Biden popularity: Looks like it's Steady Joe, not Sleepy Joe... so far

lizkat

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At present his rating looks like I would expect his voting base expected... this is "all polls"... the one for "likely or registered voters" has him at about 54% at the moment.... the one for "adults" has him at about 52%. Anyway all better than the former guy ever did...


snap Biden popularity thru 5:2021.jpg
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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I think the “not Trump” bonus points will wear off by the end of the year, especially if Republicans continue to win the obstruction and propaganda war. “Republicans won’t let us get things done” is going to get old quick and the blame won’t be entirely on Republicans. Disapproving looks and mild words of disappointment aren’t leadership.
 

SuperMatt

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I think the “not Trump” bonus points will wear off by the end of the year, especially if Republicans continue to win the obstruction and propaganda war. “Republicans won’t let us get things done” is going to get old quick and the blame won’t be entirely on Republicans. Disapproving looks and mild words of disappointment aren’t leadership.
This political reality exposes the fact that Manchin and Synema are NOT strategic thinkers.

Some of the things Biden passed are being lauded by GOP lawmakers even though they voted against them. That means the Dem agenda is popular. Why Manchin and Synema don’t see this and kill the filibuster and pass popular laws is beyond me.
 
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This political reality exposes the fact that Manchin and Synema are NOT strategic thinkers.
A pro-lifer who votes with Trump >50% of time?! Manchin is a Republican. I too feel most comfortable and confident when there's a compromise across the board, and I appreciate my admittedly left-skewed opinion to be complemented by rational right-wing approaches. Together we are smarter. However, US politics went so far right, that the GOP is now considered farther right than the party established by former neonazi skinheads where I grew up (no joke). Manchin plays preted-decent, even when he could really use his pull to help his constituents, who DO really need help. Honestly, I can see the concerns about the elimination of the filibuster destabilizing things (but would it). But there is absolutely no justification for this lazy shit filibuster that allows representatives to just leave a day early prior to the long weekend. You wanna oppose something? Be fucking there and be forced to stay on topic and explain why you oppose it.

Sinema on the other hand seems like a very complicated person with a MSW, JD, MBA, PhD who graduated high school at 16 and college at 18, and left the LDS around that age as well.
 

lizkat

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This political reality exposes the fact that Manchin and Synema are NOT strategic thinkers.

Some of the things Biden passed are being lauded by GOP lawmakers even though they voted against them. That means the Dem agenda is popular. Why Manchin and Synema don’t see this and kill the filibuster and pass popular laws is beyond me.

It's easier for GOP pols now to find assorted ways to diss the Dems on their rounds of TV shows. but still vote for the bacon in Biden's legislation (now that they have a few recorded votes on some amendments that look good to Rs) than it is for those two blue dog Senators to stand up and help kill the filibuster option when a big chunk of their constituency is not of the party in power right now.

It's impossible to gloss over such a move and the media would blow it up like crazy. Far more oxygen would go into that than gets expended on some red state Senator casting a vote for Biden legislation after spending weeks talking about how the Rs have successfully managed to tamp down the excesses of Democrats' unrealistic yada yada.

Ironically though it's also true that if the filibuster does get killed, then the Rs will be quick to make use of a simple majority to do whatever they want the next time they can round up those votes or actually control the Senate itself. Still that shouldn't stand in the way of the Dems going ahead with their option to kill the filibuster right now and get done what the Democrats set as their goals during the 2020 campaigns.

To the victor, the spoils. Why should Dems snatch defeat from victory? So yeah, Sinema and Manchin amount to royal pains in the behind right now and they come off as supremely interested in their own respective political standings, so much so they seem blinded to the upside of killing the damn filibuster.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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A pro-lifer who votes with Trump >50% of time?! Manchin is a Republican. I too feel most comfortable and confident when there's a compromise across the board, and I appreciate my admittedly left-skewed opinion to be complemented by rational right-wing approaches. Together we are smarter.

In my fantasy world the Democrats are the party that comes up with big crazy ideas and Republicans bring it down to a more manageable level. Everybody wins. But somewhere along the line Republicans became the party of only the rich get welfare and obstruct anything that doesn’t point in that direction. Now they are the party of making everybody hate government by design.
 
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In my fantasy world the Democrats are the party that comes up with big crazy ideas and Republicans bring it down to a more manageable level. Everybody wins. But somewhere along the line Republicans became the party of only the rich get welfare and obstruct anything that doesn’t point in that direction. Now they are the party of making everybody hate government by design.
I've known some (very smart) people whose entire existence revolved around making their own ives more convenient. While sometimes this benefits the group as a whole through removing unnecessary work, most of the time this only meant others have to work more instead of them. That's the GOP. Their whole gig is around accumulating such uninformed voters they can get away with not doing shit, and if things work out they can still claim credit. Or as you said, being a governmental worker whose prime purpose is to prove government doesn't work is both a perverse incentive and a next level way to ensure nobody's expecting you to work.
 
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Chew Toy McCoy

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I've known some (very smart) people whose entire existence revolved around making their own ives more convenient. While sometimes this benefits the group as a whole through removing unnecessary work, most of the time this only meant others have to work more instead of them. That's the GOP. Their whole gig is around accumulating such uninformed voters they can get away with not doing shit, and if things work out they can still claim credit. Or as you said, being a governmental worker whose prime purpose is to prove government doesn't work is both a perverse incentive and a next level way to ensure nobody's expecting you to work.

No disrespect meant towards the supervisors and managers I’ve had at my jobs, but I have yet to know one that works harder than the people who work under them. Maybe occasionally they have to deal with some bullshit situation that I’m glad I don’t have to, but day to day work….not even close to hard work. A lot of times they seem quite bored. I had one manager who would actually keep me from doing my job by frequently plopping down in a chair in front of my desk to just shoot the shit. From my personal experience climbing the career ladder has appeared very much as getting paid more to do less.

It should be noted that I haven’t really worked at any company that is cut-throat about job promotion and career climbing, or at least not in a department of a company that is that way. So management positions have been more about a certain number of people needing somebody over them to communicate with upper management or to make sure things don’t go completely off the rails. It’s never been about expertise in a specific field and deserved promotions with a lot more responsibility.
 
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No disrespect meant towards the supervisors and managers I’ve had at my jobs, but I have yet to know one that works harder than the people who work under them. Maybe occasionally they have to deal with some bullshit situation that I’m glad I don’t have to, but day to day work….not even close to hard work. A lot of times they seem quite bored. I had one manager who would actually keep me from doing my job by frequently plopping down in a chair in front of my desk to just shoot the shit. From my personal experience climbing the career ladder has appeared very much as getting paid more to do less.

It should be noted that I haven’t really worked at any company that is cut-throat about job promotion and career climbing, or at least not in a department of a company that is that way. So management positions have been more about a certain number of people needing somebody over them to communicate with upper management or to make sure things don’t go completely off the rails. It’s never been about expertise in a specific field and deserved promotions with a lot more responsibility.
The Peter principle is really legit on this: people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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The Peter principle is really legit on this: people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.

I had a manager who once wrote me up for insubordination and put me on 90 days probation because I said in a fit of frustration "You could come out and help for once". Never mattered how busy or understaffed we were, he'd just sit behind his desk all day. He'd even have people work overtime when short staffed so that he wouldn't have to help out. He was salary and that often means more than 40 hours a week, not less, but he'd frequently role in late and leave early. 6 months after he wrote me up he got shit canned because he wasn't doing his job either. We have no clue what he was actually doing because the manager who replaced him said his job was cake with many down hours with nothing to do. In that position an extremely busy day is probably less than 4 hours of actual work.
 

lizkat

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I had a manager who once wrote me up for insubordination and put me on 90 days probation because I said in a fit of frustration "You could come out and help for once". Never mattered how busy or understaffed we were, he'd just sit behind his desk all day. He'd even have people work overtime when short staffed so that he wouldn't have to help out. He was salary and that often means more than 40 hours a week, not less, but he'd frequently role in late and leave early. 6 months after he wrote me up he got shit canned because he wasn't doing his job either. We have no clue what he was actually doing because the manager who replaced him said his job was cake with many down hours with nothing to do. In that position an extremely busy day is probably less than 4 hours of actual work.

I turned the tables on a guy like that once. He was lackadaisical even during my interview with him. I was interested in having some meetings with the person I'd be working for or taking direction from, and I made that very clear to him. He knew damn well at that time that that guy was on vacation, but since he was interested in getting me on board he just lied and said "Well you'll be getting your work from me."

Right so after some walk-throughs to meet managers in other areas like networking and tech support etc., I decided to take the job, giving three weeks notice to my then current employer.

So I show up to the new job and fill out the paperwork at HR and get back up to my desk and there's a note from my new boss to call him when I'm done with all that stuff. I phone and he says oh good come on over to my office.

So I step in there and he says hey good to see you, this here is Dave and he'll be giving you your work.

Jesus Christ. I'm furious but I politely say hello and then after a walkaround to meet a few people, ol' Dave says well I got some things on my plate this morning so let's get together after lunch and meanwhile you can just settle in.

I went down to HR and said cut me a check for today, I quit, you're in breach of contract, hash it out with my headhunter but I'm gone at 5pm. They said wait, what? and I explained and they called up to the boss and asked him did he promise to give me my work himself and he said ( as I only learned later!) "yeah but what's the difference?"

So HR referred that issue to the VP of my department and then said to me ok what if he assigns your work and oversees it himself, will you stay? I said yes. So the VP told my boss ok you have to give her the project assignments and review her work, you agreed to that so we have to make good on it.

So turns out my boss, Don, is just burnt out or has exceeded his own competence or has god knows what sort of problem but anyway he's a closed-door dude doing nothing all day every day and I'd phone and say I'm done with this project can you review it and what's next? And he'd say well how about if I come up with something by Friday? or he'd say oh hell I don't know what's next, ask Dave why don't you?

And Dave would say ha ha yeah just buy a couple paperbacks it's good money you're making so don't worry about it everything's cool and eventually someone from some department will show up with some work we can do, we don't even have to bother with Don (the boss).

A couple more weeks of that and I went back to HR and said I'm out and explained why and they said no wait we see what's happening here, give us a day to iron this out. Next afternoon the VP calls me in and says here's the deal we're sorry about all this, your boss is gone and I'm hiring his replacement but you'll interview them for me, here's the HR contact, they'll be sending people up starting Thursday.

Yee hah! Sometimes stuff works out way better than you think at the time. I got to hire my own boss.
 

lizkat

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That's awesome! What happened next?

Heh, the guy I liked best among the applicants HR sent up for me to interview, did get hired as my boss. He subsequently poached a few people from his prior place of employment to replace some other not particularly competent individuals who couldn't keep up the new pace he went about modeling.

We ended up with a group that really woke up that IT department and lit some fires under the seats of some of the in-house client side departments as well. The analysts in our group were forcing competence levels up over there as well , by the better quality of our own preparation and questions in project development. So all in all it seemed to work out pretty well.

Attitudes can be contagious, doesn't matter if they're positive or negative.

That's what I like about the Biden administration so far, they act like they think government can play a positive role in people's lives and they just set about doing it. And it seems to be having a good effect on the body politic in general and the media too, as far as I can tell

Otherwise the "steady Joe" polls so far would not look the way they do. Not everyone (even in his own party) likes either Biden or his policies as rolled out to date, but he's running a competent government and it gives off an aura of steadiness and more civility that we can sure use at this point.
 

Huntn

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The level of competence Joe Biden displayed at the G7 was masterful (not the G8 as Trump cravenly sucked master’s toes to try to make it so), but let‘s be clear here, practically any performance by any honest leader would have outperformed Donald Trump‘s disgraceful performance during every visit to Europe turning off the entirety of our NATO allies as he could not help himself, with his self serving, insecure chip on shoulder, incompetence.

Don’t forget he decided Vlad’s word was to be trusted over our own counter intelligence services. And just think in 2015, the GOP in it’s entirety would have been lambasting anyone in bed with Vlad. 👀

And Vlad is not as talented as he thinks he is. When asked by a reporter why all his political opposition is in jail, poisoned, or dead, he brought up the Capital insurrection as a parallel. There is zero comparison. Putin is a lawless thug and defacto dictator, just what Donny aspires to be.

Five takeaways from the Biden-Putin summit
 

SuperMatt

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The level of competence Joe Biden displayed at the G7 was masterful (not the G8 as Trump cravenly sucked master’s toes to try to make it so), but let‘s be clear here, practically any performance by any honest leader would have outperformed Donald Trump‘s disgraceful performance during every visit to Europe turning off the entirety of our NATO allies as he could not help himself, with his self serving, insecure chip on shoulder, incompetence.

Don’t forget he decided Vlad’s word was to be trusted over our own counter intelligence services. And just think in 2015, the GOP in it’s entirety would have been lambasting anyone in bed with Vlad. 👀

And Vlad is not as talented as he thinks he is. When asked by a reporter why all his political opposition is in jail, poisoned, or dead, he brought up the Capital insurrection as a parallel. There is zero comparison. Putin is a lawless thug and defacto dictator, just what Donny aspires to be.

Five takeaways from the Biden-Putin summit
I am seeing the dumbest sh*t about this in some conservative corners of the internet. When Biden said he gave Putin a list of infrastructure that, if targeted by hackers, would result in retaliation... the right-wingers said “OMG he told Russia exactly what to hack to cripple America!"

Wow, Russia never would have figured out on their own that shutting down America’s power grid might cause us a few problems. How dare Biden tell them such secrets?!?!
 

Huntn

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I am seeing the dumbest sh*t about this in some conservative corners of the internet. When Biden said he gave Putin a list of infrastructure that, if targeted by hackers, would result in retaliation... the right-wingers said “OMG he told Russia exactly what to hack to cripple America!"

Wow, Russia never would have figured out on their own that shutting down America’s power grid might cause us a few problems. How dare Biden tell them such secrets?!?!
They are desperate and depend on STUPID for traction.
 
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