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You prove the point you're arguing against.

ROFLMAO. I cite 1980 to the present and your counter is 1972? Fucking weak beer dude. Not to mention that the boomer stats for that year are 52% for McGovern and 48% for Nixon, which is a couple hairs short of 'overwhelmingly'.

Swing states voter turnout was around 70%, the total turnout was 60%. Trump won the presidential election.
You want to change the electoral college for direct election. That's ok, but it's a completely different game and you can't know who'd have won it. it.

And even if you equate Trump's current disapproval rates with wanting him choking on a chicken bone, a good chunk of them couldn't care less when it really did matter. BTW, the main reason for that disapproval is personality and not policy based. http://news.gallup.com/poll/21...

Only due to edicts from environmentalists, especially those that are indifferent or hostile to those responsible for mining it.

Most environmentalists aren't hostile to such people, and whether they are hostile to miners or not has nothing to do with whether the environmentalists are correct.

most of the world is behind it.

Well, most of the world is behind jumping off a cliff. The US is not.

This is wrong at multiple levels. First, the rest of the world is trying to prevent us from going over the cliff of catastrophic global warming. Second, the only part of the US that is right now vocally against dealing with global warming are certain parts of the Republican Party (but certainly not even all of it), and the Trump administration. Most Americans are concerned about global warming http://news.gallup.com/poll/206030/global-warming-concern-three-decade-high.aspx. Facts matter.

1,018 polled != 320 million U.S. citizens.

For fucks sake. Polls are completely useless and by you referencing them as "fact" makes you look like an idiot.

Only due to edicts from environmentalists, especially those that are indifferent or hostile to those responsible for mining it.

Most environmentalists aren't hostile to such people, and whether they are hostile to miners or not has nothing to do with whether the environmentalists are correct.

most of the world is behind it.

Well, most of the world is behind jumping off a cliff. The US is not.

This is wrong at multiple levels. First, the rest of the world is trying to prevent us from going over the cliff of catastrophic global warming. Second, the only part of the US that is right now vocally against dealing with global warming are certain parts of the Republican Party (but certainly not even all of it), and the Trump administration. Most Americans are concerned about global warming http://news.gallup.com/poll/206030/global-warming-concern-three-decade-high.aspx. Facts matter.

Coming off a low of 35%. (Lowest was 34% back in August.) [1]

So natch he's got to do something.

And I dunno, maybe he thinks he can hit the norks before they have a chance to build another nuke, or a missile to launch it. I just hope China doesn't decide retaliate for them.

Getting a few million Americans killed will almost certainly do wonders for his job approval. But then those people knew what they were in for when he was elected, right?

Putting the B52s on alert doesn't bother me too much, in the grander scheme of things. Let me know when he takes off in Air Force One with no set destination. Of course by then it'll be too late.

[1] http://news.gallup.com/poll/20...

Every year, at least one brush fire is started that way in California.

That is less of a problem, since smoking rates in California have gone way down. California is now under 15%, and only Utah does better. Kentucky is the worst, at 30%.

Smoking rates by state.

One reason for California's low rate is their anti-smoking ads. Many states squandered their tobacco settlement money on ads about how smoking is unhealthy, which was not effective. California focused their ads on making smoking look stupid and uncool. There was a billboard on my commute with a man asking an attractive woman "Do you mind if I smoke?" Her reply "Do you mind if I fart?"

Yeah, and remember what the net effect of the Starr/impeachment clusterfuck was? Clinton's approval numbers went up 15 points, the GOP's approval numbers went down 20 points, and republicans lost seats in both houses in the next 2 elections and won the presidential popular vote in 2000.

As I Trump supporter I fucking pray dems somehow win the house in 2018 and immediately impeach him over a fucking Russian facebook ad.

Yeah, and remember what the net effect of the Starr/impeachment clusterfuck was? Clinton's approval numbers went up 15 points, the GOP's approval numbers went down 20 points, and republicans lost seats in both houses in the next 2 elections and won the presidential popular vote in 2000.

As I Trump supporter I fucking pray dems somehow win the house in 2018 and immediately impeach him over a fucking Russian facebook ad.

Now try looking for Trans, PoC, etc Queer people - yeah. They barely exist.

That'd be because (aside from "PoC"), they do barely exist, at least in the US. It's well under a percent for trans people, and 1-2 percent queer/lesbian/gay. I haven't seen any studies on the topic, but I wouldn't be surprised to find they're actually overrepresented in the media (I can't find simple numbers with a quick Google search, but Wikipedia gives ~4% for regular broadcast TV characters, which is surprisingly close to the right fraction). And as for "PoC": they're again usually represented at around the expected demographic fraction (13% of movie characters vs. 13.6% of the population, for e.g.), except for IIRC Asians, who tend to be overrepresented, and Mexicans, who tend to be underrepresented.

Mind you, people will still complain because most people have no idea what the demographics in the US actually are (such as for e.g. this, admittedly quite dated, study), and for many special interests groups, that's a feature, not a bug. A news story of "only 3 of the 20 Oscar nominees are black!" gets clicks, "black actors slightly overrepresented at the Oscars" does not.

Investors are precisely those who IGNORE climate change! It is because of investors that we are in this mess.

I mean I know it's dropping but you're still talking about the majority of Americans http://www.gallup.com/poll/190... There's also plenty of people that know diddly squat about financial markets but still denying climate change, so what about them?

You're also ignoring the fact there are plenty of investors also investing in green energy sources. It's how those projects get off the ground. So really, it sure sounds you're throwing a blanket statement out there with no regard to its accuracy. But I bet it probably feels good being confident about blaming one group of so-called rich entitled people rather a nebulous crowd of everyone and their grandma. I think the group of people you're trying to blame is: all of humanity's, for its lack of foresight and refusal to change after the cheese moved.

If you could kick out a president for bad poll numbers Dick Cheney would've been president for a while there.

Oh really?

A much better indicator is had by random sampling, such as the Gallup poll, which tracks both employment and "underemployment". Here, underemployment is "people employed under 30 hours a week, but want to work more"

It's not unequivocally better. Unemployment is a statistics are reported to be useful in policy making. Government can make policy to assist in people who want jobs to get employed, so they get get off of welfare. Broadening the focus to also assist people who are underemployed will affect the types policies enacted. It gets a whole lot fuzzier then.

Why is 30 hours the line? I'm awake 112 hours per week, but only work 40... therefore, I'm underemployed by 72 hours. Why do I not count as "unemployed"?

To call it a "lie" implies some sort of bias. Assumptions are often built in to such statistical analysis. Why is it a lie this time?

It's a lie because the original definition communicated to voters an indication of how the economy was doing, while the current definition leans on that previous definition to give the appearance of a healthy economy when in fact it's terrible.

It's a lie because there has been enormous political pressure to skew the definition towards "statistical assumptions" in a way that suppresses voter outrage and dissent.

It's a lie because the value has morphed from a valid "quick snapshot" of the health of the economy, to a propaganda tool of the government for partisan purposes.

A much better indicator is had by random sampling, such as the Gallup poll, which tracks both employment and "underemployment". Here, underemployment is "people employed under 30 hours a week, but want to work more"(*).

(Also: Gallup good jobs index, which indirectly tells how satisfied workers are with their jobs.)

The Gallup poll notes that the results(*) can't be directly compared because federal statistics are "seasonally" adjusted. Seasonally adjusted? Why should unemployment numbers be adjusted *at all*?

(*) The article is about the UK, not US, but the principles are the same.

To call it a "lie" implies some sort of bias. Assumptions are often built in to such statistical analysis. Why is it a lie this time?

It's a lie because the original definition communicated to voters an indication of how the economy was doing, while the current definition leans on that previous definition to give the appearance of a healthy economy when in fact it's terrible.

It's a lie because there has been enormous political pressure to skew the definition towards "statistical assumptions" in a way that suppresses voter outrage and dissent.

It's a lie because the value has morphed from a valid "quick snapshot" of the health of the economy, to a propaganda tool of the government for partisan purposes.

A much better indicator is had by random sampling, such as the Gallup poll, which tracks both employment and "underemployment". Here, underemployment is "people employed under 30 hours a week, but want to work more"(*).

(Also: Gallup good jobs index, which indirectly tells how satisfied workers are with their jobs.)

The Gallup poll notes that the results(*) can't be directly compared because federal statistics are "seasonally" adjusted. Seasonally adjusted? Why should unemployment numbers be adjusted *at all*?

(*) The article is about the UK, not US, but the principles are the same.

I know this is hard for some people to grasp, but there are other reasons to work hard besides "getting rich." The happiest people I've met are those who get to do what they love every day. When you find yourself in that position, working crazy hours and getting immersed in trying to figure something out for days on end, and then actually accomplishing something real *is* a very big part of it. Rich people can't buy that feeling -- it has to be earned.

No hubris in your post at all. Yes we know Confucius once said "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." The reality is, how many people can find a paying job doing what they love? Not very many it turns out.

And you know, it turns out that you don't need to get paid to do work you love either. The problem is though if you have bills and you choose to do work that doesn't provide a source of revenue, you get to live as a homeless bum on the street after you get sued into oblivion and lose all your possessions.

Let's refine your point. There is a need for money to pay taxes, bills, buy food, etc. And there is work. There is paid work and there is not paid work. Both paid work and not paid work can yield a sense of accomplishment and we find from the data that it's the non-paid work that more often gives you that sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. Why? Because you don't have to compromise with paying fucking bills that's why. The problem is we don't live in a world that affords us that luxury unless you work real hard, you invest your money wisely and have it pay you guaranteed income and then you can do whatever the hell you want. For many of us, that "work" would be some very serious projects that would yield a great sense of fulfillment and accomplishment and maybe even help our fellow man. It's too bad we have to do a lot of useless, mundane work like creating TPS reports to pay the bills.

Want to talk about that problem? What's the solution to that one spanky?

Consider the american right wing is believing easily disproven outright lies at this point. It is annoying when they say "Evolution is JUST A THEORY" or "Blah blah blah, climate change is bad just like eggs and coffee were bad before they were good, amirite?" But they also believe violent crime is going up so we need to spend more on police and get tough on crime when in fact no, just no.

That has nothing to do with scientists being careful about their words, it's a stone cold fact that crime is at a historic low. No amount of forceful language on climate change is going to cause changes.

(And for the precious republican snowflakes upset because I'm picking on the right wing voting to waste my tax dollars on pointless law enforcement measures, yes sure fine liberals do it to. There are liberals who believe vaccines cause autism despite forceful language saying no they don't. There are conservatives who do to, and antivaxers aren't as damaging as tough on crime or climate change deniers, but we'll pretend for the moment it's a totally equal bipartisan thing.)

Because the majority of the voters want the Iraq war and the War on Drugs (I'm with you, by the way, on those items), but the majority of voters don't want "free" health care because they're smart enough to understand that health care isn't actually free.

Gallup polls: 55% support the ACA

Quinnipiac University: 17% support Obamacare repeal.

USA Today: 51% of those surveyed said they would prefer to keep and work to improve ACA. Another 7% said they wanted to keep the health care law as is.

Keep in mind that many "approval" numbers for the ACA appear low because there is a percentage of people who will not approve of the ACA when they call it "Obamacare." Second there is also a percentage that is against the ACA because it does not for them go far enough. They want single-payer.

There is absolutely no evidence beyond right-wing sound bites that indicate that government involvement in health care is unpopular.

Though the official line is that every gay person is born that way, the reality is that the percentage of people identifying as gay (or transgendered too) has been growing steadily since it became fashionable to be gay. See Kristen Stewart and any other number of celebrities who suddenly discover their gayness when their career starts to lag.

My apologies if it's politically incorrect to point that out.

Maybe you missed the other half of it. People generally are very disapproving of Congress in general, but believe their reps, whoever they are, are doing a good job. Thus most people hate Congress but keep voting the same people into office.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/162...

Disclaimer: I'm one of these terrible, no-good, lazy, overspending millennials. I have actually a pretty good job situation, but that doesn't mean I'm going to lie to myself that somehow I've done better because I'm somehow a better person. I've been very lucky, and a lot of millennials are being screwed over through no fault of their own at all.

Trump, plus a good percentage of the US population, which means the ratios must be much higher in the other countries surveyed in order to average out to 80% overall. According to Gallup, just 42% of Americans "Think global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime." Obviously that's not exactly the same thing as "catastrophic risk" with no time constraint, but it's frankly lower than I expected.

Pew has a more lengthy survey which does a detailed breakdown of views by political affiliation. Here's one aspect I found intriguing:

One thing that doesn’t strongly influence opinion on climate issues, perhaps surprisingly, is one’s level of general scientific literacy. According to the survey, the effects of having higher, medium or lower scores on a nine-item index of science knowledge tend to be modest and are only sometimes related to people’s views about climate change and climate scientists, especially in comparison with party, ideology and concern about the issue. But, the role of science knowledge in people’s beliefs about climate matters is varied and where a relationship occurs, it is complex. To the extent that science knowledge influences people’s judgments related to climate change and trust in climate scientists, it does so among Democrats, but not Republicans. For example, Democrats with high science knowledge are especially likely to believe the Earth is warming due to human activity, to see scientists as having a firm understanding of climate change, and to trust climate scientists’ information about the causes of climate change. But Republicans with higher science knowledge are no more or less likely to hold these beliefs. Thus, people’s political orientations also tend to influence how knowledge about science affects their judgments and beliefs about climate matters and their trust in climate scientists.

You, like most Americans, overestimate the size of the gay population. This is not surprising, as gays have done an extraordinary job seeing to it that they are over-represented in pop culture (as I have indicated above). The Washington Post -- hardly a bastion of evangelical redneck conservatism -- reports that "More specifically, 1.8 percent of men self-identify as gay and 0.4 percent as bisexual, and 1.5 percent of women self-identify as lesbian and 0.9 percent as bisexual." So, yeah, 1-2 percent, like I said; less than half of the 5% you indicated. No where's near the percentage as portrayed in pop culture.

All that said, having worked in media and entertainment industries for my entire adult life, I would make an educated estimation that 25-30 percent of the "creatives" working professionally are openly gay (...and the remaining 70-75 percent are terrified of saying or writing something that will piss them off). So the fact that the "gay population" of pop culture characters skews so fabulously wrong is no surprise.

The History books were written by straight white Christian men; the Future History (science fiction) is being written by multi-racial gay people. Ironic...

There you go spouting crazy again. There's no way SS and Medicare will collapse.

You need to face reality: these programs are a financially unsustainable wealth transfer from young people to old people. About half of Americans believe that Social Security won't be able to pay them any benefits when they retire.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/184...

Medicaid might, in states with too much cronyism, it would be due to sabotage, like the ACA.

ACA was broken from the start. You yourself said it "the ACA was a poor compromise". Even its architects admitted that it needed repeated passage of new legislation to work, legislation that would have never gotten passed initially. For Republicans to refuse to participate in that tinkering is not "sabotaging".

It works in the rest of the world, it will work here.

Obviously, you are resistant to facts and just love to repeat this Democratic lie. Learn something about how "the rest of the world" actually works, instead of behaving like a typical self-righteous, greedy, entitled American middle-class prick.

Canada, Germany, Norway, etc. have higher tax rates for the wealthy

Top marginal income tax rates are about 53% in the US, significantly higher than both Germany and Norway. Worse yet, top marginal income tax rates in Europe start applying to people in the middle class, often barely above the median. Furthermore, comparisons to Canada and Norway, two resource-rich countries in favorable locations and with small populations, are invalid anyway; we couldn't run the US like Canada or Norway if we wanted to. The only really valid comparison of the US is to the EU as a whole, rather than cherry-picking the wealthiest European states. Otherwise, you ought to compare the US to at least the larger countries, like France and Germany.

and their MEDIAN incomes are about the same or higher than USA

Among industrialized Western nations, the US has some of the highest pre-tax MEDIAN incomes in the world. More importantly, the income tax burden on low and average income earners is substantially lower in the US than in Europe, and Europeans pay massive and regressive VAT taxes on top of that. German/Scandianvian style social welfare states are paid for by the middle class. (Note that the Tax Foundation actually understates US taxes.)

and WITH better social safety nets.

The US has one of the highest amounts of per capita social spending in the world, higher than all of Europe and most of the Nordic countries. Even as percentage of GDP (an invalid comparison because it's absolute spending in $PPP that actually matters), US spending is very high. Countries like Germany have cut their social safety nets massively because they found that generous social safety nets result in people staying out of the workforce. And the services you get from the government in Europe are shitty: long wait times, limited choices, demeaning rules.

We don't have to theorize, their middle is doing better.

No, we don't need to theorize. Have you actually lived in Europe? And I don't mean as an American expat with full access to American opportunities whenever you want to? I have. The European middle class is highly taxed, has limited economic opportunities, and is less economically well off than the US middle class. Much of the European middle class lives below the US poverty line (that is, when you don't cherry-pick Norway and Luxembourg for your comparisons.) The situation in Europe is grim, both economically and politically. And if the US were really as repressive and miserly towards the working class and the middle class, it wouldn't be the migration destination of choice for so many people.

A lot of people look at the VHA (which is a single-payer healthcare system in the US) and say, "I don't want that."

Apparently those are people who don't use the VA, people who use it rate it higher than private hospitals (source). Medicare patients are more satisfied than private patients as well (source). People think they "don't want that" because they have been brainwashed into thinking that any government healthcare is bad. They aren't using evidence to make that judgement, it's based solely on political ideology.

Single payer is less expensive, gives higher patient satisfaction and has better patient outcomes but we can't have it because there is big money to be made in healthcare and the politicians immediately shut down any attempt to cut out the middleman. From a businessman's view healthcare is a great business -- customers rarely have any choice on buying it, prices are very murky and complex and the consumer doesn't directly pay - there is a middleman that pays the bill (and that middleman makes a bunch of money too). People who would be better off supporting a single-payer system won't do so because they have been told by their "leaders" (who take their marching orders from business) that it will inevitably lead to a communist state. Even when congress passes something that might be useful, like Medicare part D, they prohibit the government negotiating with the pharma companies because it might cut into the profits of their corporate masters. It's infuriating to me that the handouts to healthcare businesses are so transparent yet most people act like they don't notice. Making massive profits off of people's medical misfortune should be a shameful activity but in the US it is lauded and further enshrined into law.

The "problems that were not being adequately handled before those programs were created" were Democrats not having permanent mandatory control over every person in the country.

This stupid-ass meme just won't die.

57,997,000 people received Social Security benefits in February of 2017. 43,425,000 of those people were age 65 or older. 74.87% of Social Security beneficiaries are old people.[1]

Old people skew heavily Republican when voting.[2] The margin is as high as 9% for people in their early 80s. For Donald Trump's election, it was 8%.

If Social Security, by far the largest Democratic entitlement program, was supposed to gain control of those old people, it was a miserable failure. Or maybe this is just a stupid-ass meme that needs to die because it was never true.

So let me understand this. Obama and his appointees don't represent those of us who elected him TWICE.

Well, as someone who actually voted for Obama, I can say: he never represented me. Obama ran against a senile, war-mongering fool (McCain), and was saying the right things during the election about constitutionality and privacy. Obama won by process of elimination. After the election, Obama turned into what most American presidents turn into: corrupt, war mongering demagogues.

The idea that someone who gets around 20% of the votes of the American people after a contest between two candidates somehow "represents" the American people is laughable. The plurality of the voters stay home because it's not worth their time to participate in that circus.

In any case, my point was much simpler: Americans overall tend to be more conservative/moderate than progressive:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/180...

People Everywhere - That's PRECISELY the PROBLEM. I dunno exactly when it happened, but general public civility and manners has long since disappeared from the populace.

Citation needed. The best quantifiable proxy for "general public civility" I can think of would be violent crime. Anyone not drinking fox-news koolaid should know, violent crime is way down.

Making up some idiotic mythical past when everything was much better, on the other hand, seems to be at an all time high.

I'd offer two non-mutually exclusive alternative explanations. 1: You're less impressed with the big screen because your smaller screen is a lot better than it was in the past. 2: You're older and grumpier.

People have always been annoying at movie theaters. Possibly more annoying since they evidently were more likely to attack you. You just notice it more now and don't have any numbers to disprove your opinion.

Hah! WarJolt don't care about any of that.

Trumpanzees had to compromise their principals so badly in order to vote for that shitbag that they will excuse every fuckup, every venal choice and every ridiculous lie he tells in order to avoid admitting they gave up their last ounce of moral integrity to a con man. Even as his approval rating hit 35% among the general population last week it was still at least 84% among republican voters. The more he breaks his promises, the more they will double-down on supporting him.

> Problem w/ most Leftists is that they wanna legalize pot but ban cigarettes/cigars/et al.

Those with more left-wing views are more likely to smoke tobacco.

E.g. http://www.gallup.com/poll/142...

Not that, from a world perspective, Democrats are particularly left-wing. It does match my personal, anecdotal experience, though.

It's a filthy habit, but if people want to do it, and condemn themselves to an early death, fair enough.

I don't understand why people would want to take drugs.

Really getting tired of those supporting right wing causes lying out their asses.

Trust in the press in "most of the west" is not at the levels you suggest. Gallup and other independent agencies run polls regularly and have found the opposite:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/195...

http://www.journalism.org/2016...

https://www.americanpressinsti...

Only members of a single party severely distrust the media and only because they are commanded to distrust the media by their party. That doesn't mean the press is un-trustworthy or a liberal bias, just that the conservatives regularly attack the media for reporting on just about anything that disagrees with what they are saying and their followers agree with the distrust without any effort of critical thought or even benefit of the doubt. When a story that has absolutely no political slant and only presents facts can be labeled as "liberal", as has been the case more than a dozen times in the last two years, it's pretty obvious that the right are not fighting any form of political slant but reality itself.

It's a matter of a significant portion of the population putting their party before fact or country and are willing to lie to support their causes and nothing to do with their opponents conspiring against them.

I should also mention that a particular country in the news a lot as of late has regularly used it's news agencies and intelligence agencies to also spread distrust of the US media.

https://www.rt.com/usa/340124-...

Um, the point is, dare I say this, that there's very hard science and there's soft science. There's findings which are highly testable, repeatedly, and there's findings which are verging on the non-reproduceable.

No. "Soft sciences" refers to fields which arrogant scientists feel are less deserving due to subject matter, not reproducibility. Social sciences are described as soft science.

Your opinion on social science as a "real" science is up to you, but reproducibility is an issue no matter how "hard" the science is.

I used to believe global warming 100% and assume it was all correct, because I normally trust science, but then started to wonder why people were touting consensus and virtual certainty.

Because obviously scientific findings don't change society by themselves. At a bare minimum, you must publish your results or the scientific findings may as well have never been made. With even non-controversial findings, scientists need to do more, results simply don't speak for themselves, you need to write review articles placing the findings in context, issue press statements in journals, present it at a conference. And that's just to get it known within the scientific community in the absence of opposed nefarious interests.

With climate change specifically, you have powerful industries and motivated ideologues trying to cast FUD on the findings. There's an effort to convince the public that it's far from certain. This approach is having it's intended effects. Scientists and people who realize climate change is happening would be idiots to merely keep presenting dry papers when the public is convinced by scumbags in suits saying "Well, they don't REALLY know do they?"

...I dislike shitty journalism even more.

Honestly, I have zero (ZERO) faith in and respect for, journalists. That's not to say all journalists are terrible. It's that there are SO MANY bad ones claiming to be journalists, and "good" ones that allow businesses to throw away their sense of ethics to pay the mortgage. It's that the profession overall is dead-to-me until it decides to apologize and "Rebirth" itself from the ashes of clickbait.

Like, I don't even know to call "outing a gay manager of Google". It's not journalism. And I can't even think of a word that captures the level-of-offensiveness, and lack of perspective of what matters, in that kind of act. Ruin a man's (who isn't even a public figure) for AD-REVENUE?

And I'm not the only one. A gallup poll shows that ALL Americans are feeling this--even if not so consciously. A mere "32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media." Even less if you don't allow the 52% Democrat approval to scale up the average from the bottom of the barrel that the right-wing and independents think of the media.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/195...

And as a side note, when the hell did liberals stop caring about corporations? When did Starbucks become "okay"? When did 5 corporations owning over 90% of all US media become okay? (Thanks telecommunications act of 1995.) When I was raised as a "liberal", it meant dying for someone's right to say what was in their heart, and telling large corporations to go fuck themselves. I honestly have a hard time connecting the dots between my generation and the next.

Use "American do/think/believe...." less. You don't know what you're talking about.

That's strange, according to this poll I do.

The economy cycles every 8-10 years. We're 9 years into a growth phase, it's only natural another recession is coming.

Are you completely insane? We're talking about the United States here. In case you didn't know we've been going through a LONG economic BUST owing to The Great Recession. We are just now starting to see the job creation come back. I'm hoping we're about to hit a BOOM for a few years. Do you even understand Boom Bust economic cycles? There is a certain line that we have to cross before it can be considered a BOOM as opposed to a RECOVERING. By your logic, you would consider the period during World War 2 to be a BOOM following The Great Depression. The boom came later in the 50's.

The polls showing Trump's precipitous fall in popularity

Don't fool yourself. His approval rating is basically unchanged from the day after the election.
Disapproval is up, but that's mostly a conversion from undecideds. The people who voted for him are still with him, and more importantly, still with the rest of the republican party who are using the minority president as cover to enact the most hard-right agenda of the modern era.

Approval rating Nov 9-13: 42%
Latest approval rating: 40%
The margin of error is +/- 3% so those two numbers are essentially the same.

Outside of the anti-trump bubble, he's doing great.

The polls showing Trump's precipitous fall in popularity

Don't fool yourself. His approval rating is basically unchanged from the day after the election.
Disapproval is up, but that's mostly a conversion from undecideds. The people who voted for him are still with him, and more importantly, still with the rest of the republican party who are using the minority president as cover to enact the most hard-right agenda of the modern era.

Approval rating Nov 9-13: 42%
Latest approval rating: 40%
The margin of error is +/- 3% so those two numbers are essentially the same.

Outside of the anti-trump bubble, he's doing great.

why we tolerate these people? I just realized I can't afford a house because of how the mathematics of mortgages work.

Such it up you clueless millennial whiner. You understand nothing, nothing at all.
Want to pay more principal early on in your loan? Just [...]

Many people will say your problems are due to your own personal choices.

They are not.

Certainly there's a certain group of people who make bad choices and ruin their lives, or who can't seem to get ahead.

But there's another group of people, who we used to call the "middle class", who make intelligent choices but who are on the brink of poverty, or falling into poverty, or generally having a tough time getting ahead.

We see articles here about the rising cost of education, and the answer is always "some people don't need higher education". We see articles about how few jobs there are, and the answer is always "move to where the jobs are". We see articles about outsourcing, and the opinions are "you lose your job, but the population benefits overall due to lowered costs".

We are gutting the middle class in this country, have been for about 20 years, and the overall sentiment is "expect less out of life". Don't expect to own a house, don't expect to send your kids to college, don't expect to live as long, don't expect to get paid more, don't expect to be able to pay your medical bills...

...and on and on.

You're ahead of the curve by actually doing the calculations and trying to predict your finances - a lot of people up to 2009 didn't do that, and thought that they could have the same opportunities as people had in the 1980's.

There's lots of people who think everything's fine and will try to pin this back on you, but it's most likely not anything you did.

Don't listen to them.

Things are bad right now, and whether they will get better remains to be seen.

Source? Gallup has his approval looking pretty flat (it dipped down to 42% for a couple days before going up to 43%).

Well, data says...

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124...

Well, it took him a mere 8 days to hit Majority Disapproval. Even Clinton managed 18 months.

I gave numbers of women who support the current "Feminists", and my numbers are not contrived by current political pandering propaganda polls. I also gave numbers on pro-life women, who you chose to ignore. Those numbers are also not propaganda motivated polls. Continue living in your bubble, fucking idiot.

I'm sorry, your 7% number was pretty obviously made up or talking about something completely different. I mean 10% of American men consider themselves strong feminists.

You really expect me to believe you found a legitimate poll that suggested only 7% of Americans support the feminist movement?

As for abortion they don't have the exact question to match the direction of the Trump administration, but only 19% of Americans think abortion should be illegal.

I don't know where you think the goalposts are, I'm not even sure if you're on the right field.

Singapore near the top? This is the country where you get arrested for chewing gum and not flushing the toilet and the death sentence for drug possession? I also find it strange that Hong Kong is near the top.

Singapore also has the unhappiest people in the world so apparently getting rid of corruption doesn't solve everything: http://www.gallup.com/poll/159...

Considering that his inaugural approval rate is 45%, according to Gallup, then I'm willing to believe his base is close to 40% of the electorate. That approval rate, by the way, is the lowest of any modern president. I agree that he's unlikely to run in 2020. I also think he's likely to resign or face impeachment and removal before that. But then, I also didn't think he'd win the nomination, much less the election, so what do I know?

I personally remember when government data back early in the Reagan presidency went from reporting nearly 15% unemployment nationwide to well under 6% by redefining what "unemployed" meant.

Why go back to Reagan — a hateful RethugliKKKan — (with an uncited "drive-by" accusation) when a beloved Nobel Peace Prize winner did just such a big lie in 2010?

And, if we are searching for the first such lie, we ought to go to, at least, F.D. Roosevelt — another beloved Democrat — and his redefining the price of gold and silver.

they vote for their team

Looks like roughly a 30% growth in the fraction of independents since 1988.

And that means nothing. In many states, you don't get to vote in primaries except for members of the party you are registered with. As more and more people abandon the major parties, that leaves extremists to select the primary candidates. With the result that the candidates for the general election are revolting to almost everyone, but you have to hold your nose and pick one, "waste" your vote on a minor candidate or simply walk away from the whole thing.

they vote for their team

Looks like roughly a 30% growth in the fraction of independents since 1988.

They only make up about 6% of the population: http://www.gallup.com/poll/182...

The average is somewhere around 5% of humans are gay, and of course the poll only asks people so some may have denied it for various reasons. In other words, there isn't a particularly high proportion of gay people in SF.

Maybe we can argue about whether CNN are "fake news" or merely partisan hacks, but Buzzfeed is certainly beyond defense at this point. In the Trump era too many outlets are crossing the line between merely biased to outright unethical (see also: CNN collaborating with Donna Brazile and the Hillary campaign and WaPo's recent made up stories about 'fake news' outlets and russia hacking a power station), and it's destroying their already dismal credibility; to circle the wagons would only taint them all.

Two thirds of CNN's own viewers don't trust CNN (other networks are significantly better, but still not great), and overall the media's credibility is 32% (as of September. Probably well down in the 20's by now)

By all means someone needs to be out there to hold Trump (or any president) accountable, but that entity needs credibility and public trust, and the media is actively flushing what trust it has left down the toilet.

I'm hoping that people will wise up after trump and not so blatantly vote based on "feelings".

I switched from being a democrat/independent for most of my life to supporting Trump, and one lesson I learned is that both sides are absolutely convinced the other side is voting on "their feelings" and only we - the good guys - are voting on facts and rationality.

Our infrastructure is horribly vulnerable. Is Russia ready to throw the switch on any secret back doors they have managed to plant? Probably not. Are we? I hope not. Can you trust your average Chinese network router? I seriously doubt it. Embedded backdoors are the worst case as evidenced by the recent B&N tablet.

CNN fired Donna, and they were right to do so. There is no reason to believe they knew before hand.
CNN goes for ratings as opposed to focusing on actual news and such. That being said they don't seem to deliberately tilt it.

FOX and MSNBC do deliberately tilt it link

I only have to have fox on for about 5 minutes to see bias, but then I actively look. Hell I even listened to Rush for a year at one point. In a vacuum the conservatives sound good. They are fighting the good fight and all that. You defend your points by pointing to what people believe? How about pointing to actual tests of what people know? The wikipedia article on fox seems best. Yes it isn't an original source, but it does have links. link

No one is doubting that Fox is making money. I just want to see the bias ended in all networks. Remove hannity and the rest. (Fox does have some legitimate news people. They may be slightly biased, but they are fine.) Remove all the shills, including the ones at CNN. Never ever show me kellyanne conway again. She is not a credible source. Hell she was just conflating there being no proof of any actual voting machine hack with meaning that the election wasn't affecting. Of course the election was affected. People were influenced to vote against Hillary and for Trump.

Finally, if you didn't vote on feelings for Trump then what did you vote for? Hillary had plans. Most were basically to finish what was started. Trump had "make america great again" as his plan, which is no plan at all. He said he had a secret plan for ISIS. Maybe he will tell us soon.

The thing I'd really like to see is the legitimate media sticking together when Trump attacks one or the other.

Maybe we can argue about whether CNN are "fake news" or merely partisan hacks, but Buzzfeed is certainly beyond defense at this point. In the Trump era too many outlets are crossing the line between merely biased to outright unethical (see also: CNN collaborating with Donna Brazile and the Hillary campaign and WaPo's recent made up stories about 'fake news' outlets and russia hacking a power station), and it's destroying their already dismal credibility; to circle the wagons would only taint them all.

Two thirds of CNN's own viewers don't trust CNN (other networks are significantly better, but still not great), and overall the media's credibility is 32% (as of September. Probably well down in the 20's by now)

By all means someone needs to be out there to hold Trump (or any president) accountable, but that entity needs credibility and public trust, and the media is actively flushing what trust it has left down the toilet.

I'm hoping that people will wise up after trump and not so blatantly vote based on "feelings".

I switched from being a democrat/independent for most of my life to supporting Trump, and one lesson I learned is that both sides are absolutely convinced the other side is voting on "their feelings" and only we - the good guys - are voting on facts and rationality.