Most Voters Think America’s Divisions Cannot Be Overcome, Poll Says.

[Lisa558]

I don’t care how much you paid in taxes, there’s $37 trillion in debt.

You aren’t going to let anyone cut your government benefits. You aren’t going to let anyone increase your taxes.

We’ve had 40 plus years dominated by Reaganomics and it’s left a steaming pile of shit for the younger generation while you retire with benefits we won’t be able to receive.

You paid LESS taxes and will receive MORE benefits. I will pay MORE taxes and receive LESS benefits.

And I said it was only $12T when Obama took over. You were alive back then. So you’re as responsible as I am.

And news flash: all this HATE and CONTEMPT you feel for other people isn’t healthy. Get therapy.

 

[Zincwarrior]

Nope. But we're loading magazines and filling pouches.

In your BOOMER nursing home? Sure you are.

 

[Lisa558]

You own it moon bat. $28T since the muslim *** worked for American enemies to destro the nation.

That’s what I’ve been telling him. The skyrocketing started under Obama and the Dems.

 

[Failzero]

In your BOOMER nursing home? Sure you are.

Right now I’m building 4 AR pattern weapons including another Pistol Caliber Carbine ( PCC ) in 9mm, We Boomers have 75% of the legal Firearms in Private Hands in America .

 

[Zincwarrior]

Right now I’m building 4 AR pattern weapons including another Pistol Caliber Carbine ( PCC ) in 9mm, We Boomers have 75% of the legal Firearms in Private Hands in America .

Ok wheelchair boy. Don't forget your dentures!

 

[leftwinger]

And I said it was only $12T when Obama took over. You were alive back then. So you’re as responsible as I am.

And news flash: all this HATE and CONTEMPT you feel for other people isn’t healthy. Get therapy.

Actually ~$9.5T. They played tricks with stimulus & bailout.

 

[Frankeneinstein]

A new Times/Siena survey shows a significant shift among voters, as their concerns about the health of the political system overtake other issues.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/us/politics/times-siena-poll-political-polarization.html
mericans have markedly less faith in the ability of the country’s political system to solve problems than they had five years ago, with a large majority now believing that the country is incapable of overcoming its deep divisions, according to a poll by The New York Times and Siena University.

Even in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, when the country was fighting over mask mandates and forced to reckon with questions about racial inequality, a majority of voters still agreed that the country was capable of solving its political problems.

Today, just 33 percent of voters feel the same.

The steep rise in pessimism reflects a striking shift in the public’s perceptions about what ails the country. After the economy, the poll found that Americans were most likely to point to problems in the political culture as the most urgent. They named polarization and the state of democracy more often than immigration, inflation or crime.

Attacks on our Constitution continue. The illegal deportation of Men and Women who engage in Pro-Palestinian protests have been blocked. Free Speech under attack. Trump wants to put U.S. Troops on the ground of U.S. Cities. This is what Authoritarianism looks like.

meh, kid stuff compared to the 60's. if this scares you then you would not have survived those times...besides, trump is making all this stuff up.

 

[Marener]

And I said it was only $12T when Obama took over. You were alive back then. So you’re as responsible as I am.

And news flash: all this HATE and CONTEMPT you feel for other people isn’t healthy. Get therapy.

Ah, the Obama administration and the subprime crisis.

Remind me again how great capitalism is when keeps getting bailed out by government?

But hey, at least the billionaires are enjoying it and you still get your government cheese.

 

[Failzero]

Ok wheelchair boy. Don't forget your dentures!

I have all 32 real teeth , how bout you ?

 

[SweetTea]

Ah, the Obama administration and the subprime crisis.

Remind me again how great capitalism is when keeps getting bailed out by government?

But hey, at least the billionaires are enjoying it and you still get your government cheese.

Equating social security with programs like SNAP, housing assistance, etc. by lumping them all into the “government cheese” bucket is ignorant and disingenuous. If my wife and I invested the money we have paid into SS instead of giving it to the government, we would each have to live to well over 100 to even come close to breaking even. Remind us how people getting SNAP and other federal assistance programs have paid more into the system than we have. Do they pay even the same percentage in federal income taxes? Do they pay any at all after receiving things like child tax credits which are fully refundable. We don’t get any of these benefits and yet we pay more for them they those receiving them do. Now THAT is “government cheese.” And to top it all off, Democrats are ok with allowing anybody from any other country to come across our border and get a slice, despite paying NOTHING into our system. The foundation of your argument is deeply misguided.

This is the kind of stuff they must be teaching in Democratic Ideology 101 as JoeB131 does the same thing, except he goes even further and calls it white people welfare. You know, because there are more white people in the country getting SS than black people. Of course that stands to reason as there are 5-6 times more white people than black people, but evidently that doesn’t matter. Faulty logic at its finest.

 

[Lisa558]

Equating social security with programs like SNAP, housing assistance, etc. by lumping them all into the “government cheese” bucket is ignorant and disingenuous. If my wife and I invested the money we have paid into SS instead of giving it to the government, we would each have to live to well over 100 to even come close to breaking even. Remind us how people getting SNAP and other federal assistance programs have paid more into the system than we have. Do they pay even the same percentage in federal income taxes? Do they pay any at all after receiving things like child tax credits which are fully refundable. We don’t get any of these benefits and yet we pay more for them they those receiving them do. Now THAT is “government cheese.” And to top it all off, Democrats are ok with allowing anybody from any other country to come across our border and get a slice, despite paying NOTHING into our system. The foundation of your argument is deeply misguided.

This is the kind of stuff they must be teaching in Democratic Ideology 101 as JoeB131 does the same thing, except he goes even further and calls it white people welfare. You know, because there are more white people in the country getting SS than black people. Of course that stands to reason as there are 5-6 times more white people than black people, but evidently that doesn’t matter. Faulty logic at its finest.

Thank you! I couldn’t figure out what Moroner meant when he said I was on “government cheese”! I’ve never taken a penny in welfare in my life.

And now it’s clear: he means the SS program I was forced to contribute to for 40 years. And yes, I’ve run the numbers as well: if I could have added my SS contributions to my private retirement funds, I would have been much better off.

And Moroner compares that to able-bodied leeches who are in their 20s and 30s, having chid after child, with no husband, and then lives on food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid, TANF, etc., until the cycle starts up in the next generation?

 

[JoeB131]

Equating social security with programs like SNAP, housing assistance, etc. by lumping them all into the “government cheese” bucket is ignorant and disingenuous. If my wife and I invested the money we have paid into SS instead of giving it to the government, we would each have to live to well over 100 to even come close to breaking even. Remind us how people getting SNAP and other federal assistance programs have paid more into the system than we have. Do they pay even the same percentage in federal income taxes? Do they pay any at all after receiving things like child tax credits which are fully refundable. We don’t get any of these benefits and yet we pay more for them they those receiving them do. Now THAT is “government cheese.” And to top it all off, Democrats are ok with allowing anybody from any other country to come across our border and get a slice, despite paying NOTHING into our system. The foundation of your argument is deeply misguided.

This is the kind of stuff they must be teaching in Democratic Ideology 101 as JoeB131 does the same thing, except he goes even further and calls it white people welfare. You know, because there are more white people in the country getting SS than black people. Of course that stands to reason as there are 5-6 times more white people than black people, but evidently that doesn’t matter. Faulty logic at its finest.

Wow, I'm living in your head rent-free, Cleetus. I'm so happy.

Anyway, Marener wasn't talking about Social Security; he was referring to issues like the government bailouts of banks in 2008, or what Trump wants to do now, spending $ 20 billion to bail out soybean farmers because the Chinese are refusing to buy our soybeans.

But, yes, there is plenty of White People Welfare. Not just that, more white people collect what we call the traditional welfare of SNAP, Section 8, TANF than people of color, but also the "White People Welfare" of Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, and Veterans' benefits. The things we like to call "Entitlements", because like white people, we always feel we are "entitled" to something.

Now before you mewl about how "White people have paid into this all their lives".... um, not really.

Let's review, shall we?

First, most people on assistance are only on it for a short time, and a lot of them have at least one family member who has a job. Most of the rest are people who are retired or disabled.


Secondly, most people collecting "White People Welfare" (AKA Entitlements) didn't pay into it all their lives.

We can start with the obvious one. Social Security. Half of that is paid by employers. The other half is that 6% of your paycheck you pay in, but if you retire at 65 and live to be 72, you've gotten back everything you paid in. This is why Social Security is going broke. The average lifespan is now 78. It was only 62 when Social Security started. The boomers working kept it flush, but now they are retiring and it's going broke.

Medicare- You pay 1% of your lifetime earnings into it. One serious illness will wipe all of that out. It doesn't help that, because we don't have a single-payer system controlling costs (like all the other G-7 countries), medical inflation is three times the regular inflation rate.

Unemployment Insurance- Once again, you don't pay that, your employer does, and the pittance that is paid is usually wiped out if you are unemployed for more than a few weeks. It's okay if you have low unemployment, but when Republicans get in and cause the inevitable recession, those funds are wiped out completely.

Ah, and then we get Veteran's Benefits. Full disclosure: as a Vet, the only times I've used them are to pay for college (as a reservist) and to get a home loan. But here's the thing. You receive the same veterans' benefits whether you serve 30 years or 2 years. So on one is "Paying" into that.

So what is the difference? Middle Class Entitlements vs. Poor People Assistance. And because Americans are generally awful people, we have no problem with the former and resent the latter.

 

[martybegan]

They Never denied it.

Why deny when the whole story is crap?

 

[JoeB131]

Thank you! I couldn’t figure out what Moroner meant when he said I was on “government cheese”! I’ve never taken a penny in welfare in my life.

And now it’s clear: he means the SS program I was forced to contribute to for 40 years. And yes, I’ve run the numbers as well: if I could have added my SS contributions to my private retirement funds, I would have been much better off.

Or you could be wiped out in the next stock market crash. Or you could outlive your savings. Then you'll be happy for Social Security.

And Moroner compares that to able-bodied leeches who are in their 20s and 30s, having chid after child, with no husband, and then lives on food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid, TANF, etc., until the cycle starts up in the next generation?

Except nobody really does that. Most people who are on assistance are only on it for a few years.

Most of what Medicaid pays for is assistance for middle-class white people to live in nursing homes once they've lost the ability to care for themselves and have exhausted all their savings.

 

[Marener]

Equating social security with programs like SNAP, housing assistance, etc. by lumping them all into the “government cheese” bucket is ignorant and disingenuous. If my wife and I invested the money we have paid into SS instead of giving it to the government, we would each have to live to well over 100 to even come close to breaking even. Remind us how people getting SNAP and other federal assistance programs have paid more into the system than we have. Do they pay even the same percentage in federal income taxes? Do they pay any at all after receiving things like child tax credits which are fully refundable. We don’t get any of these benefits and yet we pay more for them they those receiving them do. Now THAT is “government cheese.” And to top it all off, Democrats are ok with allowing anybody from any other country to come across our border and get a slice, despite paying NOTHING into our system. The foundation of your argument is deeply misguided.

This is the kind of stuff they must be teaching in Democratic Ideology 101 as JoeB131 does the same thing, except he goes even further and calls it white people welfare. You know, because there are more white people in the country getting SS than black people. Of course that stands to reason as there are 5-6 times more white people than black people, but evidently that doesn’t matter. Faulty logic at its finest.

Entitlements are the biggest driver of debt and deficit we have.

Social security’s trust fund is set to run out in 8 years, probably earlier since we are eliminating millions of workers. What happens then?

 

[SweetTea]

Thank you! I couldn’t figure out what Moroner meant when he said I was on “government cheese”! I’ve never taken a penny in welfare in my life.

And now it’s clear: he means the SS program I was forced to contribute to for 40 years. And yes, I’ve run the numbers as well: if I could have added my SS contributions to my private retirement funds, I would have been much better off.

And Moroner compares that to able-bodied leeches who are in their 20s and 30s, having chid after child, with no husband, and then lives on food stamps, housing subsidies, Medicaid, TANF, etc., until the cycle starts up in the next generation?

He/she is a product of a failed(from a pro-US perspective) educational system. Our only hope is that there are enough people from that generation with the fortitude to break rank and think outside of the anti-US, groupthink bubble they have been in for years, otherwise, our country is lost. I honestly believe that this is something our enemies have had in the works for years. They couldn’t take us down militarily, so they played the long game, seeded this type of thinking into our educational system and waited for it to take hold. Now they can just sit back and wait until we accept Socialism and onto to Communism on our own.

 

[Lisa558]

He/she is a product of a failed(from a pro-US perspective) educational system. Our only hope is that there are enough people from that generation with the fortitude to break rank and think outside of the anti-US, groupthink bubble they have been in for years, otherwise, our country is lost. I honestly believe that this is something our enemies have had in the works for years. They couldn’t take us down militarily, so they played the long game, seeded this type of thinking into our educational system and waited for it to take hold. Now they can just sit back and wait until we accept Socialism and onto to Communism on our own.

True, and that’s why the hateful vitriol was launched against Charlie Kirk. He was making real inroads showing young people who are being brainwashed by the leftist educational system an opposing perspective - and the Left can’t have that. The only way they can win elections and destroy America is by keeping the young people ignorant and full of hate.

 

[Lisa558]

Entitlements are the biggest driver of debt and deficit we have.

Social security’s trust fund is set to run out in 8 years, probably earlier since we are eliminating millions of workers. What happens then?

We make two changes, if the Dems would allow it:

1) Increase the contribution amount by 1%
2) Move the retirement age forward by one year.

The system was set up when people lived just several years past 65 - not thirty years. We need to correct for that.

 

[Frankenstein]

You're not restoring the country, you're breaking it in half.

That's what Trump wants, so that's what you want.

There's no conservatism here.

That has to be the most tone deaf statement ever written! Trump didn't talk about putting two bullets in someones head.

Left-Wing Terrorism Is on the Rise

For the first time in more than 30 years, attacks by the far left outnumber those by the far right.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Marener]

We make two changes, if the Dems would allow it:

1) Increase the contribution amount by 1%
2) Move the retirement age forward by one year.

The system was set up when people lived just several years past 65 - not thirty years. We need to correct for that.

In other words, people like me PAY MORE and GET LESS but you lose nothing.