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BraveUlysses posted:I love the idea of being too principled to take government money but not being principled enough to not be a loving shithead to people who do choose to take that money. Have you been chatting with my old high school friend, the one who bought a new house with a tax credit, and gets tax credits for her twins, and oh, can't forget she used food stamps for a year and then dropped off 'right away because as long as the girls are fed, my husband and I can go without.' She also works from home in a cushy job, has a lot of family support, and wasn't too proud to ask me for some practical gifts when her twins were born, because she couldn't afford $20 for a fan during the summer heat wave. But less than a year later she was raving and ranting about the EBT fuckup in Walmart, how 'those people' were stealing televisions and electronics and SHE GOT DIRTY LOOKS WHEN SHE BOUGHT LOBSTER TAILS WHEN SHE WAS ON FOOD STAMPS AND THAT WAS ONLY ONCE. I was so pressed to ask her why she felt she 'deserved' lobster tails when she was using MY TAX DOLLARS to feed herself. She should have eaten only rice and beans and been loving thankful! Then again she also went stupid crazy about how women who dress to 'show off' are asking for trouble and clearly don't respect themselves so why should she respect them? I bet she thinks welfare 'people' should have to take drugs tests too. Another friend on FB is always posting how everyone on welfare needs to be drug tested, and Obama is ruining America, and how welfare whores make more babies to get more money. So tempted to ask how her three kids are that she abandoned, that are living with their father and surely on assistance, because Mommy decided she was done being a mom and disappeared one day. Oh, and then she had her third kid, and shipped it back to her ex-husband, all the while ranting that welfare queens are taking money from hard-working moms like her.
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Jan 14, 2014 22:53
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Soviet Commubot posted:Deep thoughts from a bunch of old Army buddies about freedom. Where can I find a country that hasn't learned from the mistakes of any country previous to it? We should just go bugs bunny and cut Florida off the map and then send people like this there to be "free" It would end up being some hybrid of The Road game and judge dredd.
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Jan 14, 2014 22:59
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Soviet Commubot posted:Deep thoughts from a bunch of old Army buddies about freedom. This reeks of first world problems so bad I can smell the cheeseburgers through my monitor.
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Jan 14, 2014 23:18
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 Here's a fun one from the otherwise decent guy who caretakers the site where I occasionally do field work. This is at least the third different crazy Benghazi conspiracy theory I've seen him post. EDIT: Oh for gently caress's sake: 
Lemniscate Blue fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 03:33
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BatteredFeltFedora posted:EDIT: Oh for gently caress's sake: Gee, that sounds like a familiar storyline, I wonder if  ...yep 
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Jan 15, 2014 03:58
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Radish posted:I wonder if they are too honorable to take the tax deduction for their mortgage. "No no see it's different from welfare, that's MY money, I earned it!" The tax-supported systems in place that allow them to have jobs and get decent compensation are invisible to them, so they see no need to spend one thin dime maintaining them. I remember my dad telling me that I have never benefited from the government WHILE WE WERE DRIVING ON A PUBLIC ROAD. 
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Jan 15, 2014 04:08
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Renaissance Robot posted:Gee, that sounds like a familiar storyline, I wonder if If Obama was actually planning an Order 66-esque purge of the Tea Partiers I'd probably unironically support it at this point.
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Jan 15, 2014 04:13
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Gen. Ripper posted:If Obama was actually planning an Order 66-esque purge of the Tea Partiers I'd probably unironically support it at this point. This calls for a new GBS Star Wars gif-editing thread.
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Jan 15, 2014 04:23
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BatteredFeltFedora posted:
Apparently to Benghazi truthers, "relieved of his command 30 seconds later" means "he stepped down and retired 7 months later on April 5, 2013." losonti tokash fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 04:27
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losonti tokash posted:Apparently to Benghazi truthers, "relieved of his command 30 seconds later" means "he stepped down and retired 7 months later on April 5, 2013." After a nine month succession process beginning in July of the previous year. Obama and his time machine!
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Jan 15, 2014 05:27
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I think focusing on the timeline is the way to go on Benghazi. So "Oh, poo poo. Gunfire" occurred at time X. What time did this General get an email? How many minutes away was he? Is that before or after the CIA guys from the annex showed up? I hate this topic so much because it's so hard to figure out what bullshit timeline they've imagined.
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Jan 15, 2014 05:40
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2:05 PM - BENGHAZI ATTACK STARTS 2:15 PM - OBAMA GETS REPORT 2:25 PM - OBAMA HANGS OUT AND PARTIES WITH BEYONCE 2:35 PM - OBAMA ON OPRAH, PROMOTING LATEST BOOK 2:45 PM - OBAMA PLACES CALL TO HIS MOTHER IN HOMELAND OF KENYA, AFRICA 2:55 PM - OBAMA TELLS MARINES TO STAND DOWN, EXPLAINING "I DON'T CARE ABOUT AMERICAN VALUES OR LIVES" 2:65 PM - OBAMA USES WASHROOM, DELIBERATELY WIPES WITH AMERICAN FLAG EVEN WHEN TOILET PAPER WAS WELL WITHIN REACH
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Jan 15, 2014 05:45
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Sir Rolo posted:2:05 PM - BENGHAZI ATTACK STARTS That's good
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Jan 15, 2014 05:47
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I still don't get why they chose that particular event to fixate on, when there have been any number of other events during Obama's presidency in which American personnel on foreign soil were killed. Yeah, Obama didn't have anything directly to do with them and couldn't have done anything even if he had physically been there at the time, but the thing is, the same goes for Benghazi. If they're going to pick a particular attack to make poo poo up about, what's the significance of this specific one?
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Jan 15, 2014 05:49
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Is 2:65PM a typo or a deliberate joke? Either way, I laughed  Mister Bates posted:I still don't get why they chose that particular event to fixate on, when there have been any number of other events during Obama's presidency in which American personnel on foreign soil were killed. Yeah, Obama didn't have anything directly to do with them and couldn't have done anything even if he had physically been there at the time, but the thing is, the same goes for Benghazi. If they're going to pick a particular attack to make poo poo up about, what's the significance of this specific one? It is connected with a foreign policy success (the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime) that the right-wing wrongly predicted would become a quagmire. It also figured heavily in their candidate looking like an idiot, so it helps them convince themselves that they would have won if the MSM hadn't covered up Obama's liiiiiiiiies! 
VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 05:49
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Mister Bates posted:I still don't get why they chose that particular event to fixate on, when there have been any number of other events during Obama's presidency in which American personnel on foreign soil were killed. Yeah, Obama didn't have anything directly to do with them and couldn't have done anything even if he had physically been there at the time, but the thing is, the same goes for Benghazi. If they're going to pick a particular attack to make poo poo up about, what's the significance of this specific one? I think it's because conservatives were already paying attention to the response to the Innocence of Muslims video, so they could point out how VIOLENT and IRRATIONAL Muslims are.
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Jan 15, 2014 05:53
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Mister Bates posted:I still don't get why they chose that particular event to fixate on, when there have been any number of other events during Obama's presidency in which American personnel on foreign soil were killed. Yeah, Obama didn't have anything directly to do with them and couldn't have done anything even if he had physically been there at the time, but the thing is, the same goes for Benghazi. If they're going to pick a particular attack to make poo poo up about, what's the significance of this specific one? It happened on 9/11, and close enough to the elections that Right had to fixate on it because they needed something to make Obama look as bad as all the other poo poo that Romney managed to pull (including Romney's own lovely response to Benghazi!)
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Jan 15, 2014 05:54
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Mister Bates posted:I still don't get why they chose that particular event to fixate on, when there have been any number of other events during Obama's presidency in which American personnel on foreign soil were killed. Yeah, Obama didn't have anything directly to do with them and couldn't have done anything even if he had physically been there at the time, but the thing is, the same goes for Benghazi. If they're going to pick a particular attack to make poo poo up about, what's the significance of this specific one? The right was pretty pissed that Romney came off as a complete tool with a poo poo eating grin after blasting the administration about the event. A lot of people likely blame that as something that seriously hurt Romney so they have to justify it as a grand conspiracy. At least that's my interpretation.
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Jan 15, 2014 06:04
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Not only did Romney look like a huge rear end for grinning about people getting killed, he did it while accusing the Obama administration of malfeasance without any basis in fact. Republicans have to try to pin something on Obama, retroactively justifying him, or else admit to being despicable liars.
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Jan 15, 2014 11:05
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Mornacale posted:Republicans have to try to pin something on Obama, retroactively justifying him, or else admit to being despicable liars. Ahahahahahaha *whew* Never stopped the Republican leadership or conservative media yet. They hammer something as long as the base eats it up, then if something disproves it, they either ignore that, call it a cover-up, or it goes down the memory hole.
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Jan 15, 2014 13:17
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prom candy posted:Someone in this thread said that the best response to anecdotes of welfare fraud are "well did you report it?" and then "why not?" I actually pulled this line of reasoning on my boss the other day about disability abuse. He leans pretty liberal on some things, but he's apparently convinced that welfare queens are now disability queens. I made the statement that while there is quite likely abuse of the system, I thought the extent of it was overestimated by a lot of people; and that I personally don't know anyone who qualifies as an abuser of the system. He claimed that he knew a few, and I asked him if he'd reported them for abuse and when he replied that he did not I asked him how that didn't make him as much a part of the problem as those who abuse it, since unreported crimes don't get investigated. He fell back on "Well you don't turn in your friends, and I didn't come in here to be put on trial for not reporting them" and ended the discussion abruptly. It's kind of funny because he's pretty solidly upper middle class and close to retirement age, so I doubt he really knows anyone personally abusing disability, but he is ex-military and it's probable that some of his old military buddies do collect and most likely meet the criteria to be considered disabled, to one degree or another.
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Jan 15, 2014 15:11
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NatasDog posted:"Well you don't turn in your friends" But you do rant at colleagues and possibly complete strangers about the way your friends support themselves? 
Renaissance Robot fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 15:25
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My dad is ex-military and now works with a bunch of contractors that include a lot of other guys that were in the service. He said he knows a few that scammed disability but they were all caught and totally hosed. That combined with the recent bust of the police and firefighters that were claiming disability from 9/11 then getting in trouble when the feds found out they weren't leads me to believe that the odious cases are eventually caught. It feels to me it's a crime that does happen and people see it but what they aren't aware of is the system in place that's in the process of building a case against that person to prosecute instead of just instantly landing the cheat in jail the second they collect money illegally.
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Jan 15, 2014 15:28
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BatteredFeltFedora posted:EDIT: Oh for gently caress's sake: Nibs? What the hell is that? A new code word for people too scared to just say "nigs" or worse?
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Jan 15, 2014 16:11
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De Nomolos posted:Nibs? What the hell is that? A new code word for people too scared to just say "nigs" or worse? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nibs More an old word that suggests the speaker is someone's grandfather.
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Jan 15, 2014 16:17
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NatasDog posted:I actually pulled this line of reasoning on my boss the other day about disability abuse. He leans pretty liberal on some things, but he's apparently convinced that welfare queens are now disability queens. I made the statement that while there is quite likely abuse of the system, I thought the extent of it was overestimated by a lot of people; and that I personally don't know anyone who qualifies as an abuser of the system. I actually work for ssa disability as a dba- So I know the actual stats about our allowance rates, fraud dealings, etc. Not only is the allowance rate already quite low (Around 30% ish here in Florida), there just isn't that much fraud that gets reported. The majority of our incident reports, by *far* are either people threatening suicide (Which we have to take seriously, for obvious reasons), or people calling in bomb threats or telling examiners that they're going to come in and shoot everyone in the office. There was a guy that called in the day of the Boston Marathon bombing that said he was "Going to go all Timothy McVeigh on our bitch asses, and had we heard of him, motherfucker?" (This will surprise approximately no one, but the most common claim in florida is mental related  )Quite aside from all that, disability checks are loving paltry. I'd guess most are in the range of 6-800$ a month. I think blind people might get as much as 1200 a month. If you can live high on the hog off of that, more power to you.
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Jan 15, 2014 16:37
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Gwaihir posted:Quite aside from all that, disability checks are loving paltry. I'd guess most are in the range of 6-800$ a month. I think blind people might get as much as 1200 a month. If you can live high on the hog off of that, more power to you. TBH, if you live in the middle of nowhere you can get by on that sum, but you're just existing and hardly living high on the hog. My aunt was on disability after she got Tuberculosis working at a state run hospital and she moved to the middle of northern MI to live out the rest of her days. She did all right, but she had to live off hand me downs for anything you might consider a high dollar item if anything happened to break. This was in the age before things like craigslist too, so finding poo poo was a pain in the rear end if you were looking to get it on the cheap.
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Jan 15, 2014 16:49
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I got this one as a Facebook share from a pseudo-libertarian friend of mine. ** Does anyone have a link for those studies where it says Wal-Mart would only have to raise their prices $00.XX cents and they could still turn a profit while paying their workers $15.00/hour? PS. If you want some pure-strain unfiltered libertarianism, feel free to read the comments on the page this image came from: http://tinyurl.com/klgj3tx
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Jan 15, 2014 17:00
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Xarthor posted:I got this one as a Facebook share from a pseudo-libertarian friend of mine. This one has been making the rounds it seems. Libertarians just love bad math and unwarranted assumptions! sweart gliwere posted:I know the famous Berkeley brief probably isn't adored by right-wingers, but it seemed pretty solid last time I read it. Their analysis said increasing WalMart's minimum pay to $12/hr would cost their average consumer $12.49 yearly, if they passed on every single expense to the consumers.
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Jan 15, 2014 17:08
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goddamnedtwisto posted:The answer is that every country on Earth has tried that pretty much and loving idiots hosed it all up for everyone else. We've tried unrestricted farming, fishing and hunting and it leads to massive ecological collapse and famine. We've tried not having building regulations and it leads to the Great Fire of London (or insert local massive disaster here). We've tried not having taxes and it turns out that the private sector is loving terrible at providing national infrastructure that businesses and individuals need to meet their most basic needs and everyone dies from starvation/cholera/attacks from countries that can afford an organised military. If we can't trust people to do the right thing then we shouldn't give them welfare.  The arguments from original person in that Facebook post are similar to arguments for a basic/guaranteed minimum income: http://usbig.net/bigblog/2011/09/why-i-support-the-basic-income-guarantee/ quote:This argument has several problems. I’ll discuss two of them. The first problem with it is that BIG cannot be accurately characterized as something for nothing. All societies impose many rules on every individual. Consider the discussion of homelessness above. Why can’t homeless people build their own shelter and their own latrine? Why can’t they drink out of a clean river? Why can’t they hunt, gather, or plant and harvest their own food? They cannot do these things because the state has made rules saying they don’t have the right to do these things. The state has imposed rules saying that almost all the resources of the Earth belong to someone else. Those of us who benefit from the rules by which our society distributes ownership of the Earth’s natural resources benefit every day from the state’s interference with the propertyless, and we pay them no compensation. A state without BIG is the state that has something for nothing. See how they feel about giving everyone money!
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Jan 15, 2014 17:13
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Xarthor posted:I got this one as a Facebook share from a pseudo-libertarian friend of mine. As was brought up before (I believe in the D&D pictures thread), that image assumes that 1) all 2 million employees would get that raise (average doesn't really work here since the numbers are ridiculously skewed by executive salaries), 2) all of those employees are working 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and 3) that the influx of $36.15 billion into the economy would return exactly $0 to Walmart, despite the fact that the people being given it are apparently spending 56 hours a week in the store. And that's just at a surface glance of what's wrong there.
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Jan 15, 2014 17:35
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Xarthor posted:I got this one as a Facebook share from a pseudo-libertarian friend of mine. We covered this one earlier in the thread a few pages back, I think there were some good rebuttals there!
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Jan 15, 2014 17:36
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Pfirti86 posted:We covered this one earlier in the thread a few pages back, I think there were some good rebuttals there! I liked this one from a quick assessment point of view: Dr. Arbitrary posted:I did some napkin math. Obviously you should use actual research instead of this. Points out (some) of the obvious number problems in that image effectively and concisely; I don't think he touched on the 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year aspect of it. Actual research would be my suggestion too but on the other hand getting hard numbers probably isn't going to convince whoever posted this that they're wrong so weigh how important your time is to you I guess. Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 17:50
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Xarthor posted:I got this one as a Facebook share from a pseudo-libertarian friend of mine. Some of the numbers they use are wrong or wholly fabricated. The $15/hour minimum wage would only affect workers in the USA and there's only 1.4 million of them. It also assumes all of these 1.4 million workers works 56 hours a week every week ($36.15B per year / $99M per 8 hour work day = 365 8 hour work days, or 2920 hours a year or 56 hours per week). According to MakingChangeAtWalmart.org the average Walmart employee works 34 hours a week, or 1768 hours a year if they work every week per year. 1768 hours * $6.19 / hour * 1.4M employees = $15,321,488,000 per year of money to pay for employees, below the net income / profits Walmart made according to their spreadsheet. This also assumes that these people making double their income aren't going to spend it at Walmart since they work there and they can do the bulk of their shopping at the Walmart they work at increasing Walmart's profits. Also this doesn't include the CEO making $35 million per year and other employees making more than $8/hr which are included in the 1.4M figure. e: Fixed a link, also beaten e2: Found another source for the employee number here Scrublord Prime fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 17:52
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Some idiot posted:My friends, what happened to the mantra "America, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave"? Nowadays it feels like all Congress cares about is gaining as much money as it can, but nowhere have I seen it go anywhere that could need it. The economy is in the toilet, and I hear that not only is Congress trying to push a new SOPA bill even though people have raged against the first one, but now I've heard that they have the gaul of charging people to use YouTube, Xboxes, and who knows what else. We are the ones the government is meant to serve. We are the ones who support these people and keep them in office. And yet rather than repay us with adequate performance and striving to repair the damage America has taken, they sink their fangs deeper into the econony's veins wherever they feel they can draw the most sustenance. I ask you, my friends, are you going to take such actions quietly? Had this forwarded to me through a friend of mine. Just screams  GOVERNMENT BAD ARJHGGHAGH to me.
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Jan 15, 2014 18:36
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I really love whenever people complain about this country not being all that free. You wanna be like "Yeah man it's a drat shame there's still so much income inequality and some people cant even afford to see a doctor. And even then in much of the country 2 consenting adults cant marry just because they're gay" but then its just complaining that they can't carry guns openly or something.
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Jan 15, 2014 18:45
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When did (American) politics turn from "this government is bad (and our party can do better)" to "any and all kinds of government is bad"?
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Jan 15, 2014 18:47
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GreatRedSpirit posted:Some of the numbers they use are wrong or wholly fabricated. The $15/hour minimum wage would only affect workers in the USA and there's only 1.4 million of them. It also assumes all of these 1.4 million workers works 56 hours a week every week ($36.15B per year / $99M per 8 hour work day = 365 8 hour work days, or 2920 hours a year or 56 hours per week). According to MakingChangeAtWalmart.org the average Walmart employee works 34 hours a week, or 1768 hours a year if they work every week per year. 1768 hours * $6.19 / hour * 1.4M employees = $15,321,488,000 per year of money to pay for employees, below the net income / profits Walmart made according to their spreadsheet. Besides that, the macro also assumes that any pay raise would be taken directly out of net profit which is just plain idiocy.
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Jan 15, 2014 18:49
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gradenko_2000 posted:When did (American) politics turn from "this government is bad (and our party can do better)" to "any and all kinds of government is bad"? Right around January of 2009.
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Jan 15, 2014 18:49
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According to this Wal-Mart earned ~470B from sales in 2013. If they covered the ~36 billion from the macro entirely by raising prices, prices would rise by an average ~8 percent.
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Jan 15, 2014 19:04
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