philip_cardella

philip_cardella, 18 days ago

@StillIRise1963 single issue voters, no matter the issue, drive me nuts.

I still remember where I was standing when someone I deeply respected told me he was voting for Bush in 2000 because he, my respected mentor, was "a single issue voter." I had never heard the term before.

I'm not in contact with him anymore but doubt he's a Trump voter. Still, the entire notion shocked me. I had just received a minor in Political Science so I wasn't completely new to the political world.

philip_cardella, 18 days ago

@StillIRise1963 on the other hand, I suppose my single issue is "fascism can go straight back to hell and take racism and sexism with it."

philip_cardella, 19 days ago

@TonyStark it's just so vile.

It's absolutely the guns.

But the right wing fear machine isn't helping at all. Crime is at near historic lows and people are acting like it's Cabot Cove 1984-1996.*

*The joke, for any who don't get it, is the town murder she wrote was set in, if it were real and had that many murders, would have been the murder capital of the world right about the peak of violent crime in actual US history.

philip_cardella, 19 days ago

@TonyStark it's exhausting. It's also an effective tool and gets people to set aside reason and to give into their emotions.

philip_cardella, 19 days ago

@ClintBarton @TonyStark $500,000 should have gone straight to the kid.

If we're gonna have guns can we at least require insuring them? You recklessly endanger someone (if not attempted murder) you get an insurance company to pay for it and then get on you for costing them money.

But also prison.

I hate guns.

philip_cardella, 18 days ago

@BetsyBeeee @FrockCoat @TonyStark Who is this frockcoat account? Is everyone else seeing the account is tiny? Or did the account block me and I'm seeing wrong info? Or are they already gone?

philip_cardella, 19 days ago

@RickiTarr they're both obsessed with lions and absolutely clueless about the species.

Newt Gingrich once took a reporter doing an interview on him to the zoo to show the reporter how dominant male lions were and told the reporter he, Newt, was a male lion.

A week after the reporter's story came out a female lion, I think in Indianapolis, killed the male lion in her enclosure.

Because female lions don't take any shit from male lions.

But Newt didn't understand that.

philip_cardella, 21 days ago

@Skepticat I believe this is for people trying to learn by trial and error the properties of various mushrooms.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

You might think, "how can they think the economy would be better under Trump?"

But they're thinking, "Nothing is working. The Democrats are all talk. I'm desperate. How can it be worse?"

You may think you know how it can be worse. I may think so. But we're not them.

Democrats MUST start offering real solutions to the housing crisis. Miami is the worst city in America but folks, it's getting bad everywhere and IT DOESN'T NEED TO BE THIS WAY.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

@TonyStark I'm saying they probably aren't thinking that way. They're thinking "how can he be worse, what have we got to lose?" Among other things.

I'm aware that this is precisely the language Trump has used to court them.

In Miami, where a person making $50,000 can't afford a studio apartment, many people really are desperate enough to seek a change.

And we can't assume they're even thinking much about national politics anyway.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

@TonyStark I mean, I didn't write the quote saying the reason why Trump is doing well is frustration with the economy and housing affordability. I'm just trying to understand it and share my thinking from the ground where I'm literally in a campaign to try to address the issue in a small way and I just sent an email to an ally to see if we can offer our paid organizer, who makes $50k and has needed to move 3 times this year, a stable apartment.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

@TonyStark the mayor of every major city in Florida is run by a Democrat. You can say Miami isn't but Miami is very weird. The Miami mayor is a sorta big fish in a pond run by a whale called the Miami Dade County Mayor. The MDC mayor has 2.7m constituents. The Miami mayor shares 400k of them

So in SoFla the Dems ARE the local authorities. And they're absolutely being blocked by Republicans. There's no question it's the GOP's fault. But not everyone in SoFla knows this. Dems need to address this

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

@TonyStark and MOST of the anti Democratic propaganda is on Spanish speaking media. The dems are starting to try to address this but the GOP took over Spanish speaking media during the Brooks Brothers Riot in 2000. They have a 22 year head start. (Some radio stations switched hands in 2022).

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

@TonyStark a big thing my initial post was missing, I've edited it, is this was SoFla voters specifically. That's important. I do think it's an issue nationally though that we can't sleep on.

People are hurting. Bad. And the benefits of good governance is hard for many of them to feel, especially in Florida, Texas etc.

Whatever they're thinking, polling suggests people are considering Trump that otherwise wouldn't for one reason or another.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

@TonyStark but in fairness to myself. I'm not thinking terribly clearly and using social media to escape personal crisis.* Apologies for miscommunication on my part.

*My dad is on life support in California and I can't get there until Friday.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

@axeshun @TonyStark just getting to watch this. I did actually read the ProPublica article he focuses on. I've tried sharing that with the committee I'm on with trying to tackle high rent and people didn't feel like reading it.

Facepalm.

A video may be easier to get them to watch! This is helpful. Thanks.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

@axeshun @TonyStark Interestingly, I was recently looking at the top wage earners at the non-profit I'm a board member of and their income relative to rent costs. The last time our top wage earner was NOT cost burdened (housing would cost them more than 30% of income) was...2016. Just before Trump allowed the merger he's talking about.

And about that nonprofit. There are two FT employees and we're working on getting them affordable housing and one PT.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

@axeshun @TonyStark in 2016 that person made plenty to afford an apartment, even 2br, in Miami.

Now? The lowest wage earner is making 25% MORE than that person in 2016 was and would have to spend close to 50% of income just on rent.

We're a non-profit with a tiny budget. The rent crisis is killing us.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

Why?

First and most importantly, because it's accurate.

But nearly as important is the recognition that a huge part of the Spanish speaking community is more interested in Spanish speaking dictators than ones who speak Russian, Hungarian or even German.

And the GOP knows this! The GOP has successfully convinced a lot of people that the Democrats are the ones like Castro and Chavez. Many people here lived nightmares under these men and the GOP constantly tells them the Democrats are them.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

@tkinias while I hear you on the variations of authoritarianism, at the end of the day both right ring and left wing authoritarians are bad.

A friend of mine escaped the Chavez regime and got here and was told that the Democrats were communists just like Chavez and to be feared and hated.

But as she and her mom listened to Trump they said, "wait a minute, he sounds exactly like what we escaped!"

They've tried to warn fellow Venezuelan expats to no effect.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

*as a scholar on here pointed out Left Wing authoritarians and Right Wing ones are demonstrably different. A Communist dictator is not the same as a fascist one.

Trump is absolutely a fascist/neofascist type of would be dictator. There is a difference between what his dictatorship will look like and what Castro and Chavez's looked like.

That said, there are a number of similarities as well that can be summed up as they're both awful.

What's more, the Democrats are NOT a far left party.

philip_cardella, 22 days ago

I'd argue the Democrats as a whole are actually a right of center party, not a liberal or progressive one.

The new Landslide podcast on NPR lays out how this came to be and nevermind the publisher, it's a great listen. Highly recommended.

But no matter how progressive Bernie claims to be and AOC claims to be and no matter that they're definitely to the left, no elected Federal official I'm aware of is far left in the United States.

And Bernie, if he was, isn't even a Democrat anyway.

philip_cardella, 24 days ago

The thing that ultimately most oftenkills people from covid is a condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome or ARDS.

I knew what it was because my dad survived ARDS two previous times. I don't know what the survival rate is now but in 2011 and 2016 is was 40% meaning my dad overcame a 16% chance of surviving it twice.

He is in danger of going into ARDS again today.

Thoughts, good spells and/or prayers to benevolent deities appreciated.