In reality, many more jobs today are already paying more than $17 dollar an hour in comparison to their prior rates of of less than $10 dollar and hour... Also, minimum wages has dramatic increased for non-federal jobs such as small business owners @ https://ogletree.com/insights-resou...te-and-major-locality-minimum-wage-increases/ Small business owners hates these numbers...it's a contradiction to those that want higher wages and then promote what small business owners dislike (it's disingenuous politics)... Thirty states and the District of Columbia currently have minimum wages that are higher than the federal standard, ranging from $8.75 an hour in West Virginia to $17 an hour in D.C. In 17 of those states and D.C., the tip credit also is higher: Virginia’s minimum wage, for example, is $12 an hour, but employers can use tips to offset up to $9.87. That means the minimum cash wage payable by the employer, $2.13, is the same as under federal law. My brother's oldest teenager has a part-time job making $20 dollars an hour in South Dakota...a job that was $9 dollars an hour in 2015. The same group of young people in their state bitching about the high cost of Inflation all the way up to record levels and still bitching about Inflation all the way back down. In reality, I think the result will be opening the doorway for an Independent political leader to run to shatter the two-party system and possibly pull off an upset especially if they can overcome the messaging disapproval of Biden and the messaging approval of Trump that so many idiots are stuck on...overcoming where America is stuck in the rabbit hole will help to open the door-way for an Independent. Also, I was looking at how powerful/important views (opinions) Americans get their political news from social media. It has almost tripled since the 2020 U.S. Presidential Elections even when politicians themselves are attacking social media (e.g. TikTok) because it has grown so powerful in shaping the views of Americans while being owned by a Chinese company and at the same time the same politicians are aggressively using social media to reach & grown the supporting base. America actually thought they could control social media by capping screen times for those who say they're under 18 years of age (most lie about their age), approving owners like Elon Musk to takeover Twitter who want their platform to be a foundation for freedom of speech while at the same time allowing it to be weaponized by politicians...the same politicians that are against social media and trying to control it. Hypocrisy and contradictions are an understatement. It's common sense and even those that do not understand rocket science get it... Most of America is against social media while the users are supporters. Just the same, they're against intervention in the Ukraine/Russia war but want intervention (even if it includes using our U.S. military soldiers) in the Israel/Hamas war. Our country is either fucked up in its political beliefs that it's allowing politicians & polls to control their life because they let it indoctrinate them into a one-sided view even if it will harm them more if they get their way or it's just stupidity. Right now, Democrats are stuck in the rabbit hole because they're so focused on being against Biden...they're not able to get the message out about who they want to support in the Democratic primaries that are coming around the corner. In the old days, if you disliked someone...you had the guts to say who you were supporting (say his or her name). Those days are long gone. Simply, we are a society that bitches & cry like babies while at the same time promoting what it has done for our state so that we can get more handouts... I call it Tubervillism. (emoji pun) P.S. Last week, I saw a protest being covered by a TV news channel (Chicago...a democratic stronghold) in the United States. There were protestors with signs blaming Jewish people for America's "economic problems"....shades of Hitler propaganda when he rose to power in Europe... We all know how that turned out as Americans...right ? P.S.S. The door is wide open for me to vote for an Independent because the two-party system in America...really sucks. Those who embrace a Trump/Biden repeat while dismissing Biden...are individuals who want the chaos of 2020 to return... Individuals that want Trump but too damn afraid to say it out loud. wrbtrader
It will be remembered, I hope, as the hug that sank a craven president. It was mid-October. US President Joe Biden made the requisite pilgrimage to Tel Aviv to show that his staunch support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not simply rhetorical. His grateful host, fidgety with excitement, waited for Biden to emerge from the bulging hull of Air Force One. Apart from the loud harangues of a throng of nearby journalists, the whir of the White House-in-the-sky’s engines muffled much of the chatter below. Netanyahu nodded to his companion, President Isaac Herzog, as an army of stoic Israeli and American bodyguards stood by – at the ready. After a minute or so, Biden appeared with his trademark aviator sunglasses in hand. He paused for a moment at the top of the aircraft’s steps to reach out to Netanyahu, like an expectant bride to his groom. Then, looking pale and tired, Biden walked down the aisle – as it were – and towards his beaming beau. The pair embraced, with Biden patting Netanyahu on the back. The delighted prime minister said something. Biden offered a short, perfunctory reply. As hugs between politicians go, this one seemed long and sincere. Israel’s indispensable patron had arrived in person to verify, once more, that America stood with and by its equally indispensable ally. But whether Biden and his camp knew it or not, in that instant the president’s already precarious political fate may have been sealed by an image now fixed in consciousness and memory – the unintended consequence of an act of “bro”-like solidarity on an airport tarmac in Israel. The unmistakable irony, of course, is that Biden had rushed to Tel Aviv to confirm his comradery with an indicted authoritarian whom, for years, he had treated with wariness and, on occasion, contempt. Bygones were apparently bygones. Still, weeks later, “the hug” has emerged as a defining symbol of Biden’s blatant hypocrisy and obstinacy. A president who has denounced Russia’s ruthless aggression and outrages in Ukraine now defends – without reservation – Israel’s ruthlessness in Gaza and beyond, while, remarkably, extolling the necessity and virtues of the cataclysmic outrages being committed largely against Palestinian children, the infirm, and the elderly by America’s indispensable ally. Biden’s hypocrisy and obstinacy have not only offended but also infuriated crucial constituencies – young Democrats and Arab Americans, among others – that the ageing commander-in-chief must carry if he intends to win re-election in less than 12 months from today. Recent polling suggests that Biden and myopic company have underestimated the breadth and visceral depth of the potent reaction to his unqualified backing of Israel and warm embrace of a media-savvy, calculating politician that millions of Israelis cannot abide. Biden’s approval rating has plummeted to a treacherous 40 percent among all registered voters in the wake of the hug – an all-time low since his inauguration. That animus is being driven mostly, pollsters say, by voters’ near-blanket rejection of Biden’s embrace of Israel and Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas – no matter the appalling nature, extent and tally of human casualties that Americans and the world have witnessed. “I do not support his support of Israel,” Meg Furey, 40, a Democrat from Austin, Texas told NBC News. She is not alone. A clear majority of Democrats believe that Israel has “gone too far” in its retributive designs, in effect, to erase occupied Gaza and, bit by inevitable bit, the West Bank. Indeed, an astounding 70 percent of Democrats between 18 to 40 have made it plain to pollsters that they “disapprove” – to put it charitably – of Biden’s “handling” of the Israel-Gaza “war.” “This poll is a stunner, and it’s stunning because of the impact the Israel-Hamas war is having on Biden,” one pollster said. The poll is, as well, a stunning rebuttal of the Biden administration’s belief that its diplomatic and military girding of Israel in light of Hamas’s murderous October 7 assault would prove popular and be welcomed as a necessary expression of Israel’s “right to defend itself” without limits or any measure of restraint dictated by humanitarian conventions and international law. Other numbers are even more sobering. Arab-American support for Biden is fast evaporating. In a poll taken in late October, a paltry 17 percent of Arab Americans backed the president, an astonishing 42 percent drop from three years earlier. As the halting pictures of the limp bodies of dead and bloodied, dirt-caked Palestinian children pulled from the pancake-like rubble continue to flood social media and television screens, that jarring figure is sure to fall further. The potential existential political consequences of this pervasive anger and alienation may be starting to register with Biden and his in-denial campaign crew. Despite battling a slew of federal and state indictments, Donald Trump remains a stubborn, even emboldened, threat. A spate of surveys shows the former president edging ahead nationally and carving out sizeable leads in a string of swing states where Biden prevailed in 2020. The mood and momentum is with Trump. To staunch the haemorrhaging and confront the yawning and bitter discontent, Biden has tried to reposition himself lately as a sort of honest broker who understands, and is sensitive to, the toll the “war” has exacted on Israelis and Palestinians alike. Reportedly, Biden has penned two letters. One was addressed to “pro-Israel” Americans, in which Biden, predictably, reiterated that “the United States stands with Israel.” The other appealed to “pro-Palestinian” Americans by insisting that: “We mourn the many innocent Palestinians who have been killed.” The hackneyed, almost pathetic gambit has failed – miserably. I doubt that one young Democrat or Arab American has been moved to reconsider their pointed and poignant objections to what Israel has done to Gaza by Biden’s stale, hollow bit of performative nonsense. It is too late. The damage has been done and it will not be undone by a cliche-laced letter written on the White House letterhead. So, happily, I am convinced that Biden is finished. The other delicious, unmistakable irony is that Biden has likely forfeited the presidency ostensibly to “save” Israel and prop up a prime minister who, in due and deliberate time, is certain to lose the position and powers he has long enjoyed and abused. Soon, these strutting presidents and prime ministers will face the stiff, emasculating wrath of citizens whom they claim to lead. I, for one, am looking forward to such a deserving and satisfying comeuppance.
More than likely, if the Democrats ditch Joe Biden, they will give it to Gavin Newsom who is ultra progressive and will satisfy the most extreme of Democrats.