Teamsters WTF?

So what do teamsters and lesbians have in common

They don't do dick.

Maybe some lingering memories of his steel tariffs. 

I'm not sure why the unions keep endorsing democrats . Look at what Biden did to the railroad workers when they tried to strike.

Well the teamsters didn't endorse either candidate, but yeah, I get what your saying about unions in general. They're slowly driving themselves into extinction as they continue to support Democrats who have ditched them for the globalist cause, and speed up the exportation of our manufacturing base. Well at least the private unions. The public unions are really flourishing as the government keeps on-a-growing.

my dad's close friend is a retired "Teamster", he's the furthest left leaning son of a bitch i've ever met in my life

Probably because the IRA tax credit is doing more for Domestic Content and Union Labor and apprenticeship than any program I have seen in recent memory.  Not sure if they credit that to Biden or not.  

I just hope people realize that there is no clear choice, in that, this person over here is amazing!!! Your only choices are varying degrees of shit. A little more shitty, a little less shitty. That's it. But to pretend that any of it is actually above the bar of mediocre and into the category of good, is a drunk take on things.. 

Well just look at some of the posters in here. 🤐

They've all had policies that were bad for industries, the only thing that actually changes is us and whether or not we do backflips to dismiss it, because that's what we're actually about, whatever makes us happy.

why would teamsters be upset about a tariif that's purpose is to make American steel viable?

no unions in the steel industry anymore?

Tell me you’re endorsing Trump without telling me you’re endorsing Trump. 

Short version in this paragraph, it's hard to support Trump era Republicans on pushing back on Putin. Getting weapons from them has been like pulling teeth. I support conservative measures, which is pre-Trump Republican policies, which Dems are doing way better here, for now, we'll see what happens if/when China comes into play. If they turned their back on Taiwan, I'd probably throw a rock or five through the local rep's office window. 

And then if for some reason you wanted a billion more words that I'm never going to type again because it took effing forever.....

My concern is that when I see words like flip-flopping specifically pointed at any one person, without the awareness that you and I could both totally decimate both candidates with endless examples of flip-flopping, then it means there is no potential for an honest conversation, because flip-flopping from a candidate that people like will be dismissed as something else, and flip-flopping from a candidate that they dislike, is definitely flip-flopping. That stuff is super important, because honesty is the foundation of any conversation, that people are discussing in good faith, and the complete inability to find common ground today is because the reasons people give for things, aren't the reasons. So, flip-flopping is out of the conversation because, if either of us were to take a side on that topic, we'd both be liars and those pointless self-serving conversation are done to death.

But, in general and with pre-Trump times in mind, I'd say that Dems are more closely aligned with social liberalism, which is just social forms of freedom. Conservatism by definition is to slow something down in order to preserve it, and that hinders social freedom, which is to say that it's anti-freedom. And of course that comes with a big asterisk, because try telling a hetero Christian male that Dems are there to protect their ways of life and they'll laugh at you, so it's really more for people that have been historically restricted and not for mainstream whites, but that's a whole can of worms for another time. And I know, but what about this and this and this, but until we get to a specific issue, I'm generalizing and trying to avoid the exception fallacy. 

With economics, historically the two parties have operated on two separate core principles with the same objective. Republicans felt that if you took care of business, business would thrive and thus people would thrive and thus the country would thrive. Democrats felt that if you took care of people, the people would thrive and thus business would thrive and thus the country would thrive. I think both of those styles probably worked fine during certain periods some number of decades ago and then something started going wrong. We know that billionaires aren't trickling down, but we also know that less billionaires means less business which means less workers, so be careful putting the squeeze on 'em. We know that whatever we're doing, we're pushing corporations to consolidate and that's bad for everyone except these small community bubbles where megafactories are located. And we know that we're pushing them to cheat, as in, step outside of our natural economic cycles to look for cheaper options for materials and labor and we all lose when that happens. This is why I favor policy that points towards economic isolation, keep everything in house. We're not Cuba, we're big enough and we have enough going on here that we shouldn't need to step outside of the country for almost everything. And my position here is essentially anti-freedom, because capitalism means you can step outside the US cycle and cheat if you want to, so I'm more aligning with conservatism, at least in principle. 

And even your abortion question is super tough. I definitely respect the opinion of anyone that believes thou shall not kill and they're consistent about it, but not so much when it turns into, " oh no but it's okay there, and there, and there, but no not there", because that means they don't believe in thou shall not kill. Principles are what they are and whether or not they make us happy is irrelevant. When someone is consistent about not killing, I couldn't even attempt to argue against it, nor would I really want to, because I don't even want to change someone's mind when they're operating on a principle, it'd feel like theft. Came across a truck with a sticker on it that said, "don't like guns? don't buy one", but how does it work when your state has outlawed guns? The ability to make the choice has been taken away under the guise of being given a choice. That's all super dishonest and I dislike it. And I generally align with the ability to feel pain as the metric, which is maybe 24 weeks give or take, which means third trimester is definitely out. Also, I don't think of abortion as anything to be celebrated. Defects aside, it's generally a failure. Someone did something wrong. It's a somber procedure. The only thing is that I think it should be legal under 24wks because in many cases it's maybe the least shitty option in a pool of shitty options. That's the most positive picture I can paint. 

Nope steel mills loved him. Same with iron workers and pipe fitters. It's always funny how the bosses in their cushy union chairs support always goes left but more often then not of the workes go right.

I always thought Unions are run by a bunch of criminals so this makes sense

When i joined the carpenters union in the 70’s they offered two options. 

 Pay $35 and enter into a 4 year apprenticeship program and start at $6.03 per hour and attend classes at the local community college. You would receive advancements every 6 months and a modest wage increase. 

The other option was you hand over $250 to the local union leader and he signs the paperwork that makes you a journeyman carpenter and a wage of $10+ per hour. 

Needless to say the hundreds  of carpenters building condominiums in the desert were being constructed by journeyman carpenters with very limited building skills. 

Are the teamsters controlled by the mob?

Unions.....right up there with car dealers....

Damn, never thought I see the day where so many non-moto folks would be anti Police Unions.

Maybe there is hope after all.

I have not seen any meaningful legislation from any administration that forces me to use union labor and domestic content until now.  Nothing during Presidents Trump, Obama, Clinton, or either Bush. The IRA is making Prevailing Wage and apprenticeship mandatory on all projects looking for the tax credit.  It is a huge deal for the unions.  But most of the rank and file don’t know or understand. 

Flip flopping isn't valid by party, imo. Just read what every Republican had to say about Trump before they dropped to their knees. Someone was mentioning Dems calling Trump Hitler and even Vance referred to him as Hitler, so flip flopping is out because there is no one that hasn't flip flopped a thousand times.

Oil is tough. Dems are trying to dial back their lefty'isms into moderateland as a means of bringing in votes to win, but how long is their maybe-we-went-too-far lesson going to last? I definitely understand a lack of trust, though I do think they will be more oil friendly over the next term if they win. Nobody will be as oil friendly a Republicans though. 

I'm super down with bringing back manufacturing to the US. That affects me directly. It's still not easy to pick, look at Ford's huge new factory. It's ridiculous. Still, Dems don't have a strong history here, so how long will that position last? I think as far as the next cycle is concerned, we'll be okay on manufacturing either way. It's the election after that I'd be more worried about whether or not we could trust Dems to continue to invest in manufacturing. 

Honestly I'm okay with just about any legitimate take on abortion. Yours sounds fine to me, up to 24 weeks sounds fine, and even thou shall not kill sounds fine, just make sure it's consistent and get rid of the death penalty to prove it. Me, personally, I can work with people that are ideologically driven. The people you can't concede an issue to are people that are full of shit, hence the world to today.

I can't stress enough how we're in no position to give any part of another country to anyone. This kind of things has happened before, lookup the Munich Betrayal. That event is the lesson for the world to not repeat history. If we do that for Trump, it's like political blasphemy. 

I think Kamala will be better with Ukraine and I think that's something Democrats can actually get movement on, because Republicans know they're taking the wrong side with being somewhat silently pro-Putin and that's why they've eventually come around, albeit begrudgingly. There will be no progress on abortion and for the most part I'm fine with the lie of state's rights somehow being painted as a "choice", because if I'm fair, I have to allow room for imperfect legislation from either party, otherwise there'd literally be nothing to support. As much as I don't think Trump is a good person, I do think we would be fine with him as long as it was roughly a duplicate of his first term and not the stolen-election-revenge-tour version he's hinted at.

Good chat, TM. I really like it when I see these well thought out comments from you. 

Har!

Does not being in favor of sending 800b dollars over the next 10 years to Ukraine really make someone pro-putin?

Not by itself, no. Where did you come to form that opinion and is it consistent with anything else? Basically, what is the core principle that you're operating under to make that choice? Against all military spending? Against all spending? If China were invading India and killing their people it would be okay to standby? It's problematic from a Christian standpoint as well, witnessing crimes and having the ability to help those being attacked, but choosing not to. Are you ambivalent to street crime, you see a weaker person being attacked and prefer to let them figure it out? You'd just want to figure out what principle you're working under and then test it out. I'm half old-school left and half old-school right, so bullies attacking other countries doesn't stand with me either way. It wouldn't with China or even our Canadian pals up north. There's no gray area. 

It's interesting you can even pretend this was a completely unprovoked attack on ukraine. You can save your response ,I'm not getting into this with someone like you.

The unprovoked angle definitely has some validity to it, but the problem is that joining the EU and NATO is perfectly legal and what Putin is doing is not, not to mention that murder as a political tool is just slightly immoral. It's like punching someone for saying something rude. Sure, technically people shouldn't be rude, but it's perfectly legal and assault isn't. Very straightforward. 

That's funny, because I've kind of been the opposite. You're thinking we should have gone in harder in the beginning and should kind of fold now that we're here. I think now that we're here, we should be all in and history (Munich Betrayal) is why no land should be given. I was of the opinion early on that Ukraine should have folded on their EU/NATO aspirations on as a means of preventing the invasion and give themselves more time to either figure out a strategy, or rethink the application altogether, I got beat up on that a little bit because it was taken as giving in to murderous dictator bullies, but like you say, it didn't seem as black and white to me at the time. Today, I agree more with your take that Biden should have been like NOPE from the very beginning, except I think that's still a fine position now. 

In the current DC Swamp Mentality...

There's NO MONEY in "NO WAR". That's how their foreign policy has worked for DECADES. Hell, it's apparently the "How and Why" behind the Kennedy assassination. 

And the most recent proof, The Ukrainian War, is an obvious indication of such matters: Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin...etc., etc., etc. ...

Then there's the obvious demeanor of our current administration that waits until things "look really bad, AGAIN" before approving the next tier of BILLIONS on weapons and other "War Aid".

Alllllll the while...

IF...Ukraine had F16s early on...

IF..Ukraine had been allowed to go "over the border" and fuck shit up in Russia EARLY ON...

IF...Belarus had been kicked in the fucking balls from the onset.

IF..we'd had REAL Russian Energy Embargoes from the onset...

IF.  

Yup..."IF". 

From what I understand, the Budapest Memorandum was never meant to provide NATO level of direct military support and Ukraine was aware of that, and what we're seeing with sending weapons, intel, etc., is the lower level of support that was promised. I'm also not sure how bringing up the memorandum(i.e. law) which Russia broke with their first and second invasion, would be satisfied by allowing them to take the land. The left's version would be Dems signing laws saying that it's a crime to steal, and oh by the way we're not going to stop you from clearing out every CVS in SF. Actually, not even that we're not going to stop you, but we're actively going to help you steal.