The Real timschochet

Fareed Zakaria spells it out with a brand new opinion piece: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/04/new-york-florida-liberal-failure/ In case you’re blocked from reading this, he looks at two states, New York and Florida, with similar populations (23 million vs 20 million) and demographics. Except that the state budget for New York is 270 billion, and for Florida it’s 120 billion. New York, run for decades by well meaning liberals, spends more than twice as much every year with much higher taxes. Yet the standard of living is higher in Florida. This, Zakaria says, is why Republicans are winning elections. I am a Democrat for a lot of core reasons: in no particular order, immigration, abortion, woke issues, trade, internationalism, fighting climate change, etc. Leftist economics has never been one of those reasons. I think Zakaria is right, and I think liberals need to wake up or we’re going to continue to lose.

You’re 100% wrong. You’re not a liar. I’m sure you believe the stuff you write. That makes it worse.

Well apparently you do. I offered my opinion and you chose to respond to it, several times now.

No.

Well IMO it is.

Yeah.

I think I’m very much a liberal for non-economic issues.

I was there in the summer only so I’ve no idea.

They’re probably trying to emulate Amsterdam. If you’ve never been, it’s more bikes than cars. But the problem is that nobody determined Amsterdam would be that way; it just evolved over time. I don’t think you can plan this sort of thing and try to force it on a population used to something else.

OK thanks: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/05/nx-s1-5248994/new-york-congestion-pricing Not sure how I feel about this. I’ve never lived in a traffic congested city so I can’t relate to the concerns. Apparently this sort of thing has helped in London and other cities. But frankly I have never loved the idea of trying to alter human behavior by punishment. I have a feeling this is going to fail.

I don’t understand what this means. Is it a toll road? What was it before?

4 years ago as I recall, President Trump claimed that most of the rioters were Antifa. Now he wants to pardon them.

I actually have been pretty critical of the MSM in recent times and I’m willing to acknowledge their flaws. But in the end I don’t see any alternative. The idea that everyone will simply seek out their own news source and believe whatever appeals to them is unacceptable to me. We’ve already seen the awful results of that- today is the 4 year anniversary. There is, IMO, no alternative for a stable society to having news reporting that almost everyone accepts. Therefore the MSM has to succeed.

He certainly had a lot to do with it.

It really has nothing to do with the post you were responding to. But as I wrote at the time, the Democratic Party is a private organization. They can choose a Presidential candidate by any means they wish. If you don’t like how the candidate was selected, you don’t have to vote for him or her.

Your post is wrong on just about every level.

Nancy Pelosi never allowed a vote to take place unless she knew the outcome beforehand. That way she was never embarrassed. But for the second time in a few weeks, Mike Johnson is about to lose a vote- this time renewing his speakership. It’s also an embarrassment for Donald Trump because he called for unity. He’s not getting it. Will they fix this? Probably. I doubt it will take 15 votes the way it did for McCarthy. But it still looks really really bad.

And what’s even more offensive is his statement that he would rather Hungary be Communist. I knew Hungarians who lived under Communism and fled here after the 1956 uprising was crushed. That was a slave state; HT wouldn’t last 5 minutes.

That among plenty of other things yeah.

You have no idea what you’re talking about. What an idiotic comment,

As for the OP question: I honestly believe that the biggest threat to this country is that roughly half the nation now distrusts the mainstream media. This is about 20% the fault of the MSM, which has made mistakes, reported false news at times (rarely) and has tended to ignore reasonable conservative concerns. But it is 80% the fault of conservatives themselves who, especially in the Trump era, have used legitimate concerns with the MSM as an excuse to believe falsehoods and accept lies whenever it suits them.

The funding began in the early 80s. Why don’t you post what you “read up on” that contradicts me?

I challenged you before to provide evidence that he’s anti-American. Still waiting on that.

I’d sure like to know what it is you “read up”. I’ve posted this before: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/fa141f34-3f1e-43b3-ac95-eff80f39cdc8/george-soros-and-the-fall-of-communism-in-europe-20191106.pdf which is why I didn’t feel the need to do so again. Basically Soros heavily funded anti-Communist movements, particularly in his home country of Hungary, beginning in the early 80s, which contributed significantly to the liberation that took place there in 1989. I was just in Budapest and unfortunately there is no monument to Soros there, probably because he is anti-nationalist, an opponent of Viktor Orban (as any decent person should be) and a Jew.

Tell you what: provide a link of one of your posts in which you offered a coherent thoughtful opinion on any subject, and then maybe I’ll take you seriously. Go ahead. I only need one.