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Nessus posted:So I have a dummy email getting RNC messages and I got this fun one today. It's cool that you have such a casual first-name basis relationship with the head of the national GOP.
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Apr 16, 2014 17:31
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Cheekio posted:Because the thread is in shambles, I figure now is as good a time as any to say your avatar might be my all time favorite. How is this thread in shambles, nobody's even arguing about circumcision or what it means to be middle class.
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Apr 16, 2014 17:31
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zoux posted:It's cool that you have such a casual first-name basis relationship with the head of the national GOP. One thing I've noticed is that the Republicans never seem to offer you random raffle prizes.
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Apr 16, 2014 17:34
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Every time I see Reince's name posted it makes me think of this article.
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Apr 16, 2014 17:36
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Captain_Maclaine posted:It's come up here and in other threads, the consensus seems to be "that guy's a shithead, his supporters are bloodthirsty loons, and the feds did the right thing backing down so we wouldn't have another Waco and/or Ruby Ridge." The big thing to watch for now is what happens when they slap him with massive civil penalties, and whether that provokes his plastic patriot pals into shooting anyone. The downside of the Federal government giving him back his cattle and leaving, is that it has emboldened the morons who went looking for a fight. This might start to happen a lot more often, in increasingly rediculous situations.
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Apr 16, 2014 17:40
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A Winner is Jew posted:
(Wife makes more than me, which I agree is a fine thing, but I'm starting to wonder if D&D goons are disproportionately, well, how do I say this without endorsing gender normati--parasitic losers.)
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Apr 16, 2014 17:41
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Well we are liberals 
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Apr 16, 2014 17:42
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Talmonis posted:The downside of the Federal government giving him back his cattle and leaving, is that it has emboldened the morons who went looking for a fight. This might start to happen a lot more often, in increasingly rediculous situations.
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Apr 16, 2014 17:56
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Biden is now on Instagram.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:03
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pangstrom posted:A trust fund and a (future) sugar momma--truly, a winner is you. Oh I'll still work because when the economy was poo poo I went through a few 3-6 month stretches of being unemployed and I got super bored after the first month and gently caress that. It just means that I don't have to always chase the high paying and high stress with high travel jobs at huge firms in my industry which will be really goddamn nice for a change since I'm already pretty burned out from it and can instead go back to working at small firms which I greatly prefer. And since the wife and I are DINK's for life we've already already agreed to live off her income after she graduates and mine will be for vacations and fun poo poo. zoux posted:Well we are liberals Speak for yourself, I'm a socialist. 
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Apr 16, 2014 18:07
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The best part of the Nevada ranch story is conservatives are now hella mad about free speech zones. My extreme right winger coworker was going off about them yesterday wondering how such a ridiculous thing could exist.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:07
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Gravel Gravy posted:I'd say they should've learned their lesson about using violent imagery against political opponents, but I doubt it. They learned it works. The base turns out, and every once in a while a nut tries to top a Dem! No downside.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:08
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Not married yet, or even considering it, plus technically I make more because she's still working on her phD at the moment, but depending on how things go maybe  Bonus: comes with foreign citizenship. Downside: not on the list of countries to which I'd really want to relocate.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:08
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mdemone posted:Heh, I'll only defend the tax code when it's being used to wipe out a piece of poo poo like Donald Rumsfeld. The accuracy of his criticism is utterly immaterial. I don't like riding on buses, but I'd buy stock in Greyhound tomorrow if the crosstown express ran him over in the street like a loving dog. Taxes should be easier, period. And they are in much of the developed world. Notice I have very carefully not gotten into FATCA and this level of insanity because it's niche for most of you and would get off-topic for 99% of America. Still my President 
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Apr 16, 2014 18:11
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zoux posted:Every time I see Reince's name posted it makes me think of this article. My favorite thing about Reince Priebus was mentioned on this forum by someone I can't remember (I think it was in one of the 2012 election threads): If you remove all the vowels from his first and last name, "Reince Preibus" becomes "RNC PR BS". That's loving magical and the only proof I will ever need that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:15
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ReindeerF posted:Saying that our current tax code is hosed up and complex and not accessible for everyone is not some Republican attack on the tax code, and I'm not riding with Hitler here, it's reality the same way that saying that it's a barrier making people get an ID and drive to a certain place between certain hours and pass modern day poll tests and so on to vote is reality. Yes, you're all very smart and this all makes sense and you can figure it out, I agree, but for a lot of people it's made really complicated and they don't need to own companies for it to be so. The simple change of allowing the IRS to automatically calculate everything for you instead of requiring everyone to file their own returns would solve this issue for most people whose primary source of income is wages earned, i.e., most people. TurboTax-type online filers already have the difficulty of doing your taxes down to an hour or so and most of that time is collecting and entering the data, all of which the IRS has already gathered from employers. Past that things *can* get very complicated, especially if the wage earner has a year with unusual income (i.e., inherit and sell a house or something) but in most of those cases if you have enough income to have that problem you have the income to hire a professional to help you with it all. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Apr 16, 2014 |
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Apr 16, 2014 18:15
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The simple change of allowing the IRS to automatically calculate everything for you instead of requiring everyone to file their own returns would solve this issue for everyone whose primary source of income is wages earned. TurboTax-type online filers already have the difficulty of doing your taxes down to an hour or so and most of that time is collecting and entering the data, all of which the IRS has already gathered from employers. Well, gee, why doesn't the IRS just do it for us then?
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Apr 16, 2014 18:17
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zoux posted:Well, gee, why doesn't the IRS just do it for us then? Yeup, exactly. I mean, it's a problem, but it's not a problem of complexity for most people, it's a problem of lobbyists and entrenched political power. We could make most people's tax filing even easier than voting, if we wanted to.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:20
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Eulogistics posted:My favorite thing about Reince Priebus was mentioned on this forum by someone I can't remember (I think it was in one of the 2012 election threads): If you remove all the vowels from his first and last name, "Reince Preibus" becomes "RNC PR BS". That's loving magical and the only proof I will ever need that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Between that and "My Ultimate Ann Rand Porn" maybe there are mythological tricksters behind all this...
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Apr 16, 2014 18:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeup, exactly. I mean, it's a problem, but it's not a problem of complexity for most people, it's a problem of lobbyists and entrenched political power. We could make most people's tax filing even easier than voting, if we wanted to. I think it's hilarious how anti-tax advocates actively fight making tax filing easier because they want to make it as painful as possible for as many people as possible. Radish posted:Between that and "My Ultimate Ann Rand Porn" maybe there are mythological tricksters behind all this... It's absurd. If I were writing a hack obvious satire of right wing politics I couldn't come up with a WASPier name than Reince Priebus.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:20
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mr. mephistopheles posted:The best part of the Nevada ranch story is conservatives are now hella mad about free speech zones. My extreme right winger coworker was going off about them yesterday wondering how such a ridiculous thing could exist. Yeah that was one of the parts of it that didn't get talked about much around here but that was endlessly amusing. Now they're upset about them. Like they're some sort of brand new thing and not something that started under Bush (or possibly earlier I dunno).
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Apr 16, 2014 18:26
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ReidRansom posted:Yeah that was one of the parts of it that didn't get talked about much around here but that was endlessly amusing. Now they're upset about them. Like they're some sort of brand new thing and not something that started under Bush (or possibly earlier I dunno). I remember talking with my brother about Free Speech zones as recently as a year ago and he had no clue they even existed and had never heard of them before, despite listening to Fox and Rush daily. Don't underestimate the bubble.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:28
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My favorite protest event was when the local judge got arrested randomly while walking around during the WTO in Miami. I mean how poo poo didn't implode when a random, non-protesting judge gets harassed and arrested due to these insane speech zone laws, that's beyond me. Judges have some pretty serious pull and are taken fairly seriously.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:30
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They started back in the 80's (I believe in order to keep protesters away from the DNC) but have been greatly expanded in recent years since politicians of all stripes enjoy them.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:30
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zoux posted:Well, gee, why doesn't the IRS just do it for us then? This is one of those things that I've actively chosen not to spend a lot of time thinking about, but every year it winds up ticking away in the back of my head when I press that Turbotax button that auto-retrieves your W2 info from the IRS server. Makes me feel like some psych-study subject, like I'm vaguely aware that I'm being tricked but can't even figure out what kind of experiment I'm in.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:37
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mdemone posted:This is one of those things that I've actively chosen not to spend a lot of time thinking about, but every year it winds up ticking away in the back of my head when I press that Turbotax button that auto-retrieves your W2 info from the IRS server. Makes me feel like some psych-study subject, like I'm vaguely aware that I'm being tricked but can't even figure out what kind of experiment I'm in. Sorry, it's literally a multilateral conspiracy.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:39
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zoux posted:It's absurd. If I were writing a hack obvious satire of right wing politics I couldn't come up with a WASPier name than Reince Priebus. "Albert Carrington." BOOM. e: Charles Fairchild, Herbert Ronsonby-Smythe III, Alexander Endicott... I could go on all day (and very well might; this is fun) loquacius fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Apr 16, 2014 |
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Apr 16, 2014 18:39
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loquacius posted:"Albert Carrington." BOOM. Englebert Hornsby, Esq.
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Apr 16, 2014 18:56
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mdemone posted:This is one of those things that I've actively chosen not to spend a lot of time thinking about, but every year it winds up ticking away in the back of my head when I press that Turbotax button that auto-retrieves your W2 info from the IRS server. Makes me feel like some psych-study subject, like I'm vaguely aware that I'm being tricked but can't even figure out what kind of experiment I'm in. Wait, what? I used TurboTax to do my taxes this year and didn't see any such thing. I wouldn't have noticed it in past years, because I was a 1099 contractor for a few years, but I had to manually input the contents of my W2 this year. Also, I must say, doing your taxes for a year in which you were mostly paid as a W2 employee with a brief period of working as a 1099 contractor puts in very stark relief how badly you get screwed on taxes by 1099 work.
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Apr 16, 2014 19:01
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thefncrow posted:Wait, what? I used TurboTax to do my taxes this year and didn't see any such thing. I wouldn't have noticed it in past years, because I was a 1099 contractor for a few years, but I had to manually input the contents of my W2 this year. Only some employers sign up for whatever is needed for the IRS to be able to auto-fill your W2 information.
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Apr 16, 2014 19:03
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https://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/...es%203-7-14.pdf Whelp, it's official. Princeton study on how society functions from a policy point of view, and (who would have guessed it?) we're an Oligarchy. quote:Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens Majoritarian Electoral Democracy is 'the populace actually controls the country,' Economic Elite Democracy is what it sounds like, that you only get a real say in things if you're rich as hell, Majoritarian Pluralism is that while the majority view will dominate, there will be room enough for all and that the Tyranny of the Majority won't actually happen, and Biased Pluralism is pluralism for the rich. And, if you couldn't guess already, our country is owned and operated by the wealthy Probably won't change anything about anything, but it's an interesting read, even if the results are depressing. quote:When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy. E: Don't even care though, cause Joe Biden's instagram is magical already Magres fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Apr 16, 2014 |
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Apr 16, 2014 19:10
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Thug Lyfe
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Apr 16, 2014 19:12
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Greg Brannon, running for Senate in North Carolina, who used to run a conspiracy theorist website, and who has been endorsed by Rand Paul, has some thoughts on taxation.quote:“When has central planning worked, Bill?” Brannon said. “It’s called Holocaust, it’s called Soviet Union, it’s called, you know, apartheid. Central planning does not work but America’s version of it is better? Think about that. You pay your property tax every single year on the same property and if you don’t pay it the government takes it away. So who owns that property, Bill?” You know who else collected taxes to fund a central government....
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Apr 16, 2014 19:16
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Joementum posted:Greg Brannon, running for Senate in North Carolina, who used to run a conspiracy theorist website, and who has been endorsed by Rand Paul, has some thoughts on taxation. HITLER! It's Hitler right?
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Apr 16, 2014 19:18
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Joementum posted:Greg Brannon, running for Senate in North Carolina, who used to run a conspiracy theorist website, and who has been endorsed by Rand Paul, has some thoughts on taxation. Hyperbole is used in politics sometimes, I'm told  (seriously though in addition to making the most tenuous Godwin ever that guy just sucks at speaking in coherent sentences)
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Apr 16, 2014 19:20
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Magres posted:Whelp, it's official. Princeton study on how society functions from a policy point of view, and (who would have guessed it?) we're an Oligarchy. I wonder what the political landscape will look like once the American oligarchy really settles in and hits its stride. Post-Soviet Russia? And what should activism look like in an oligarchy?
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Apr 16, 2014 19:21
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^^^- like pre-Soviet Russia  mdemone posted:This is one of those things that I've actively chosen not to spend a lot of time thinking about, but every year it winds up ticking away in the back of my head when I press that Turbotax button that auto-retrieves your W2 info from the IRS server. Makes me feel like some psych-study subject, like I'm vaguely aware that I'm being tricked but can't even figure out what kind of experiment I'm in.
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Apr 16, 2014 19:21
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Gravel Gravy posted:HITLER! It's Hitler right? Close, it was FDR (who was America's Hitler) since he not only collected taxes to fund the government, he used government for central planned things like the TVA, WPA, and NRA.
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Apr 16, 2014 19:22
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loquacius posted:"Albert Carrington." BOOM. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.
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Apr 16, 2014 19:23
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loquacius posted:Hyperbole is used in politics sometimes, I'm told I for one am just shocked that a conspiracy theorist backed by Rand Paul has a hard time communicating in a non-crazy way.
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