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

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....)

yeah i am a little skeptical about that most recent MA poll. kennedy is a terrible candidate and he seems to have underperformed expectations, but if markey wins it won't be a blowout, and i don't think anyone knows what's going to happen.

"thing X won't happen, but i don't think anyone knows what's going to happen" -- this is me on my bullshit

go be damp and weird somewhere else Joe

Charlie Kirk deleted this tweet tying Kamala Harris to the law firm that defended Epstein.

The huge firm has employed numerous top Trump admin officials, including William Barr. pic.twitter.com/0qcOEk9OWu

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) August 12, 2020

two related things: i wish he hadn't picked her, and republicans find her very difficult to attack in a coherent way.

What is with President Turd's obsession with water pressure?

clearly he makes problem shits

he pees a lot?

Have you seen his diet? He hasn't had fiber since 1962.

He might not be a fascist if someone had given him a bidet 30 years ago.

It's possible it's a flashback to that disastrous trip he took to that chocolate factory:

http://www.itiscannizzaro.net/Ianni/booksweb/charlie/immagini/personaggi/cap%2017_18.jpg