UT alum

You can keep at me all you want, but this is my last contact with you

Well, think what you will about this, but it was a lot closer back in the day when unions had considerable bargaining power.

My recommendation would be to take what two minimum wage jobs at 40 hours a week earn and compare that to what you earn. See what you’d have to cut to make your budget fit that amount. That’s a start. Your own comparison analysis.

Only if inflation gets too hot. A job (or two) that can afford food, housing, clothing, medical care, transportation, with a little left over is a living wage. What’s mythical about that?

There hasn’t been appreciable inflation since around Clinton’s time. Trump don’t get credit for that one. I’m not saying Clinton does. It’s been low no matter the Pres for a long time.

Add up what two people making minimum wage working 40 hrs a week earn, compare that to what you make. Don’t try to count food stamps or other assistance, just start dollar for dollar, and see what you’d have to cut from your budget to fit that. That’s a start.

Everyone working for a living wage.

I’ll give you low unemployment, but the rest is hogwash to me. What jobs came back? He didn’t stand up to Iran, he just mooned them. Got about a hundred miles of wall built that can be penetrated with a battery operated saws all, again he just mooned the UN, he didn’t “put them in their place”. You forgot to mention NATO. He mooned them too. Had he really put them in their place, imagine how elated Putin would be right now. The infrastructure bill was something Trump talked about doing almost monthly. Biden got one done in less than a year. Granted, he hasn’t gotten a lot else done yet, but no harm, no foul.

I confess I protested too loudly. I don’t spend a lot of time here, and the reason is because of the bile spewed by a few. You are right. My brush was too broad. I enjoy talking with people of opposing opinions when they doesn’t devolve into sophomoric name calling.

Uh, I think he was talking about you…

Ad hominem, right there. Could be used as an example in the dictionary.

Yeah, Hagar, I didn’t mean to lump you in, either. I don’t call individuals racist, but I will call it out when I see what I believe to be it. That’s what my little Get Woke About It ditty was about. The ones who deny its existence are the ones I watch out for.

Point taken. Not all, but most, in my experience, but again I don’t spend a lot of time on here because it suck’s the energy from me like a vampire sucks blood. I’d love to have a rational discussion with you.

Again, ad hominem attacks are all you know. I can’t count one thing of substance since you started railing on me and my folks. So, I guess it’s cool if I start talking trash about your mama. I figure you hiding behind this screen makes you feel like Superman.

Ad hominem. That’s all you know. And I told you, my parents are both dead. I’d appreciate you leaving them be. You’re an insensitive ass.

Trump’s record deficit after record deficit finally caught up

Name one.

I may trash conservatives as a group, but I try not to attack the person I’m debating with. That’s ad hominem. You don’t argue the subject, you trash the one you’re arguing against. I can’t say much to defend Biden at the moment, though I think we’ll be surprised be the economy in two years. I will say the deficit has shrunk sizeably this year. Trump has all the earmarks of an authoritarian ruler, and that’s not what I want for a leader. I watched the Capitol riot from start to finish, and I want a leader who immediately jumps on such an affront, not wait four hours then say go home (but we wuz still robbed). He’s a coward.

That’s not ad hominem, but that’s beside the point. I’m with you 100% on paper ballots, four person counting teams, and manual tabulation. The way we did it back in the day. I still believe that if what this documentary says is true, it would have been exposed and corrected long ago. I happen to believe in our institutions, and DOJ takes election integrity very seriously, as does also the Texas Secretary of State, in the past, regardless of the party holding the office. I’ll watch the documentary and throw in my two cents worth.

Ad hominem

I encourage everybody who reads this thread to look up the term ad hominem, whether or not you already know its meaning. The reason I come here only occasionally is because that form of rhetoric is used almost exclusively in every debate (here they seem to be arguments). It becomes tiring in a hurry. The only person who stands out of the ones I’ve encountered here is Steve Nash, May he Rest In Peace. That man would engage in an intellectual debate most readily and effectively. As for most everyone else, the argument is against the opponent’s character or misjudged lack thereof. Ad hominem rhetoric has been perfected by who seems to be the Lord and Savior of most on this blog, Donald J. Trump. You all parrot him perfectly, chapter and verse. I get tired of it in a hurry. How about trying to think for yourselves, and make your arguments for your case, instead of against your opponent. We might actually make some progress towards compromise, which is what the Founders so ingeniously designed our Constitution to achieve among competing points of view. That’s all I have to say about that…

Classic, man, classic. “Many people have said…”. “Seen or read or heard many stories” you claim to know are third person accounts. Probably most of them told by Tucker Carlson. If you know so many cases of “poor performance” covered for as racist or sexist, or “I didn’t do nothing” covered for as police harassment, state your case citing actual people you know. First or second hand, not third party narratives. How about this one: A friend’s daughter was in the Navy, stationed on the carrier Nimitz in the Persian Gulf. She got tied to a chair, a dildo strapped on her, and wheeled around the deck, humiliated as her crew members heckled and laughed. No one was disciplined. And, I’d bet dollars to donuts that experience is not anecdotal. It is painfully obvious that your bias is totally confirmed by the little bubble you live in. As 45 would say, “Sad”.

See my reply to Engelbert. I am consumed only by a desire to see fairness and an even playing field for all.

See my reply to Englebert. I’m not tearing down. I’m truth telling.

First off, my parents are dead a-hole. Second off, my wife was the woman in the union. She was the second woman admitted into the apprentice program in the Dallas carpenters local. She joined because she could quit a minimum wage job wearing a skirt behind a desk and make $12.50 an hour learning a trade. She endured three years of sexual harassment on the job site, discrimination, and was even sexually harassed by the union lawyer who was supposed to be on her side. Where did she fail? Third off, the African American in the song is based on a friend of mine who is a sportswriter. One night he was in Hollywood after a game he covered and was walking with five other people, all white and they all crossed the street between lights. A cop whirled up out of nowhere and started harassing him, hands on the car and all that, for jaywalking all the while saying nothing to the white people standing agape at what they were seeing. If not for their protestations that if he was breaking the law, then they all were, he probably would have gone to jail. Where did he fail? Fourth off, where do you get I called everyone racist? If you read what I wrote with even a hairsbreadth width of an open mind, you’d see I said “chances are” the white man would say kiss my whatever. That’s elementary arithmetic, Engelbert. “Chances are” means greater than 50/50, not “all”. And in my experience as a white man growing up and dwelling in southeast Texas all my life, more than 50% of the white people I’ve ever known would make that retort. I posted this mainly to test a hypothesis. I don’t think you MAGA heads have a sense of humor. You only laugh at people when you do laugh, not with them unless they’re all in agreement with you laughing at the ones you don’t like. That’s not humor. That’s a circle jerk. The mind is like a parachute. It only works when it’s open.