Hardkill

Biden’s approval rating went down a bit after the “disastrous withdrawal” from Afghanistan. However, I believe that in the long run, the American people are going to appreciate it.

There were a number of painful losses and disappointments for the Democrats for the 2022 Midterms. Therefore, they did not have the blue tsunami that they had truly hoped for. However...... They actually achieved a unique overall victory that rarely if ever happens for the Party holding the White House! They flipped a US Senate seat blue in Pennsylvania and every incumbent Democratic US senator throughout the entire country won re-election (which they say has is the first this has happened within about the last 100 years , gained a net total of 2 governor seats throughout the entire USA, and only lost less than 10 seats. Biden has presided over the best first midterm election compared to any other Democratic president in modern US history since JFK in 1962. Moreover, prior to the 2022 midterms, there have actually only been 3 to 4 midterm elections within the entire history of the country where the party holding the White House has done as well as the Democratic Party did this time around. According to my knowledge, the only few times in US history where the party in power has done this well in a first or second midterm election before 2022, were FDR and the Democrats in 1934, JFK and the Democrats in 1962, Clinton and the Democrats in 1998, and Bush and the Republicans in 2002. So, Michael Moore was in many respects more accurate in his prediction than almost every other pundit and pollster out there who all predicted that the red wave would happen. Boy, were they spectacularly wrong about that: Btw, check out what the legendary Presidential Historian, Allan Lichtman, says about both the results of the 2022 midterms and the future of the Republican Party:

Ah! So, now you say that Trump no longer has a serious chance of winning in 2024. Did the disastrous outcome of midterms for the GOP, especially for every MAGA freak out there, changed your tune on that?

I think and hope that this ends up finally being a big mistake for Trump.

The shift to more red in Texas is only temporary. If you if you look at the trend of electoral history, Democratic presidential candidates have in the long run been winning more and more of a greater percentage of the votes in Texas since 2000 to 2020. Also, Beto O’rourke was close to defeating Senator Ted Cruz in the 2018 senate midterm elections. Its not just because of the increasingly amount of Latinos in Texas. Since 2000, there have been a number of other factors that have been making the state more liberal including: the growing amount of black people and asian people having migrated from the western and northern states, the growing number of young liberal folks having also migrated from the northern and western states, increasing amount of urbanized areas and densely populated areas, and increasing amount of smart and educated people. Also, despite Texas being one of the most religious states in the country, as time goes on, there will be more secular people in Texas as the younger generations take over the older generations. Younger generations generally are more open minded because they usually grow up in more contemporary environments that influence them to either have more liberal religious/spiritual beliefs or become agnostic or become atheist. Older generations tend to be more dogmatic because they are generally more set in their beliefs during older age and usually have grown up in more old fashioned environments that influenced them to have more conservative religious beliefs or have more traditional values.

Listen to this from Michael Moore: That's why we gotta put in the work to get out the vote for all Dems ASAP.

Many liberals and progressives, including president Biden, have been accusing big corporations including oil and gas companies of price gouging ever since the beginning of the pandemic. That's why they have been floating a windfall profit tax proposal on all corporate profits. “Record profits today are not because they’re doing something new or innovative. The profits are a windfall of war,” Biden said from the Roosevelt Room, alongside Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. “Enough is enough.” Bernie Sanders recently said "...In a time of soaring corporate profits, are you prepared to support a windfall profits tax, or you're going to allow prices to continue to rise? Are we going to move forward in addressing the absolute greed in the healthcare industry and in the pharmaceutical industry, which is driving up prices?" Centrist economists including Zandi, Summers, and Furman say that the idea that corporations have been price gouging during the pandemic is all bogus and that a windfall tax would a costly mistake. Summers just said, “I’m not sure understand the argument for a windfall profits tax on energy companies,” Summers said on Twitter Tuesday morning. “If you reduce profitability, you will discourage investment which is the opposite of our objective.” “If it is a fairness argument, I don’t quite follow the logic since even with the windfalls Exxon has underperformed the overall market over the last 5 years,” said Summers. What do you guys think is the truth?

Alright then, let's get the FBI and the SEC on top of this.

I get that having a nationwide ban on all assault weapons throughout the entire country probably won't dramatically reduce the amount of gun violence that occurs in America. However, that shouldn't mean that nothing should be done at all to seriously reduce gun violence problem we have in the US. Biden and Clinton in the 90s were able to successfully pass the Federal Assault Weapons Ban Act within the Clinton Crime Bill the Biden Crime Law, which became a 10-year ban that "included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms that were defined as assault weapons as well as certain ammunition magazines that were defined as large capacity." The results were mixed and it probably didn't lead to a major plummeting in overall gun violence, but from what I understand, it likely helped reduced the amount of mass shooting and murder to some significant degree. Some experts on this matter say that the ban it probably would have reduced gun violence to a greater degree if it was implemented for much more than 10 years. Biden lately has been saying that he's going to get the federal ban on assault weapons passed again through Congress (somehow): Let me know your thoughts on this.

Oh no!

Well, actually maybe they are beginning to learn: Zakaria points out how the right-wing rhetoric has become much more dangerous than the left-wing rhetoric. I don't think that CNN has any of their news anchors make any kind of comparisons like that before.

Leo has talked about how cable news channels such as CNN have to stop being too centrist and making false equivalences. CNN and other mainstreams outlets like them have to call out the problems right-wing extremism that have been going on and not compare it or try to balance it with the problems associated with left wing extremism. Well, Eric Deggans from NPR actually recently told CNN those same things: https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2022/08/22/media-critic-warns-about-the-pitfalls-of-false-equivalence.cnn Even, A top legal analyst, named Jeffrey Toobin, who used to work on CNN, said a couple years ago that he regrets his role in making false equivalences between Hillary Clinton and Trump during his time on CNN: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/01/29/cnns-jeffrey-toobin-i-regret-my-role-in-hillary-clinton-false-equivalence/ Perhaps CNN will eventually learn from their mistakes?

Well, with regard to inflation being a top priority for voters, according to top economists who are really on point, if you look at the on the ground real most of actual inflation is behind us and there have already been major drops on prices on commodities, shelter prices, and transportation costs, costs of services, and oil and gas prices. The headlines and prints are largely not showing the true current rate of overall inflation in real life in the US. They are mostly telling us what happened to inflation last year because of the way the BLS calculates inflation reports have a major a lag effect to them. Plus, according to Paul Krugman “September, consumer prices were 15 percent higher than they were on the eve of the pandemic. However, average wages were up by 14 percent, almost matching inflation. Wages of nonsupervisory workers, who make up more than 80 percent of the work force, were up 16 percent. So there wasn’t a large hit to real wages overall, although gas and food — which aren’t much affected by policy, but matter a lot to people’s lives — did become less affordable.” Yet, gas prices again have gone back down to relatively normal levels, and in fact when adjusting for inflation are below what they were during Obama’s 2nd term as president. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/opinion/the-truth-about-americas-economic-recovery.html Furthermore, have lately been hitting the message hard to voters on how big corporations are in part responsible for inflation in our because of their price gouging methods, given the unusual record high profits all these corporations made over the past couple of years. One more thing. Michael Moore said this three days ago: ”I can tell from my mailbag, just 11 days out from the election, that many of you are going mad. Even more of you have sunk into a deep depression. Nonstop polls, punditry and journalistic pomposity telling you every single hour all the ways the Dems have blown it, lost it, and how the Repugnants are soaring like eagles! Yes, you are told, you might as well sleep in on Election Day because this baby is over. It is all a lie. They have no clue what they are talking about. They tell the story they want to tell. If it doesn’t fit their narrative, it’s not in the story. You are being misled, bamboozled, hoodwinked, scared to death, and made to believe that the economy has imploded when the factual truth is that wages are up, unemployment is at the lowest in half a century, more jobs have been created during this presidency than any other president in their first two years, inflation has slowed, the economy grew 2.6% last quarter, and everyone on Social Security is going to get a whopping 8.7% increase in their monthly checks in the coming year. So what is really happening here? I’ll tell you what’s happening: Your leg is being seriously pulled — so hard that if you don’t stop listening to (and believing!) all this bullshit, you’re going to lose more than a leg. TURN THE TV OFF! No cable news for the next 11 days! No reading the daily newspaper! TURN OFF THE NEWS ALERTS ON YOUR PHONE! What’s the point of letting them drive you insane?” Remember, he’s the guy that has correctly predicted more big elections than the mainstream media outlets have. https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/midterm-tsunami-truth-30 So, let’s get out and rally as many other people as you possibly can to vote together with you for every Democratic candidate for every single race. If we are able to mobilize enough people in the country to vote for all Democrats up and down the ballot, then we can actually win the midterms big!

I previously overlooked another vid from him about the midterms:

The polling averages and many pundits out there have lately been saying that it's now looking like the Democrats are going to lose the House and might only be able to barely hold the Senate with a 50-50 split again. However, Michael Moore is actually predicting the opposite. He was one of the very few people in 2016 who correctly predicted that Trump would win the GOP nomination for president. Afterwards, he predicted that Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential Election. He then predicted that Trump would not last as president for more than 4 years. About a few weeks before the 2020 General Election Day happened, he predicted that Biden and Democrats would defeat Trump and the Republicans. Now, he's saying that contrary to what many pundits are currently saying and what a lot of polls have lately been showing, the Democrats are going to win both the House and Senate races big. He says that many of the polls and pundits are wrong because they are not actually seeing or realizing what's truly happening with many voters on the ground throughout the whole country. His opinion is that those polls and pundits are not truly realizing how many people there are out there who are absolutely outraged at the Republican Party. Furthermore, he saying that even though inflation, crime, and immigration issues, and Biden's approval rating still being underwater have all become serious political headwinds for the Democrats in the upcoming midterms, that the majority of voters in the US actually are more upset about the overturning of Roe vs. wade and how increasingly threatening Republicans have become to American Democracy. Here's an article that just came out today by The Guardian on his prediction on the midterms in an interview they had with him: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/23/michael-moore-democratic-party-win-midterm-interview Also, this is what he said about a few weeks ago regarding the midterms: He is a little crazy and weird, but he has been a truly dedicated political activist for most of his life, was elected to a public office at the age 18, is very intelligent and very knowledgeable, and has had a really solid track record of correctly predicting the outcome of a number of big elections that most people and most news outlets in the US had incorrectly predicted in the past.

I am very glad that Lula won, but I hope that Bolsonaro will not be able to pull off a coup of any kind.

Yeah, that’s what I’ve been trying to say here on this thread. Not only do we need liberals and progressives, we need to persuade and work together with as many moderates as possible. That includes moderate liberals, very centrists, and even moderate conservatives. As James Carville said before, Democrats and liberals gotta be practical and strategic in order to win the real political power.

I can tell you as someone who has always been well above average looking that I only had girls in middle school, high school, and somewhat in college compliments my looks and some of them were into me to the point of even asking me out and then asking me to be their boyfriend. However, the girls who asked me out and wanted me to be their boyfriend were ones I was not attracted to because to me they were barely average looking. After my college years, I stopped getting compliments on my looks from random girls and I actually never lost my virginity until I was 27 turning 28. Some of reasons include having been always socially behind due to having Asperger's, never really tried asking out the girls that I was attracted to because I was way too shy, overthinking like crazy on how to socialize with other, had very unrealistic expectations with dating and sex, played video games too much, got heavily involved in a lot of sports and fitness activities, watched too much porn, spend too much time also surfing the web for other stuff, didn't have any good dating coaches or PUA experts available to help me develop my social and seduction skills, etc.

Far left ideology is ideal, but not practical. A lot of times you won't be able to elect progressives or even moderately liberal candidates into office. That's why I believe in making actual progress by voting for conservative Democrats, very moderate Democrats, very moderate independents, center-left Democrats, center-left independents, progressive Democrats, and progressive independents depending on which candidate will be the most viable left-leaning one in any particular election. Also, Republicans need to vote for a lot more moderate Republicans. Furthermore, too much of far left politics only worsens the political polarization between the left and the right. Not only, will this mean even more political violence. It also will also mean even more political gridlock, which will lead to Congress and state legislatures all around the country becoming less productive and more unable to pass major beneficial laws for the people. That's what happened during the Gilded Age in the late 1800s. Contrast that period with the early 20th century progressive and the mid 1900s, when Congress passed floods of new historic laws and constitutional amendments that kept tremendously improving the lives of Americans throughout the entire country. However, since the late 70s to early 80s our country has become increasingly polarized, which has lead our country back to the similar kind of gridlock problems we had during the Gilded Age. If our country basically elected a lot more political leaders into office who are neither not staunch conservative establishment Republicans nor MAGA Republicans, then America would actually end up making a tremendous amount of progress on both productive bipartisan consensus and moving towards leftism. That's why I think Democrats and progressives need to work on framing progressive policies like the Green New Deal, universal health care, and banning big money and corporate lobbying from politics as something that is moderate and is also aligned with traditional American values. For example, instead of telling moderates and conservatives in America that we need to have Medicare for All, a single-payer system which sounds to them like a form of socialism, why don't we try to have them sold on a universal healthcare proposal that would be framed as a good old American way of giving every American a real solid opportunity to having healthcare? It should also be framed as a universal healthcare proposal that would grant everyone in America freedom from all private tyranny. Freedom from having to be tied down to a miserable job in order to keep the health insurance you need. Freedom from the terrible price gouging done by the health insurance cartel in the US. The proposal could be called something like Freedom Care or the National American Freedom Care Act. Furthermore, we actually need to work more on persuading more from the other side. We're never going win most of the people from the opposite side, but we should be able to win over a good amount from that side. Plus, we of course need harder on persuading many more swing voters. All of that together would make a major difference electorally for Democrats, help heal the divisions in our country, and help push America more towards the left.

Yeah, that's what I've been thinking. That's why according to more recent news, a lot more liberals and minorities have been taking up arms:

Thank God, Paul Pelosi made a successful recovery. Though, I hope he doesn't end up with any serious complications from this. Btw, this is what Michael Moore has to say about this: https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/midterm-tsunami-truth-31

Leo mentioned in "When Does The Left Go Too Far?" part 2 vid, that some things that need to be deregulated, especially when they are outdated. What are some specific or actual examples of regulations that definitely need to be removed? Moreover, what regulations are there that can be safely removed without it leading to unintended long-term negative consequences for countless people like what happened with the 2008 financial crisis after about 3 decades of limited government intervention in the US economy and the deregulation of many businesses, banks, and the stock market in America?

I thought that Leo's entire 2 part vids series on "When Does The left Too Far?" was excellent. He made a lot of valid points as to how and when it becomes a serious problem when someone takes any kind of ideology to such an extreme, whether it be right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism, or even extreme centrism. The only point he made in that series that I definitely disagree with Leo on is when he essentially said that he agrees with the idea of American citizens being allowed to defend themselves with guns in case the US government one day ever becomes truly tyrannical. Worrying about a such possible government take over of everything ever happening in the US is so ridiculous because something like Socialism, Communism, or Totalitarianism will never happen in this country. Certainly not with any of our lifetimes. Monarchy is also certainly never coming back to America. Furthermore, no other developed countries in the world allow their citizens to buy guns of any kind at all and their countries have had much less gun violence per capita than the US has ever had. Now, maybe guns would be needed to fight the right wing fascists in the US, but even Leo doesn't believe that our country will ever get taken over by fascism. So, I don't see how Leo point's on this makes sense. Moreover, if banning all assault weapons in our country won't work, then what should be done to reduce the gun violence problem in the US?

I know you said that in your vid, "When the Left goes too far: Part 1," that you are concerned with the idea of a company having a 4 day work week because you say that that could cost that company many valuable hours of productivity, which would cause that business to be less competitive than other businesses who have all of their workers do the usual 5 day work week. However, I think that a 4 day work week would really help every worker in the business get the sufficient amount of emotional and mental recovery they need to be fully refreshed and feel even more motivated to work even harder and better the following week. Furthermore, I really believe that it will help reduce or eliminate workplace burnout. It sounds counterintuitive, but couldn't that actually make a company be even more competitive by working smarter and not longer?