"The August 2020 US Politics Thread is highly thought of, but nobody likes me. It can only be my personality. That's all."

** I HAVE A PLAN TO SAVE THE POST OFFICE **

YOUNG PEOPLE: Call your grandparents and ask if they got the card you sent.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT SEND A CARD.

When they say no, you sound very sad. "Oh, that's too bad. I heard that Trump was really underfunding the post office."

— Christopher Keelty 🏳️‍🌈 (@keeltyc) August 11, 2020

wrt to regional differences, you’ll be *shocked* to find out that the GOP’s intent to destroy what’s left of the USPS in order to privatize it will do just fine down here with virtually all white people—whether old or young or poor or well-off. Every failure or inconvenience is chalked up to government & employee incompetence, and the PO is notoriously where “black ppl work” because of Civil Rights and Affirmative Action. Racist post-WW2 GOP orthodoxy is absolutely unquestioned and well into its fourth generation of cradle-to-grave propaganda.

xpost Could work!

I just asked my wife her opinion, and she thinks it may be the culture at our local post offices. So much so that people recommend going to a village or town over to other post offices for better experiences.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trumps-attack-on-the-postal-service-is-a-threat-to-democracy-and-to-rural-america

A fact that sometimes gets lost is this: USPS must - by law - go to almost every address almost every day. And they've almost always done precisely that, for something like 200 years. Even if you don't have any stupid fucking junk mail about gutter cleaning or credit offers on a particular day, the mail carrier still needs to check to see if you have any outgoing mail.

UPS and FedEx only need to go to your address if you have a package, or if you've requested a pickup.

That is a HUGE difference in mission, and the lopsidedness of expectations is being manipulated for trumpian political gain. Fuck that noize.

In my experience it varies by post office branch. The smaller one that is more near to my house, which I've been using much more regularly during the pandemic, is almost always staffed with super friendly and helpful people who often go out of their way to suggest better/faster ways to ship things (we often ship things to my father in law).

The main branch, however, is another story entirely. While I won't say that everyone that works there is awful, almost every time I've been there has been really frustrating. I've never waited less than 30 minutes in line and the employees are constantly short or outright rude. More than once I've waited in line and walked up to the open window at my turn only to have the worker slam the window shut and grumble, "closed now, get back in line".

My mother is a retired postal worker. My imaginary Roger Milleresque country hit is called "My Momma was a Mailman."

She carried mail in Houston in the 70's and quit when she moved way out to the country. In the late 80's she returned to carrying mail. She worked the counter for a while but really hated it because of the stress of dealing with people and handling money. She preferred delivering mail and being active outside.

According to her, the Psycho Postal stereotype is a real thing and it's because the management of the PO went downhill so badly. Back in the day it was a really good job with good benefits and it has slowly eroded, creating a lot of disgruntlement. There's also a disconnect between management and the carriers that are busting their ass to get everything delivered. But that could probably be said about a lot of jobs.

She had a coworker who I helped out with a couple of personal projects because he couldn't deal with computers. I was over at his house once and he introduced me to his three guns which he had named. There was Father Frank, Sister Sarah, and I can't remember the third. Quirky fella.

My mom always carried a pearl-handled deringer in her purse.

This is a small town in East Texas, I can't say that these observations apply everywhere.

the fact that mail carriers *pick up* your mail from your private home is amazing to me as an immigrant.

(it also seems unnecessary and insanely expensive in like 90% of the populated united states, and actually harmful in cities with large homeless populations and few mailboxes, e.g. LA. but i like getting my mail picked up from my house like i'm the queen.)

my local carriers DO NOT pick up from the home unless you sit and wait for them. I've had packages sit down by the door for a week.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Kamala Harris were preparing for their first public appearance as running mates on Wednesday afternoon, after President Trump, his Republican allies and conservative hosts on Fox News unfurled a string of sexist attacks on Ms. Harris.

Mr. Trump added to the barrage with a racist tweet on Wednesday morning claiming that Mr. Biden would put another Black leader, Senator Cory Booker, in charge of low-income housing in the suburbs. That tweet did not mention Ms. Harris, but it continued Mr. Trump’s tactic of playing into white racist fears about integration efforts as he declared, “The ‘suburban housewife’ will be voting for me.”

this seems unusually candid for the NYT

xpost - Yeah, same here. We've tried leaving mail in our mailbox for the carrier to take, but they only take it if we personally hand it to them. So more often than not, I'll just walk to a drop box when I need to mail something.

the drop box near my house was modified so that you can only put envelopes in it, or nothing thicker than about an inch; not sure if they are all like this now, I assume it was to prevent people from shoving dog shit and trash in it but given that the closest post office also doesn't have a drop box for packages, it's pretty annoying.

But that could probably be said about a lot of jobs.

Which is why I've never been able to figure out the USPS. The supermarkets I go to, for example, everyone is visibly busting their ass and generally helpful and friendly. And I've got to assume they're getting paid less than postal workers, and with worse (if any) benefits. Heck, that's probably true of most retail/behind the counter work. So why would postal workers be particularly grouchy or disgruntled?

Our mail carriers - who, again, awesome, no complaints - do pick up from us when we tuck things into our mailbox, but I usually just walk it to a box, anyway, rather than have the letter or whatever hang out there for hours.

Anyway, postage (like gas prices) is far lower than what it should be for the services rendered, no matter how grouchy the employees are.

xp yep, same here wrt drop off boxes. there was a series of incidents of stealing through the slot so now we're all hamstrung.

I NEVER SAID HE WASN’T https://t.co/GaLhqvsBfp

— Paul F. Tompkins (@PFTompkins) August 12, 2020

I want to see all yours yelp reviews before I take yours opinions on post office workers seriously!!

Busting ones ass is lame

would like to go on record as having never used yelp as it is a scam

A couple years ago, I was working from home and happened to look out the window to see a post office truck pull up at our front gate and an employee stand up at the open door of the truck (i.e. without leaving the truck) and throw a small package about 25 feet toward our front door. When I told my mother-in-law, who was a letter carrier for almost 25 years, she got so angry she made me call my local post office and complain.

The supermarkets I go to, for example, everyone is visibly busting their ass and generally helpful and friendly.

How many times a week do you say “if you have time to lean, you have time to clean”?

come on usps employees, put some elbow grease into it

xpost I should try that on my kids!

Time to Lean

https://ctl.s6img.com/society6/img/YqrQ7R5bSM1ILd8fWWcDjkUPN2I/w_1500/prints/~artwork/s6-original-art-uploads/society6/uploads/misc/6ba89dc81e9245d992a417b7a6393baa/~~/lean-in-love1632018-prints.jpg

That might explain my local post office.

(At first I thought, ew, pickle and cough syrup, gross)

the employees are constantly short

fu, Mr I'm-So-Tall

ahem, that's Mr Very-Much-Average-Height, if you please

lol

To add more fuel to the USPS conversation, I live not far from soda and my USPS experiences have been uniformly great

my USPS experiences since moving to NYC have been almost uniformly godawful and day-ruining, but i blame structural understaffing, under-equipping, etc., not the staff themselves.

yes

except for the guy who has tried to actually start fights in the kensington branch. they should probably fire him.

messing with the USPS is so incredibly dumb, not only does vote-by-mail not really help either party but one would think it's the boomers who rely most on the Postal Service

like the only way this makes sense is because he's gonna dispute the result b/c of the post office clusterfuck that he created & honestly I can't see that argument holding in any court even with all the chud judges he's installed

I mean, clearly already someone on team trump realized the problems with this particular line of thinking, hence his tweet last week about "except if you live in Florida, then voting by mail is perfectly safe and encouraged!".

It's not just vote by mail, the Republicans have wanted to kill the Post Office for decades. This is just providing them the pretext.

They said they wanted politicians to run the government like a business, they did not say they did not want it running like a shitty business.

I'd say mission accomplished.

Good luck if you got anything going media mail. I got three things that hit 40 miles from my house and just stop a month ago. They say 'still on it's way to next location'. There just has to be tractor trailers sitting all over the place in parking lots packed with mail, as these Postal sort places only have enough space for a few days work.

Mentioned it somewhere else, but the worst I encountered so far was some CDs I ordered from Woodsist. Took six weeks to get from Woodsist in New York to New Jersey, then another two full weeks from there to my house.

The desire to privatize the USPS is one of the stranger conflict of the Republican tent - it will absolutely hurt their voters and the vaunted small business owners, unless you develop some kind of magical thinking that UPS and FedEx-style services can fill the void.

yeah as someone who's been ordering a lot of records lately the various wait times have become incredibly unpredictable. order something off eBay and it'll arrive anywhere between 3 days and 6 weeks from the "shipped" date

GOP campaign strategy: first kill off as many older voters as possible while making it clear that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about and don't even care if people die. then, see if you can destroy USPS. finally, get Matlock canceled

It would probably be best for society if people were okay with two week delivery times than two day but there are other ways to go about it.

GOP vs. the USPS is very
https://frinkiac.com/video/S06E25/dFtzbaSWZvEFr9_0AuBnIbLOocM=.gif

yeah i have been getting rid of excess books on ebay for a year or so and prepandemic i found media mail to be shockingly fast. now it stays in "waiting for acceptance by USPS" status for 3 days, followed by various long stops thereafter. i am waiting for a book i bought that was shipped a week ago and still hasn't gone anywhere. relatedly, i was already trying to stop using amazon and this has really taught me how little i care about fast shipping in most instances because most of the shit i buy is not life-saving medications or critical for my job, fortunately.

Time has become meaningless anyway

gonna keep posting this stuff here because the biden thread is working on figuring out the whole democratic party thing

choose your own adventure pic.twitter.com/fNCnhCEbOC

— Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) August 12, 2020

Kamala Harris: "He inherited the longest economic expansion in history from Barack Obama and Joe Biden. And then, like everything else he inherited, he ran it straight into the ground."

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 12, 2020

The one thing I am absolutely sure Kamala Harris is good at is being the hatchetwoman. She's not squeamish.

this is fantastic

Wow, Ed Markey at 71% - 21% with 18-29-year-olds #mapoli pic.twitter.com/wa8la0fO6N

— Jonathan "Boo and Vote" Cohn (@JonathanCohn) August 12, 2020

I was pleasantly surprised to see Markey way up in the polls. For some reason I thought he was getting destroyed.

yesssss! i hope collins eats shit too

xp this is startling, it would indicate a very recent surge. It was neck and neck for a long time.

(also I don't see any attribution for this poll, don't know what it is, so....)