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Here we are again, in a brand spanking new US Politics Discussion thread for April 2015, where keeping discussion on topic is like herding cats... Budgets and gay bashing and entitlement reform and mandatory Ted Cruz/Bibi Netanyahu speeches (take your pick), oh my! What a month it's been, and it's only getting better as Republicans continue to stymie Republicans at every turn. Oh well, at least there's still two out of three functioning branches of government. Too bad Obama's done just about everything he can as president, and SCOTUS has done just about everything they can to do the opposite. Yes, that's right, the country is still going down the tubes, faster than ever. Yes, that’s right, the country is still going down the tubes, and faster than ever. And this thread is your ticket to the fun! Just head on down the train to Acceleration Station, show your ticket to friendly conductor John Boehner, and away we go! 114th Congress Bingo Card Every month it's worth reviewing what the 114th Congress is up to. After all, it's the cause of any number of hangovers over the past few months, and it's always worth reminding ourselves of drunken stupors both long past and yet to come.
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Talk to other goons (why would you want to do that?) Remember that we have an IRC channel at synirc in #poligoon for livesteaming stuff. Goon Recommendations Documentaries
Talks Long pieces
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Twitter feeds
Related threads "US Politics" is an incredibly broad topic, as A) the country is freaking huge and B) given our role in international events pretty much everything impacts us. So there are other subthreads 2016 Presidential Primary 2016 US Senate Elections SCOTUS thread Right Wing Media There are also regional subthreads that are usually pretty slow, but sometimes cross-pollinate with this thread when something important is happening. Pacific Northwest Illinois Texas California There was a South thread, too, but it's been dead since last July. Lifted the rest of the above from FriedChicken. As before post suggestions for adding to the above and I'll edit them in if I see them. And remember folks, drink chat goes in D&D chat thread. Drink responsibly. Your liver will thank you.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 08:01 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 13:25 |
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So with Ted's announcement and the others soon to follow, when will GOP primary season officially be in full swing, May? June?
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 08:15 |
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Evil Fluffy posted:So with Ted's announcement and the others soon to follow, when will GOP primary season officially be in full swing, May? June? Im pretty sure that depends on when everybody's book comes out, no need to fake run until there's money in it. edit: serious answer, basically whenever Jeb announces will be the beginning and end of GOP primary season, everything outside that is delusion / self promotion. Spaceman Future! fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Apr 1, 2015 |
# ? Apr 1, 2015 08:21 |
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Evil Fluffy posted:So with Ted's announcement and the others soon to follow, when will GOP primary season officially be in full swing, May? June? The first debate in 2011 was in May. The first "official" debate this go around is August, but who knows, we might get a Newsmax or Values Voters debate this cycle too that no one can turn down. EDIT: Oh hey, in "news that probably belongs in the Middle East thread", look what Obama just did. ComradeCosmobot fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Apr 1, 2015 |
# ? Apr 1, 2015 08:24 |
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Spaceman Future! posted:Im pretty sure that depends on when everybody's book comes out, no need to fake run until there's money in it. Just as long as the Reagan debate in September is still on.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 08:35 |
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Not content to let Indiana and Arkansas get all the attention, the Texas House Votes to Defund HIV Prevention to Pay for Abstinence Education.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 08:44 |
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PostNouveau posted:Not content to let Indiana and Arkansas get all the attention, the Texas House Votes to Defund HIV Prevention to Pay for Abstinence Education. quote:House Democrats fought against the amendment in a debate that rapidly devolved into awkward farce, with Rep. Spitzer revealing details of his own sexual history as proof of the effectiveness of abstinence. For those keeping tabs at home, he was a virgin until marrying his wife at age 29, although he declined to answer a question from Rep. Harold Dutton (D-Houston) on whether she was the first person he propositioned. “Decorum,” shouted state Rep. Jason Isaac (R-Dripping Springs). Which state will have the next pants-on-head insane episode and create the next horrific piece of legislature? Samurai Sanders fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Apr 1, 2015 |
# ? Apr 1, 2015 08:50 |
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PostNouveau posted:Not content to let Indiana and Arkansas get all the attention, the Texas House Votes to Defund HIV Prevention to Pay for Abstinence Education. Hahaha: quote:House Democrats fought against the amendment in a debate that rapidly devolved into awkward farce, with Rep. Spitzer revealing details of his own sexual history as proof of the effectiveness of abstinence. For those keeping tabs at home, he was a virgin until marrying his wife at age 29, although he declined to answer a question from Rep. Harold Dutton (D-Houston) on whether she was the first person he propositioned. “Decorum,” shouted state Rep. Jason Isaac (R-Dripping Springs)
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 08:52 |
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Yes, that's right, the country is still going down the tubes, faster than ever. Yes, that’s right, the country is still going down the tubes, and faster than ever. So important, he said it twice. Also, this HIV prevention defunding sounds particular stupid given the ongoing outbreak in Indiana—and it's not like Texas doesn't have a relatively high infection rate already. It's like we're back in the 80s.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 09:50 |
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I don't think it's stupidity that makes people like that destroy programs that stop the spread of a disease associated in their minds with sinners.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 10:11 |
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Oh no, surely not. I was just thinking in terms of the amendment itself; there are far worse adjectives that should be used to describe the people who introduced it and voted for it.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 11:07 |
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Samurai Sanders posted:Holy hell.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 12:04 |
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FlamingLiberal posted:Probably us here in FL with that bill that would make it illegal for trans people to use the restroom they feel comfortable the most in using, which also allows people to file civil suits against businesses that don't abide by that law. It's so disgustingly bigoted it's not even funny. Ahahaha! I have a right to run my business however I want, if I don't want to serve gays that's my business and the government needs to respect it! Unless I want to accommodate a transperson, then I want to government right there to make me do what they say and tell me to go gently caress myself!
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 12:13 |
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Bel Shazar posted:I think the brouhaha over Chick-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby have changed the ground rules. The funniest part of the Chic-Fil-A brouhaha is that Republicans are sick of eating it now. quote:After the State of the Union speech in January, Sen. Lisa Murkowski pressed past the phalanx of shouting reporters in Statuary Hall and snaked her way through the Capitol toward the Senate chamber and a smaller, quieter gaggle of reporters. It was nearly midnight on a long day that had also featured the year's first meeting of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, whose help Murkowski will need in her 2016 reelection bid; in 2010, the Alaska Republican lost the GOP nomination and had to mount a write-in campaign to keep her seat. But when I asked her what had happened at the NRSC meeting, the senator's mind went not to strategy and fundraising, but to food. "It was Chick-fil-A! We always have Chick-fil-A!" she complained. "I don't mind Chick-fil-A every now and again, but you know, here's my deal: I'm really trying to eat healthier. I don't know what they coat that Chick-fil-A stuff in."
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 12:21 |
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The secret ingredient is hate.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 12:24 |
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Here's the crisis schedule for the rest of the year. May 31: The Highway Trust Fund expires. June 1: Key provisions of the U.S.A. Patriot Act expire. June 30: The Export-Import Bank’s authorization expires. Oct. 1: Current funding for U.S. government expires. Sometime in October: According to the Congressional Budget Office, this is around the time the U.S. will reach the debt ceiling.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 12:27 |
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Don't forget that mean old Obama wants to make up new overtime rules that will kill the retail industry If managers can't work 90 hours a week for $25,000 a year, how can we expect to be successful!?
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 12:33 |
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Luigi Thirty posted:Don't forget that mean old Obama wants to make up new overtime rules that will kill the retail industry If managers can't work 90 hours a week for $25,000 a year, how can we expect to be successful!? It's going to quadruple the price of walmart underwear packs! OH NO.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 12:49 |
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Luigi Thirty posted:Don't forget that mean old Obama wants to make up new overtime rules that will kill the retail industry If managers can't work 90 hours a week for $25,000 a year, how can we expect to be successful!? This might be one of the most important things he's done, as far as my life is concerned (I already have free healthcare). Changing this is going to fundamentally alter how just about every chain business operates, assuming the DoL doesn't leave in a ton of loopholes or whatever. quote:They may also bring back complicated and burdensome duties tests that would attempt to categorize and segregate management responsibilities from other tasks in a retail or restaurant establishments. Yeah, this right here is going to really piss them off. Pretending low-level workers are all managers and making them exempt has been saving these companies a ton of money. edit Is that really the best argument they've got? That if their managers can't micromanage then everything will fall apart? Sir Tonk fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Apr 1, 2015 |
# ? Apr 1, 2015 13:38 |
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Sir Tonk posted:..assuming the DoL doesn't leave in a ton of loopholes or whatever. 2 words: Independent Contractors
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 13:42 |
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ErIog posted:2 words: Independent Contractors Yeah, but if the laws on how those are used are actually enforced, then they wouldn't be able to used them as much as they want. There's a ton of restrictions in that regard, but the people working never want to make it an issue since they'd lose the gig. If the DoL were to go out and interview people doing those jobs (unannounced, of course), it would get kinda ugly.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 13:48 |
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I had forgotten how messed up the Terry Schiavo situation was. I happened to catch Maddow last night who was comparing Jeb Bush's involvement in the Schiavo case to Mike Pence's current situation. I was not as tuned in politically when that thing went down but in retrospect it seems pretty gross. It also seems like the epitome of government getting involved in peoples personal lives. I'd like to think that situation that would ruin any shot Jeb would have at the presidency.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 13:57 |
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The Queehrmacht rolls through GOPoland.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:17 |
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Pence crumbles under the might of Big Gay
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:19 |
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Gay Mafia forces Pence to go down.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:20 |
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Sir Tonk posted:
Their duties are greater than 100% therefore we should not have to pay them for having greater than 100% of duties. Yea that makes sense. Like why the gently caress bother complaining about the middle class might not be feeling the positive effects of the recovering economy when you're doing everything you can to stop them from making more money? Doctor Butts fucked around with this message at 14:23 on Apr 1, 2015 |
# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:21 |
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VitalSigns posted:I don't think it's stupidity that makes people like that destroy programs that stop the spread of a disease associated in their minds with sinners. That's certainly a feel-good conclusion! Well, let's take a look in more detail, shall we? First, here's the original amendment. So they're "defunding" and "destroying" a program/budget line called "A.2.2 - HIV/STD prevention". Seems pretty bad. But then if you look at the full budget, you can see they've allocated $191 million each year to the program. So, like a re-allocation of less than 1%. Huh.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:22 |
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joeburz posted:Pence crumbles under the might of Big Gay Need to relax the anus.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:24 |
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TheDisreputableDog posted:So, like a re-allocation of less than 1%. From a useful program to one that provably does not work, for ideological reasons.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:25 |
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Big Gay is a power top. Pence getting his poo poo wrecked was inevitable.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:26 |
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Sir Tonk posted:This might be one of the most important things he's done, as far as my life is concerned (I already have free healthcare). Changing this is going to fundamentally alter how just about every chain business operates, assuming the DoL doesn't leave in a ton of loopholes or whatever. Actually the graphic shows the disconnect between these assholes and reality, their argument is that if they aren't able to exploit managers for more than "100%" of their day it will increase costs. Which seems reasonable to them since exploitation has become common practice but you dont see any upper management members taking on jobs and increasing their roles past "100%" of their work day just to reduce costs to the end customer. As soon as the Applebees CEO starts running janitorial and busing tables after expanding his hours to 12-14 a day in the name of reducing costs to the customer Ill buy this bullshit argument. Any sane business sees a role that is taking disproportionately more time than other roles and assigns additional labor to it counting it as a normal cost of business. These pricks go the opposite route and want to exploit a single person as much as they can so that money can be applied to, and they expect us to believe this, the customer and not the company gross. Corporate america is lucky I don't have the ability to detonate heads remotely using the power of my brain because I wish nothing but bad things on these pricks. ed: For those of you counting at home that brings the people I would give remote aneurysms up quite a bit from Meter maids (and probably 90% of all active police to go with that), the TSA and just to lump in probably a good part of the political apparatus. Spaceman Future! fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Apr 1, 2015 |
# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:28 |
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I really enjoy that NRF page trying to say that just because a rule is from the 70's, when wages reached their highest real point, that it's old an antiquated and should be left in the past with bell-bottoms. Who are the National Retail Foundation paid shills for, if anyone knows?Bob James posted:The secret ingredient is hate. The secret ingredient is actually deep-frying them inside a pressure cooker.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:32 |
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TheDisreputableDog posted:That's certainly a feel-good conclusion! Well, let's take a look in more detail, shall we? Yes cutting 1% of a program that saves lives, despite population growth alone requiring more resources, will kill people and is pretty bad, I agree.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:35 |
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Spaceman Future! posted:ed: For those of you counting at home that brings the people I would give remote aneurysms up quite a bit from Meter maids (and probably 90% of all active police to go with that), the TSA and just to lump in probably a good part of the political apparatus.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:42 |
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Hey, your creepy obsession with talking about meter maids really bothers me. Can you cut it out? I think you have to mention it more than once and once as a self deprecating referential joke for it to be obsession or am I reading this flow chart wrong
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:59 |
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Wulfolme posted:I really enjoy that NRF page trying to say that just because a rule is from the 70's, when wages reached their highest real point, that it's old an antiquated and should be left in the past with bell-bottoms. Who are the National Retail Foundation paid shills for, if anyone knows? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Retail_Federation
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 15:00 |
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I posted this in the last thread but it was buried under a sea of dorks telling boring 9/11 stories. Koch brothers caught impersonating randos in order to make it seem like more people hate net neutrality than actually exist: quote:Many of the critical statements from American Commitment's past email petitions began arriving in lawmakers' inboxes en masse earlier this month. To solicit support, the group used display ads that asked visitors to sound off against the FCC's net neutrality rules. Those messages were then delivered March 5-10 in the House and March 8-15 in the Senate, according to Kerpen. You can bet this has happened before and they haven't been caught, and you can bet this will happen again. You can also bet that this will never become a major news story and will slowly slide into the memory hole.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 15:04 |
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Xibanya posted:I posted this in the last thread but it was buried under a sea of dorks telling boring 9/11 stories. The disturbing part is that we will never ever build protections in against ultra wealthy douchebags treating the entire country as their own personal ant farm. Our entire political system is structured in a way that assumes that monetary corruption can not be limitless in scope, the founders just assumed that no one could consolidate that much influence. There is no recourse against the Koch brothers, they can do literally anything they want and they are above punitive damages. As far as the political landscape and thus the landscape of the U.S. is concerned they are god.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 15:13 |
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I agree, their influence over President Romney has been a disaster for this country.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 15:18 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 13:25 |
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Not linking to the full post in the March thread since it's locked and won't let me, but re: this It's the usual thing of the city/state wanting taxi companies to follow the law, but with the added twist of the banks pressuring the politicians to enforce the law for $$$ reasons and Uber spamming out a form letter for its users. This is the response a tired intern makes to one of those form letters, nothing malicious.
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# ? Apr 1, 2015 15:22 |