2016 Republican Thread

[greg775]

I'll put this in the Republican thread. My feelings as of today.

I prefer Trump to be President over Hlllary. However, I will vote for neither. I will still write in Jesse Ventura. I still don't believe Trump has a chance. Cause this is all according to form. The stories recently are all about Trump having a chance. That's setting up ALL the stories about how Hillary won the debates by an overwhelming margin and she will run away with the election. You wait. Trump should refuse to debate. Cause all the Chris Matthews' of the world and ALL the pundits will claim she just plain KILLED Trump in head to head debate competition. No media pundit would EVER admit to Trump winning a debate. So the coronation is beginning folks, right after the first debate. You wait. She will be declared the big winner just as she was over Bernie.

[Jenksismyhero]

Dear God, it is becoming more of a reality

 

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-e...n-forecast/#now

 

[StrangeSox]

Nate's messed with his model a whole bunch this year and it seems to be much more in favor of wide uncertainty than any of the other aggregators.

 

check out how 538 compares to the rest of them about half way down this page.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/up...s-forecast.html

 

For example, if you give Clinton Minnesota (only state that didn't go for Reagan; currently polling very strongly Dem), Virginia (bluer and bluer each year thanks to NoVA; polling strongly Dem; Clinton pulled out ads a month ago to focus on more contested states), and Pennsylvania (polling fairly strongly Dem; has gone Dem since 1988), Trump needs to run the table in every other remotely close state to win. That includes states that are still pretty favorable to Clinton such as Wisconsin, Colorado and New Hampshire.

 

Trump is in better shape than he was a month ago, and I don't like his better-than-Russian-roulette odds of becoming President, but he's still got a very tough hill to climb and after a really bad week of polling, Clinton already seems to be rebounding a little bit.

Edited September 21, 2016 by StrangeSox

[Chisoxfn]

I don't think you have to worry about sending any messages to children. The Millenials have proven that parents are doing such a poor job of raising kids that they don't want to work, they are lazy and all the other things people say about Millenials. No need to worry about children. They have no chance cause since American adults certainly have proven they don't know how to raise kids. Participation trophies; coddling them, screaming at teachers who give Johnny and Julie a B instead of A, on and on.

Or, you can say that kids these day are less violent and smarter then all previous generations. They have invented many things. Perfect, no, different, certainly, and that isn't a bad thing. What exactly makes kids these days so bad? Whether they received participation trophies or not, does that make them rude, hateful, etc?

 

[Chisoxfn]

Greg's probably too far on one end of the spectrum but there is certainly issues with the millennials. If I had to generalize like greg, I would say they want and expect everything for free and they're all victims.

Their are issues with every generation. And that doesn't make them different / worse. When people are young, they have different expectations than people who are older and that is just a natural way of life. Greg makes them sound like some horrible, deplorable generation. Yes, they are different and have different expectations. And you too are generalizing on the victims and wanting everything for free. Baby Boomers were once hippies and all about peace, love, and blah blah blah. People act as if millennials today will behave the same 15 years from now and that won't be the case (as you have families and evolve, your beliefs change and mold and evolve). It is who we are and it happens in all walks of life.

 

PS: Pretty sure the vast majority of all age groups tend to feel they are the victim.

[Quin]

You're definitely not wrong. To be fair, I did say "if I had to generalize like greg." Every generation of youth has its detriments and its gripes coming from their elders. I am in my 20's so when I speak on millennials I am speaking on my experience with the age group. Certainly the people on the south side of Chicagoland is a specific subset but the results have been pretty meager and I am from a nicer suburb. In fact, when a few of my classmates conspired to kill one kid's parents CNN referred to my hometown as an "affluent Chicago suburb.

 

I am going to sound arrogant but I just don't think my generation is a good at making decisions. You have all these people saying, "go for your dream job" and all of these parents raising their kids with the idea of, "you must go to college." I am being simple and curt, but a lot of teenagers and young twenty year olds have terrible dreams and there's a good chunk of population that has no business being in college.

 

I couldn't tell you how shocked I was going to a bar crawl at 22 and seeing all the kids I went to high school with. I could count on my two hands (if I needed the second one) how many actually had a good job or plan. Those who graduated don't have jobs, those who shouldn't have gone to school are working at factories to pay off their student debt and those who party were going back for their fifth years. A lot of these kids are coming from Big 10 schools.

 

I have a buddy who's been working at a construction company since he was 17 and has spent the last six years trying to put himself through college. In high school the kid would cheat off of me to skate by academic math classes. He has a great work ethic and is awesome with people, just not conventionally intelligent. At this point he's management at the company but he's been bouncing around from community college to commutable University losing thousands of dollars in credits along the way. There is no doubt in any of our minds this guy will be successful without a degree but his parents' voice in the back of his head and societal pressure have him working his ass off to get some bulls*** marketing degree. It's a waste of money. The kid could be buying a place to live but he just wants a degree he'll never use.

 

I have plenty of girl friends with degrees like communications, gender studies and political science and they're all asking me if I could find them jobs at the restaurant I had worked at in college.

 

My old man is throwback but when I was 17 he told me to pick the best value school I got into or pick a union. Luckily college went a lot better than me for high school and I am in decent spot now. The best value for me was a local school and I decided not to go away to U o I, Iowa or ISU. Since I went local, a lot of weekends I spent working and studying. All my friends at Iowa were drinking the whole time and aren't doing anything now.

 

Kids in my generation want to get a degree no matter what, drink all the time and pick majors that are more interesting than challenging. So when they're 50K in debt without a degree or useful degree to show for it I can't help but think they dug their own hole. Maybe I am an asshole for that, but my old man raised me to make myself useful and as soon as I went off that path he'd cut me off. Maybe I am just blessed with great parents, but I still don't feel bad for these people who knowingly took bad risks. Then you get Bernie Sanders coming along and all of these people who have drank their way out of college, can't find a job or don't have a clue what they want to do with their life are like "Wooh, free college!" like it's any bit feasible. I wish I didn't have tens of thousand dollars in student loans out of school but I can still understand that if everybody is given college degrees that they lose their value.

 

 

On the flip side, I have plenty of friends who seem to be workaholics working two or three part time jobs to get through school with practical degrees. My brother (Gen X, loathes millenials) got the theater degree in the family while I got the journalism one, both of us having gone to Missouri with intent of going through the J-School. Our parents, bless them, paid for both our degrees. Now I've got a sweet job lined up once I finish my master's degree, but my Gen X brother (who used to be a workaholic) is looking for acting gigs.

 

Communications and political science aren't useless degrees if they're applied correctly, but more and more fields are now asking for experience* that can really only be obtained through internships, many of which are unpaid. Taking those internships and paying for them with loans can rack up debt.

 

*The best part of the Missouri School of Journalism is the fact that it gets you the real world experience in school.

 

Yes, people in our generation seem to want to follow their dreams more and more and take a job that they want to be happy doing in life. That's what we were raised on (as you said). And for some, they go for it because they might come from a poor family and want to escape that cycle. I had a friend from high school on a full ride to Mizzou and looked like she would break out of that cycle. Then her parents made her come home because they didn't like her being far away, so now she's got a community college degree and is working two part-time jobs back home.

 

A lot of my high school friends couldn't get the scholarships to go to college and couldn't afford it and are just doing what they can to get by. Then there are ones like my best friend that went to Illinois State, partied a lot, did get some debt, but got his business degree and is now making a six figure starting salary with Google.

 

Do we have our problems? Yeah. Do we have our strengths? Also yes.

[Quin]

Also worth noting: I've seen millennials already ragging on Gen Z/Aughts/Post-Millenials/iGeneration for being spoiled with tech, which is amusing to say the least. But I'm sure that's been a common complaint from older generations ever since the technology boom started.

[StrangeSox]

Conversely I know two people with poli sci degrees who have been gainfully employed for about a decade since they graduated. You're also largely SOL if you don't have a college degree at all for many jobs these days, even relatively low skilled office jobs want a degree in something. What I do these days is only tangentially related to my original engineering degree.

 

Getting into the unions themselves isn't easy. There are only so many slots and like everything else in life, it helps if you know someone already.

[illinilaw08]

I am assuming you are at least in your 30's though? A poly sci degree is not a good investment.

 

I am from around you if your location is current and everybody knows somebody. It's a lot easier and cheaper to find someone to help you get in a union than it is to get a good degree. My buddy's brother has a felony and he still got in the electricians' union. I have uncles, cousins, neighbors, friends' dads and baseball coaches who were union. Daley's South Side is full of them.

 

Unless you go to trade school, no degree is worse. Even administrative assistants are expected to have degrees now. It's a much steeper hill to climb to get to middle class without a degree...

[Jenksismyhero]

This generation has far too many people going to school and either taking on student loan debt when they shouldn't or majoring in some useless degree. Then they want to blame the system they chose to play in when it doesn't work out. That's the crux of the issue.

 

Yes, a political science degree could be useful if you have daddy warbucks paying for law school but that's not in the picture for many. I know three people with communications degrees and none of them are doing anything with their degree. Small sample but they're all good people who are trying hard for employment so to be me, it's telling. Maybe they shouldn't have taken the road of least resistance.

 

I am too motivated to settle but still, part of me wishes I went in the union. That guaranteed livable salary and pension with regular hours sounds awesome. My cousin is 30 years old making near 100K and incredible pension. He has no college credit and spent his 20's gang banging and getting in bar fights. The unions are not glitzy by any means but if you're a 17-18 year old from Chicagoland you should at the very least consider it for a minute. The state isn't broke for no reason - there's a lot of upside with those gigs.

 

Based on my experience dealing with the various trade unions in litigation, those income figure fluctuate year to year. You can be an iron worker or pipe fitter making 100k one year and 30k the next. It all depends. And it's all based on seniority bulls***. Don't forget dues too, they're not a lot, but 2-3% of your salary isn't nothing.

[StrangeSox]

Yeah, it depends on how much you're working. You're never guaranteed steady work. One of my friends is working 60-70 hours a week right now as a pipefitter, but once this job is over in a month he might be laid off for 2-3 months until the next big project comes through. Depending on the specific trade, you might get laid off for 2-3 months a year every year due to weather so you better make tons of overtime during the "good months"

[Quin]

http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/...audis/90742378/

 

Rand Paul is trying to stop the US from a billion dollar plus weapons exchange with Saudi Arabia.

 

The media is entirely absent. WaPo is the only "reputable" source who has reported on it. Congress will b**** and moan about things that should be decided on a state level for decades but as soon as there is a proposal to sell arms to the Middle East every congress is cool with it. Shameful.

 

I can't get a quote but Paul said in some interview that the US would sell the arms to Saudi Arabia, pick out the targets and then execute. It's not like Obama's administration hasn't already been drone bombing Yemen into complete hatred of America already, but this is just egregious.

 

It was on the wire two days ago. Looks like most places just used the Reuters story. The exchange got through.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saud...s-idUSKCN11R2LU

 

CNN, Fox News and Huffington Post all had stories on it per a quick google search.

[NorthSideSox72]

Conversely I know two people with poli sci degrees who have been gainfully employed for about a decade since they graduated. You're also largely SOL if you don't have a college degree at all for many jobs these days, even relatively low skilled office jobs want a degree in something. What I do these days is only tangentially related to my original engineering degree.

 

Getting into the unions themselves isn't easy. There are only so many slots and like everything else in life, it helps if you know someone already.

I'd like to point out that my degree is Poli Sci. Ended up working in Financial Technology, been in this field for 18 years now and it's been going quite well.

 

Having a degree is key, major is usually a secondary factor. Fact is, there are very few undergraduate degrees that are themselves trade degrees. Engineering is one of the few exceptions. Mostly, what bachelors degrees have become is the new High School - a show of completion, of basic life skills, of work ethic and the ability to learn and adapt. Not so much highly specialized knowledge for a specific job (again, other than Engineering and a few other exceptions).

 

[Jenksismyhero]

http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/22/media/disn...linkId=29118376

 

Silly white kid. You can't pretend to be another race! That's racist!

 

Oh, and silly brown kid, you can't be a brown character. You have to be a white character!

 

This whiny, complaining society has gone so far anti-PC that we're now on the other end of the extreme.

[Quin]

You seem to be the media's watcher around here but this is what Google got me before and after my post.

 

 

Ah. Yeah, I was looking up the arms deal over Rand Paul. Then Google News churns out more results.

[NorthSideSox72]

http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/22/media/disn...linkId=29118376

 

Silly white kid. You can't pretend to be another race! That's racist!

 

Oh, and silly brown kid, you can't be a brown character. You have to be a white character!

 

This whiny, complaining society has gone so far anti-PC that we're now on the other end of the extreme.

 

I read this story yesterday and had a similar reaction. Seems like significant oversensitivity to me in this case.

 

That said, I also think the "WE ARE TOO PC" thing also gets overblown. When Trump says patently racist things, as he is wont to do, he's isn't breaking through the PC barrier. He's just being an asshole, and I'm glad he gets called on it.

 

[pettie4sox]

I'd like to point out that my degree is Poli Sci. Ended up working in Financial Technology, been in this field for 18 years now and it's been going quite well.

 

Having a degree is key, major is usually a secondary factor. Fact is, there are very few undergraduate degrees that are themselves trade degrees. Engineering is one of the few exceptions. Mostly, what bachelors degrees have become is the new High School - a show of completion, of basic life skills, of work ethic and the ability to learn and adapt. Not so much highly specialized knowledge for a specific job (again, other than Engineering and a few other exceptions).

 

Most of your sciences are trade skills.

[caulfield12]

http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-jeb-b...ng-502144?rx=us

 

Trump either lied to the Republican Party or deliberately perjured himself in debate confrontation with Bush.

 

[NorthSideSox72]

Most of your sciences are trade skills.

Really? What do undergrad degrees in Physics, Chemistry or Biology get you? Pretty sure most ways to use those degrees end up needing graduate degrees too, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

[StrangeSox]

All sorts of lab tech type jobs, working at refineries or gas plants, power plants etc.

[juddling]

Hmmm....so why do I keep hearing that this kind of stuff never happens so having an ID to vote is stupid....

 

The dead rise (to vote) in colorado.....

 

 

[illinilaw08]

Hmmm....so why do I keep hearing that this kind of stuff never happens so having an ID to vote is stupid....

 

The dead rise (to vote) in colorado.....

 

Colorado largely does mail-in ballots though (which the article acknowledges and was the basis of the majority of the examples). So a valid voter ID wouldn't stop someone that passed away from wrongly receiving a ballot in the mail and then mailing a filled in ballot back in. Voter ID laws would not have stopped this type of fraud, because even with that ID requirement, the person doesn't need to go to a polling place to cast a ballot...

[StrangeSox]

Hmmm....so why do I keep hearing that this kind of stuff never happens so having an ID to vote is stupid....

 

The dead rise (to vote) in colorado.....

 

Broerman said after their deaths, the Sosas remained on active voter rolls and mail ballots were still sent to their home because they did not meet the criteria to have their names deleted from eligible voter rolls.

 

 

[southsider2k5]

What a surprise. You make it easier for fraud to happen, and more fraud happens.

[StrangeSox]

A few states are entirely vote-by-mail and I think Colorado is shifting that way as well, and they don't seem to have any more fraud than any other state (which, nationally, is a negligible amount). You'd have to weigh the ratio of potential for increased fraud against the potential for increased legitimate voting/decreased disenfranchisement, and from what we've seen over the decades that ratio is very strongly in favor of liberalizing voting access.

Edited September 26, 2016 by StrangeSox