The Politics Thread

[marceline]

Impeachment would be a waste of time and would bring the Senate to screeching halt. It's more important to kept getting these other Biden judges confirmed. There's no way to "fix" SCOTUS. There just isn't. It took decades of corruption and manipulation to get to this point. The focus should be on November. That's it. Impeachment would be a self-inflicted wound.

Edited May 19, 2024 by marceline

[Khan]

I agree.  Our best hope is to keep electing Democrats to the WH who will be there to appoint new justices as the older ones die off.

[janea4old]

May 19, 2024:  Biden gives the commencement speech at Morehouse College.(men's historically Black college/university)
He talks about racism, about a two-state solution for Palestine, and about hope.  Worth watching the whole speech.
Transcript here:
https://www.c-span.org/video/transcript/?id=60321

(at one point he says "I've been vice president to the first Black president and become my close friend and president to the first woman vice president.  Wh- - I have no doubt that a Morehouse man will be president one day, just after an AKA from Howard. (referring to Kamala Harris being part of the AKA sorority at Howard University).
 

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Edited May 19, 2024 by janea4old

[DRW50]

The Trump campaign openly saying he will lead a "reich." Yet so many in the media and the public will still tell us both men are the same, or Trump is better than Biden.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-election-2024-rhetoric-germany-antisemitism-31002afb91b642c0314223d19e51f427

[DramatistDreamer]

ICYMI, Fani Willis handily won her primary election according to the numbers that the returns suggest.

 

[DramatistDreamer]

Wow, 8% interest rates for graduate student loans?!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/student-loan-interest-rates-to-soar-above-65-the-highest-level-in-more-than-15-years/ar-BB1mzSOs

[Khan]

Mine's 9%.  (God bless Navient, lol).

[DramatistDreamer]

Absolute criminality which shouldn’t be allowed at the academic level.

[janea4old]

Concerns grow that Darfur is facing another genocide
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/may/24/sudan-darfur-el-fasher-abu-shouk-displaced-people-camp-rsf

[DramatistDreamer]

He should be thrown in jail just for this.

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https://www.westhawaiitoday.com/2024/05/26/nation-world-news/new-jersey-man-gets-12-years-for-violent-acts-during-jan-6-riot/

Tragically, I think we’re already at this point.

[Khan]

I agree.  At one point, the interest rates on my graduate loans were TWICE that of a mortgage on a new house.  That should not be a reality in any country, let alone this one.

I'm not someone who believes all student debt should be wiped out.  If you take out a loan, I believe, you have to do your best to repay it.  But I do think something needs to be done about lowering interest rates so that college graduates and others aren't stuck paying off loans into their so-called "twilight years."

[DramatistDreamer]

Yes, in principle, one should take out a loan in good faith that repayments will be made but the student loan system hasn’t been working in good faith for the last 30 years. I can remember being told by financial aid and registrars offices that student loan debt was “good debt”. Oh really…how sway?

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 The terms of “good debt” shouldn’t function in a way that is as or more ruthless than loan sharks do. When I read this article, I thought back to how hard it was for low-income students to graduate on time. Not for academic reasons but financial. I was able to graduate on time for undergrad but for graduate school, I had to take time off for financial reasons only to discover that the  it elite university I attended lost (yes, I said LOST) my scholarship! That made me graduate late into a less than ideal economy. 
I also thought about the fact that in undergrad, the school actually allowed credit card companies to come on campus and set up tables trying to sign up students for credit cards.  So you take a situation where you have students, most of whom have had little to no financial education, some of whom are low-income, some who are the first in their families to go to college and luring them in with freebies. Most of us were not profligate spenders but if you have vulnerable students who have work study jobs that only pay the bottom of the wage scale needing books  you’re setting most up for financial pressures. Honestly, I don’t really care if these folks see a dime. Any time I get mail seeking alumni contributions, guess where I put that letter?

If anyone is really interested in actually fixing the problem, they may want to pay more attention to the obscenely high tuition fees and how much of that goes to university presidents and professors who are hardly on campus and leave their adjuncts to do all the work. I once had a professor, the head of my department (in a rotating chair of the department position) give me the number to contact him at his summer home if I needed to contact him (a second home, as it turned out, the school was helping to pay mortgage on). 

 

[Vee]

 

[Soapsuds]

Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty Guilty

[reallyhateskateonlost]

WOO-HOO!!!!

I was worried about this.

He got away with so much.