Dr. Strangelove

To be fair, one of the most all documented and studied aspects of Political Science looks at the ways in which Democratic voters approve of programs and that benefit rural voters. Republicans voting against their own interests is a well known phenomenon. Thomas Frank wrote "What's the Matter with Kansas?" nearly two decades ago. In that book he details how conservatives in the state weaponized right-wing populism to motivate voters on explosive cultural issues, and in doing so, convinced them to reject spending and tax law that would benefit most people in the state. This book predicted that most of American politics would eventually devolve into something similar more than 12 years before it happened. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's_the_Matter_with_Kansas%3F_(book)

I certainly don't agree with this. It's a bit much to make the shooting of a school into some MAGA-militia move. It just so happens that the parents of a crazy kid are far-right Trump lovers. The laws pushed by the right - and ideology associated with the modern GOP led them to purchasing a gun. Is the GOP responsible for the gun violence in this country? Yes. But it's a stretch to associate it directly to Trump.

Yup. But try getting the conservative posters to admit as much. A comprehensive analysis is not going to change their opinions.

Yeah, they're going to lose to a party that doesn't even bother to put forward a legislative agenda or party platform anymore. Simply promoting the MAGA-verse is enough. To be fair to Ds though, elections are going to be bad for them for quite awhile. We're looking at prolonged minority party rule for 2 decades.

It means Nebraska isn't bringing in talent. For every transfer from a G5 or FCS that turns out to be a Toure there are 10 that get buried on the depth chart. Is like when fans think that some 2* player is the next JJ Watt. The odds are against it.

We've now offered 3 FIU players. The talent acquisition for this season should get Frost fired by itself.

Society, employers, etc. In my ideal future on site childcare care is a common workplace benefit like 401k matching. It should be an expectation where feasible. As for my booster, my reactions were fortunately mild. A mild headache for 24 hours in addition to the sore arm.

I completely agree. I also think we can rethink benefits at work, like having on-site Daycare. The employees in the building next to us hand this, and it seems incredible. From what I understand, employees pay for a portion while the employer covers the rest. I hope that in addition to immigration, we can rethink our current workforce to tap into a labor pool which would allow for working parents to participate in the workforce. As @KnappIc pointed out, a huge barrier of workforce participation is the cost of childcare. Having two children in daycare is like having a second mortgage, if not more expensive. It's absolutely insane.

When I click those links, I see nurses most of the jobs at 17-25 per hour. $20 per hour is 800 bucks a week before taxes, which isn't bad if you're single. But if you plan on having kids and put them into daycare, it quickly becomes not worth it. I also think nursing is an extremely difficult job. I'm not arguing for more stimulus or that there aren't a lot of job openings. But, we're going through a bit of a worker uprising in America, and I don't see it as a bad thing. If employers wanted workers as bad as they say, they'd be proving paid leave, on site childcare, retirement and competitive salaries. Until employers start providing the means for workers to enjoy the very basic things in life - like the ability to have a baby and work at the same time - people simply aren't going to put up with working there anymore because it's not worth it.

I'm not arguing that there isn't. There are hundreds of job openings in Lincoln alone, with relatively few workers to fill them. Competition for employees is fierce. The same is true for most of the country. What I am arguing is that businesses are not willing to pay enough/provide benefits to lure workers. Like I mentioned, is the accounting firm you mentioned struggling to find workers despite paying 60k per year, offering paid vacation, paid maternity leave and a comprehensive retirement plan? Or are they complaining that American workers aren't willing to accept pay similar to whatever they're outsourcing the job to India for? I suspect it's closer to the latter.

No offense, but working in Healthcare is not that great of a job. Nursing is a demanding job with a lot of burnout. I can't say anything about the accounting job, but what is their hourly pay? Are they outsourcing to India because they don't have American candidates to hire or are they having trouble finding Americans willing to be paid the same as the guy in India? My friend works at NRG Media in Omaha and that company is complaining about not having workers, but the positions pay 31k a year, it's an insulting joke.

t&p We live in the greatest country in the world.

I agree that stimulus checks are no longer necessary. But most of the jobs that are hiring aren't very good. How many places that offer paid family leave, 401k matching, paid vacation and pays 55k, are struggling to hire workers? You can't buy a house, start a family, or accomplish life goals based on the jobs that have vacancies right now.

This is a good article, I wonder if in the net it was helpful to still send that last round of checks? Overall, I think the stimulus checks did their job. They did not contribute significantly to inflation and helped millions of people.

There isn't much evidence that those checks contributed to inflation. The European Union, China, and other nations are all experiencing inflation. They didn't coordinate stimulus checks like we did, which suggests that inflation is being driven by supply chain bottlenecks and low interest rates - which are pretty much universal.

Yup. If you're curious, you can read articles written by G. Elliot Morris of the Economist or Nate Cohn from the New York Times. There are probably many others as well. Long story short, we're in a period of extreme partisanship. The leading indicators of partisanship are race and educational attainment. Educated voters, those most likely to vote for Democrats, are leaving states to move to big cities. Think of students from Ohio and Iowa moving to Chicago. Ohio and Iowa turn more red while the city of Chicago turns more blue. When this plays out for the country as a whole, more states are turning red than states turning blue. Democrats will likely turn states like Arizona and Georgia blue (thanks to cities like Phoenix and Atlanta) but the tradeoff will be Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania which are turning red. Furthermore, since Democrats are increasingly concentrated in cities, they become much easier to gerrymander when it comes to congressional seats or state legislature seats. One last note - the divisiveness of America's politics is likely to get much, much worse. Elections aside, large cities produce most of the economic growth and provide most tax revenue for federal and state government. The gap between the economic fortunes of urban vs rural areas will continue to grow - as well the discontent between what the citizens of cities want to do with those tax revenues vs what they can actually accomplish with the electoral system in place.

By the skin of their teeth, about 40k votes in 2020. But the trends are not good for them. In 2016, for a Democrat to win the Presidency they needed to win the national popular vote by 2.5% or so. In 2020, it was 4.4%. In 2024, it's likely higher. They may need to win by 5%, maybe more, in order to win the Presidency. In a hyper-partisan environment, it's really difficult for one party to win by that many votes.. this trend is accelerating. The political reality for Democrats in the Senate are even worse. By extension, because the Senate controls the Judiciary, they will dominate there too. Democrats will eventually battle their way back in the house, but at the end of each decade they will control fewer state legislatures and as such less house districts to gerrymander.

I think Trump would have a greater than 50% chance to win against Joe Biden and probably much, much higher (70%?) against a non-incumbant candidate. Your assessment isn't wrong, but in the context of the electoral college Democrats face a 4-5% disadvantage. It's possible that a Democrat wins the national popular vote by 4.8% (8 million or so votes) and still loses. In other words, despite Trump being the least popular person in politics, the structural advantages Republicans hold mean they may win the election no matter what. This is before we consider what state legislatures do in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia, where they seem poised to subvert an election anyway. In the game of politics, to put it simply, Republicans have won. It's sort of over at this point.

Recruit after this season? Have you seen how they're recruiting CURRENTLY? It's already fallen off a cliff.

8-4 simply is not possible, my ceiling for this team is 6-6 next year. I know fans want to believe that we're 'close' because of 1 score losses, but many of them are late TDs to turn 14 point losses into 7 point losses (Purdue and Minnesota come to mind). This program, the direction, the recruiting, it's all abysmal. They need to fire Frost now, next seasons recruiting class can't be sacrificed just to continue the Frost experiment any more.

Even if they do make a home run hire, the amount that needs fixed is massive and the time to do it is short. I think Nebraska fields a worse team next season, the defense will take a step back, but the record may improve to 4-8.

Couldn't agree more. The only reason Nebraska keeps games even close is because they have talent, especially at WR, TE and the secondary. It'll be scary to see what Frost does with a team without talent.

According to any one of the recruiting services, any high school players worth a damn are taking your advice.

I agree. Firing Frost makes sense right now, you lose nothing in recruiting, our class is small and terrible anyway. Why wait a year to sacrifice next year's recruiting class? Not to mention, Nebraska voluntarily signed up for another year of this. But this time the defense will be completely gutted. Jojo, Tanner, CTB, Stille, Dismuke, Williams and Deontre Thomas aren't walking through the door to save the day anymore.

At least we lost with a Nebraska man in charge. That's pretty much all that matters around here.