Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Speaker Johnson thread nuked as requested.

No offense meant to @Gigem as it was not his intent for it to go where it went.

Well, it was rather mild by our standards.  I didn’t need it nuked. I kinda felt like it ran its course. 

It's still all a function of supply and demand.  Any sector where supply can be increased, prices will, broadly, come down.  Where demand is decreased (probably not much of a factor as far as what you're talking about here), prices will, broadly, come down.

Whatever happened, my hope was that housing and groceries can become more affordable.  I think there are ways to facilitate that, though I don't know if any of it will be achieved.  You need more than just good policy, and that's assuming you get good policy. 

Fingers crossed.  We need cheaper food, housing, and continued cheap (relatively speaking) energy.

We could all use cheaper/better medical insurance, but I have to admit, I don't have a clue how to make that happen, and I handled insurance for a clinic for a few years, so I like to think I know a bit about it. Most ideas I hear make me think the person either doesn't understand the problem, doesn't understand basic economic realities, or both. But, there are many smarter people than me, so maybe there's a way. 

Housing remains tough because of the way we have turned it into an appreciating asset. Lotta folks want it to be easy To buy a house in theory, but hard to buy their house and practicality.

I know lots of people here would completely disagree with what I wrote above; that's not my point. My point is that Kamala/the Democrats focused their energy on Trump being a bad guy (which people had already become accustomed to and apparently don't mind), instead of fighting on the issues that people care the most about.

I agree, there was very little positive messaging from the democratic presidential campaign outlining a vision and plan.  Mainly just criticisms of the opponent nominee.  Probably hurt them significantly.  

I recall Vivek in the primaries saying Republicans have been in the same trap for many cycles now, and that they needed to do better at positive messaging.  It makes me wonder how much of campaign messaging is focused on outlining what a candidate is for, as opposed to critcizing what they don't like.  And also if any data exists describing the impact/effectiveness of one vs. the other. 

Like you said, many would disagree with what I'm about to say.  I recall Obama in 2008 running on quite a bit of positive messaging, and I think it helped him.  While I frequently disagreed with him, I think it's indisputable he was a gifted, inspirational speaker, and he put it to use doing more than just criticizing McCain.  

I agree, there was very little positive messaging from the democratic presidential campaign outlining a vision and plan.  Mainly just criticisms of the opponent nominee.  Probably hurt them significantly. 

I recall Vivek in the primaries saying Republicans have been in the same trap for many cycles now, and that they needed to do better at positive messaging.  It makes me wonder how much of campaign messaging is focused on outlining what a candidate is for, as opposed to critcizing what they don't like.  And also if any data exists describing the impact/effectiveness of one vs. the other.

Like you said, many would disagree with what I'm about to say.  I recall Obama in 2008 running on quite a bit of positive messaging, and I think it helped him.  While I frequently disagreed with him, I think it's indisputable he was a gifted, inspirational speaker, and he put it to use doing more than just criticizing McCain. 

I think Kamala tried to run on a positive message, but she thought that "I'm not Donald Trump [and I'm not Joe Biden]" was that message. She was wrong (as were her handlers). The message--as you said--needs to be "we're going to do [these] positive things," not "I'm not as bad as that guy." 

We could all use cheaper/better medical insurance, but I have to admit, I don't have a clue how to make that happen, and I handled insurance for a clinic for a few years, so I like to think I know a bit about it. Most ideas I hear make me think the person either doesn't understand the problem, doesn't understand basic economic realities, or both. But, there are many smarter people than me, so maybe there's a way. 

Stop allowing medical facilities to charge absurd prices for certain things would be a great start. In my hospital stay, was tough to see my billing and each Tylenol pill was $12 when I could go down to Costco and get 400 of them for $19.  Maybe i'm missing something, but I don't understand the basic economic reality of that. 

To your point, the scale of the problem is massive and far above and beyond what I personally could fix, but when I see Cleveland Clinic buying blocks and blocks of old neighborhoods and building excessively beautiful and expensive buildings under their Non-profit status, I'm thinking there's some blatantly obvious areas that could be at least small steps forward. 

Stop allowing medical facilities to charge absurd prices for certain things would be a great start. In my hospital stay, was tough to see my billing and each Tylenol pill was $12 

I'm told some part of this is that a fair number of patients don't pay at all for services, and another portion pays a very controlled low rate (Medicare,Medicaid).  So, they charge the rest of us $$$$$$.

I noticed my eye drops (antibac) cost me $5, the stated "rack rate" was $75.  This is a tiny bottle of moxifloxacin.

I'm very lucky to have pretty cheap and good health insurance, no doubt with those controlled rates costing other money.

I recall Obama in 2008 running on quite a bit of positive messaging, and I think it helped him.  While I frequently disagreed with him, I think it's indisputable he was a gifted, inspirational speaker, and he put it to use doing more than just criticizing McCain. 

Axelrod was a brilliant strategist. Truly.