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Dr. Faustus posted:If by day one you mean Feb 20th 2009, then there were 58 (D) Senators due to Franken's 7-month legal battle and even then he'd have only had 59. Not filibuster-proof. That's still a big jump to "Congress was trying to sabotage him from Day One", though. The Right was, sure.
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# ? Oct 26, 2016 23:40 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 09:19 |
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https://thenib.com/the-fall-of-dilbert It's wonderful. Wonder how Scott Adams is going to take it?
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# ? Oct 26, 2016 23:43 |
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Dr. Faustus posted:If by day one you mean Feb 20th 2009, then there were 58 (D) Senators due to Franken's 7-month legal battle and even then he'd have only had 59. Not filibuster-proof. also one of those 59 was joe lieberman edit: and ted kennedy passed away and scott loving brown won his seat. but republicans in 2009 were talking about a "41 seat majority" after that happened. Instant Sunrise fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Oct 26, 2016 |
# ? Oct 26, 2016 23:53 |
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Since nobody ever actually bothered to read the e-mails (why would they?) they contain whatever Rush needs them to. While making up things out of thin air wouldn't be surprising for Rush and Hannity, it seems generally they take something and purposely misinterpret it to suit their own agenda, like with the "Hillary Clinton hates the phrase everyday Americans!" So I wasn't sure what, if anything, was being skewed here. Anyway, Scott Adams continues to ignore the bullies on Trump's side to push his own narrative. And for those of you who pointed out Trump himself is a bully, fear not! He's addressed that! quote:If you want to watch the persuasion game-within-the-game, follow me on Twitter @ScottAdamsSays. Here’s the situation so you know what to look for. A couple of points to address. To his number one, yes, Trump absolutely has encouraged his supporters to bully Clinton supporters. Even if he didn't actually say it, his bullying of Clinton and her supporters is a pretty big way to persuade (that favorite word of his!) them that bullying is cool and good, because he does it. If it's okay for him to bully as long as he says "Do as I say, not as I do" then he has absolutely no leg to stand on to criticize Hillary for her supposed hypocrisy or negative points, because then we can say "Hey, as long as she tells OTHER people not to do what she does, then she's not encouraging it." To his number three. Wow, yes, there's absolutely no way that three people saw Scott Adams' blog post and said "Hmm, Scott Adams is clearly insane or an idiot, that might be a fun article to write about." I'm convinced, the only way a whole THREE people could have done this is if there was a coordinated effort from Hillary herself. To his number four, wow, a lot of people attacked him for saying dumb poo poo, and said Dilbert has turned into a terrible comic? No way could multiple people come up with these unbelievably brilliant attacks on their own, truly they must all be taking their talking points from a central command. And to his takeaway, that logic of "I must be totally right because if I wasn't people would ignore me" is fantastic. You can imagine all the hilarious and stupid implications that can be drawn from that. I mean, it's not as if people are looking at his posts and just want to tell him "You're a loving dumbass" because it's fun. And the sheer amount of wishful thinking that suddenly Clinton supporters will just not vote simply because they laughed at a stupid man. It's on the level of "I hate intolerance!" "Hmm but not tolerating intolerance makes YOU the intolerant one." "Oh no, I am defeated, I have seen the error of my ways and will now support hatred of gays/non-whites/women."
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# ? Oct 26, 2016 23:55 |
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Twelve by Pies posted:To his number three. Wow, yes, there's absolutely no way that three people saw Scott Adams' blog post and said "Hmm, Scott Adams is clearly insane or an idiot, that might be a fun article to write about." I'm convinced, the only way a whole THREE people could have done this is if there was a coordinated effort from Hillary herself. You ever feel like Soros gives us all the lovely assignments? It's not that I don't enjoy running a thousand odd sock puppet accounts and flooding polls with fraudulent support for Clinton, but I'd like a shot at writing a hit piece, too.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 00:03 |
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Dr. Faustus posted:Correct me if I misremember, but there were some problems with the whole "supermajority" notion. Things like blue dog dems, Al Franken's contested election, and guys unable to vote due to illness, even with the members Obama had in the Congress the 60-vote requirement (which was a definitely a day one thing) was a serious hurdle. The 60-vote control of the Senate only lasted like 6 months, because Teddy Kennedy died, but I mean, bitching about "super majorities" when you control both houses of Congress is kind hilariously greedy. They got some poo poo done. The super obstructionist Congress didn't really happen until after the first midterm when the Tea Party took the House back for R.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 00:27 |
The disappointment with the early-Obama Congress not getting all that much done is understandable IMO. It had been a really long time since both houses were blue under a Democratic president and though it wasn't quite at the level we're at now after 6 years of obstructionism, there was still a huge backlog of meaningful legislation that needed to happen and didn't.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 00:49 |
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Jazerus posted:The disappointment with the early-Obama Congress not getting all that much done is understandable IMO. It had been a really long time since both houses were blue under a Democratic president and though it wasn't quite at the level we're at now after 6 years of obstructionism, there was still a huge backlog of meaningful legislation that needed to happen and didn't. I think it was partly because Obama honestly wanted to play peacemaker and try to work the other side to get stuff done and not just pass stuff through in bulk while giving them the finger.(i dont think him wanting to work with the GOP is a bad thing, just overly idealistic) I think Clinton knows them well enough to just say gently caress that and push as much through in the year or so they have.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 00:53 |
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Dr. Faustus posted:If by day one you mean Feb 20th 2009, then there were 58 (D) Senators due to Franken's 7-month legal battle and even then he'd have only had 59. Not filibuster-proof. Plus that included Lieberman, who wasn't actually a Dem, and several guys like Nelson and Bayh who were wishy-washy. Also Ted Kennedy died. Democrats had majorities from 2009-2010, but there was significant unrelenting opposition.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 01:02 |
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Jurgan posted:Plus that included Lieberman, who wasn't actually a Dem, and several guys like Nelson and Bayh who were wishy-washy. Also Ted Kennedy died. Democrats had majorities from 2009-2010, but there was significant unrelenting opposition. I mean, minority opposition is a time-honored tradition in these united states... conflating that with "congressional obstructionism" isn't helping anyone.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 01:33 |
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I'm not sure if this is right thread for it, but I just saw this attack ad against the Democratic candidate for my congressional seat in NY and I was stunned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMJJkt63aS8 Parts of it could pretty much be recycled verbatim with a change of tone to be a favorable ad. It's absolutely ridiculous that people will watch this and agree with the message.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 02:07 |
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Chilichimp posted:I mean, minority opposition is a time-honored tradition in these united states... conflating that with "congressional obstructionism" isn't helping anyone. You've got to be kidding. There's nothing "time-honored" or "traditional" about the way Mitch McConnnell abused the filibuster. The tradition is that if one party is in control, they have a mandate to pass their agenda, and filibusters are only for extreme circumstances. "Isn't helping anyone" sounds very concern-troll, like you're trying to defend the unprecedented way the GOP has broken the institutions of government by appealing to some sense of decency. I'm not buying it.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 02:15 |
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Tritanomalicious posted:I'm not sure if this is right thread for it, but I just saw this attack ad against the Democratic candidate for my congressional seat in NY and I was stunned. Yeah it's kind of terrible that people see "We should give these people a fair trial" as a bad thing. Reminds me of Rush's tirade on single payer health care all day today, who talked about how this "health care entitlement" is all the fault of the Dems. Because, you know, wanting to actually get health care is a bad thing.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 02:21 |
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Jurgan posted:You've got to be kidding. Since when has the party-in-control ever been given free-reign to pass their agenda by the minority party? The minority has always had means to pressure the majority and has exercised it. "Golly, you guys, I know we've got some deeply held beliefs about the direction of the government, but I mean... they won this time, so hey, it's their turn." Harry Reid being huge piece of poo poo, I'm sure, had nothing to do with filibloat. I'm also not concern trolling. I just took odds with the prior statement that Obama faced congressional obstructionism from day 1, which isn't true. Chilichimp fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Oct 27, 2016 |
# ? Oct 27, 2016 02:27 |
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The Speaker of the House used to have an absurd amount of power in terms of which bills could be presented. The idea of a Senate-based filibuster was designed to counter that crazy superpower and was regularly used until 1910 when Canon abused the system so horrifically that basically everybody got together to put a stop to it. But now that the House doesn't have that particular "exploit" the Senate is free to power game and it's all hosed up. We need to fix the hole we created in 1910.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 02:32 |
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Prism posted:What does that even say? TRAITOR CRIMINAL? It looks like they were low on spraypaint, and also forgot the second T in traitor. 'Tram chlamydia'? A cautionary warning about the dangers of STDs on city transit?
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 02:53 |
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Chilichimp posted:Since when has the party-in-control ever been given free-reign to pass their agenda by the minority party? The minority has always had means to pressure the majority and has exercised it. There is a difference between extracting concessions from the majority party to get compromise legislation passed and spitefully blocking the government's ability to function for 8 drat years
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 02:58 |
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VitalSigns posted:There is a difference between extracting concessions from the majority party to get compromise legislation passed and spitefully blocking the government's ability to function for 8 drat years That right there is the core of it; the GOP's explicit goal was to do absolutely everything they possibly could to sabotage everything Obama tried to accomplish. It obviously got far, far worse when the GOP got a majority. It's worth noting that Congress broke the record for "least productive Congress ever" twice in a row. The federal government would seriously fail to accomplish anything other than renaming a building for months at a time. This is the political movement that thought it was totally OK to refuse to even pass a damned budget to hold the entire god damned nation hostage for no reason other than spite. They'd seriously happily burn the whole thing down if they can't have it. Which they've been doing. There's a huge gulf between "yeah this goes too far" and "we're going to ruin everything because the president isn't one of ours."
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 03:11 |
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I'm pretty sure the fwd:fwd:fwd groups we're all part of count for this thread, but does MoveOn know about Mail Merge functions? All of Obama, Bernie and Hillary's people do. Do that want to keep that old-timey feel with "Dear MOVEON MEMBER"?
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 03:26 |
Chilichimp posted:Since when has the party-in-control ever been given free-reign to pass their agenda by the minority party? The minority has always had means to pressure the majority and has exercised it. There is a happy medium between free reign and total obstructionism and the balance was more towards obstructionism from the beginning. It deepened tremendously in 2010 for obvious reasons but it was there from day 1, and that had very little to do with the GOP; I agree that they had the right to put pressure on the Democratic agenda from 2008-2010 as the minority, sure. Nobody is really that upset with the GOP's behavior in that time period (rather than their behavior from 2010-now) but rather with Lieberman and the Blue Dogs, who pretty much held the majority hostage to their whims. Having just emerged from an era of tremendous GOP unity it was pretty upsetting to watch a few folks who were nominally Democrats (or traditionally associated with them in the case of Lieberman) refuse to entertain the idea of Democratic unity! btw the era of the happy medium is probably gone and we're going to oscillate between extreme obstructionism in periods of divided government and free reign in periods of one-party government for the foreseeable future Jazerus fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 03:28 |
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Shbobdb posted:I'm pretty sure the fwd:fwd:fwd groups we're all part of count for this thread, but does MoveOn know about Mail Merge functions? All of Obama, Bernie and Hillary's people do. Do that want to keep that old-timey feel with "Dear MOVEON MEMBER"? Most people* know mail merge exists, and people probably perceive "Dear <your name>..." to be more sleazy than just, "Hello MoveOn member..." The latter makes it clear that everyone is receiving a similar e-mail.* The former makes it seem like they're trying to convince you they're sending you an e-mail personally. *Wouldn't be surprised if people got slightly different e-mails in order to A/B test like Obama did for his fundraising e-mails. *the pedantry abounds ErIog fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Oct 27, 2016 |
# ? Oct 27, 2016 03:29 |
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ErIog posted:Everyone know mail merge exists, and people probably perceive "Dear <your name>..." to be more sleazy than just, "Hello MoveOn member..." The latter makes it clear that everyone is receiving a similar e-mail.* The former makes it seem like they're trying to convince you they're sending you an e-mail personally. A lot of people don't though. I've had numerous customers thank me really awkwardly for my personal e-mails (some of which I don't even remember sending) and other savvy customers ask me how I'm doing what I'm doing. If you are in sales/marketing/related sure "everybody knows" but to a lot of people it is magic. It's like Coke and Pepsi. Why do they need to advertise? Because studies show that if one pulls out, the other ends up dominating that market. If both pull out, sales for all soft drinks tank. In the spirit of modern cynicism, I tried a more general mass mail since mail merge feels crazy inauthentic and I figured a tech savvy market like the San Francisco Bay Area would respond well to "authentically inauthentic" over "fake authenticity". I was very, very wrong. I repeated the same campaign with mail merge and responses were back to their normal level. It's easy to assume everyone is as tech savvy and detached as we are but that's a really bad assumption.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 03:50 |
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That right there is the core of it; the GOP's explicit goal was to do absolutely everything they possibly could to sabotage everything Obama tried to accomplish. It obviously got far, far worse when the GOP got a majority. This. Our systems were designed with the understanding that the two parties would be open to compromise for ensuring functionality. Sure, idiotic stunts were always common, but eventually, they'd have to get something done. The Republicans have completely discarded that. They have openly said that their goal was to ensure that no president outside of their party could ever see something useful get done. "Compromise" is now a dirty word. The shutdowns over the budget have proven that the Republicans would gladly watch the nation burn so long as they could score points with their base who have been radicalized to the point where they welcome that outcome. This is an utter failure of the two party system and must be rectified for any future business because we can be drat sure that it will only get worse. If there is no hope of the Republicans magically growing a sense of integrity, then we must remove the systems they have used to prevent progress of any sort for these past eight years if only to see something happen.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 05:10 |
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Chilichimp posted:Since when has the party-in-control ever been given free-reign to pass their agenda by the minority party? The minority has always had means to pressure the majority and has exercised it. You're just totally wrong about this. Of course the minority party has fought for their agenda, but preventing the majority from voting altogether was never part of the picture. They'd withhold votes, and since the parties were less polarized back then and the majority couldn't count on 100% support, they'd work across the aisle. If Johnson couldn't rely on Blue Dog Democrats, he'd make deals with northern Republicans. In the twentieth century, I can only think of one time where an organized group used parliamentary tactics to halt all work on an issue, and that was the civil rights movement. The fact is that a lot of how the government runs was based on norms, not laws. Filibusters were rare because the minority knew someday they'd be the majority, and they didn't want to open the door to that kind of abuse. Presidents were given deference over nominations, and Supreme Court justices were generally confirmed unless there were serious issues of incompetence or corruption; no SC justice ever sat waiting for a year since the Civil War (Republicans say this ended when Democrats blocked Bork, but they still gave him a hearing and an up-or-down vote). In addition, there were a lot of long-term senators who valued the Senate as an institution, and didn't want to see it become dysfunctional. The endless filibusters are completely unprecedented in American history. I'm not sure how on Earth you can blame Harry Reid for Mitch McConnell abusing the process (he was asking for it?). "We're going to break the Senate because Reid was mean to us?" No way. January 20, 2009 was day one of Barack Obama's presidency. On that day, Mitch McConnell met with some other top Republicans and they agreed that they would reflexively oppose everything Obama did, even if he proposed policies that they had previously supported. They planned to prevent him from having any accomplishments to run for reelection on. The main tactic they used was constant filibusters, which made it a Herculean task to get anything through Congress even with a 58 to 60 vote majority in the Senate. So if you're saying "the Congress as a whole wasn't fighting Obama in his first two years," sure. But the Republican minority used unprecedented tactics to obstruct all of Obama's priorities in a way that had never been done before. So, yes, I'd say he faced significant obstruction from the minority in Congress that made normal governing near impossible. Jazerus posted:There is a happy medium between free reign and total obstructionism and the balance was more towards obstructionism from the beginning. It deepened tremendously in 2010 for obvious reasons but it was there from day 1, and that had very little to do with the GOP; I agree that they had the right to put pressure on the Democratic agenda from 2008-2010 as the minority, sure. Nobody is really that upset with the GOP's behavior in that time period (rather than their behavior from 2010-now) but rather with Lieberman and the Blue Dogs, who pretty much held the majority hostage to their whims. Having just emerged from an era of tremendous GOP unity it was pretty upsetting to watch a few folks who were nominally Democrats (or traditionally associated with them in the case of Lieberman) refuse to entertain the idea of Democratic unity! No, I'd say I am upset that the GOP abused their power in 2009-2010. I'm much more angry with the way Lieberman et al took advantage of it, but that wouldn't have happened if McConnell hadn't broke the Senate. They had the legal right to do what they did, but they took it far beyond "putting pressure on the Democratic agenda." From 2001-2007, the Democratic minority never did anything like that. They filibustered a number of Bush's judges, and the Republicans in the Senate said they were outraged at this abuse. Then Obama takes office and the Republicans filibuster by an order of magnitude more than the Dems ever did. We put up with it when we were in the minority and let the government continue to function. So yes, I am mad that they claimed the Democrats were being obstructionist during the Bush years and then did far worse in the Obama years.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 05:46 |
Geostomp posted:This. Our systems were designed with the understanding that the two parties would be open to compromise for ensuring functionality. Sure, idiotic stunts were always common, but eventually, they'd have to get something done. Something has to break here because it's a totally unsustainable situation and I don't know it will be first. Changing demographics suggest the Republicans can't just appeal to hateful white people and remain in control. However their strategy of being so bad at government that they make people hate all government until they worm their way back into power as the "anti-government party" (as ludicrous as that moniker is) just once and then go all out bonkers looting the nation while burning everything to the ground seems like it's inevitable.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 14:07 |
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Chilichimp posted:am I being whooshed? The leadership held a meeting on Obama's Inauguration Day to discuss how to shut down his agenda and make sure he was a one-term president, primarily through obstruction. Of course that failed but they have no other strategy so they're just going to continue this until people wise up and give the House back to the Dems.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 14:50 |
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Shbobdb posted:It's like Coke and Pepsi. Why do they need to advertise? Because studies show that if one pulls out, the other ends up dominating that market. If both pull out, sales for all soft drinks tank. This is a tangent, but it suggests that banning soft drink advertising altogether could reduce diabetes rates by a *lot*
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 15:36 |
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I really hope that the democrats get both houses for Clinton's first 2 years. I also hope that they actually work on solving some outstanding problems that have been lip service for 20 years but noone has done anything meaningful to address. I get the feeling, though, that Clinton's first two years will be a healthcare battle that will lose them the congress again.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 15:55 |
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The only legislation Hillary will get passed, and that if she's lucky, is an emergency patchup of Obamacare. unfortunately Dems don't seem to want to campaign on any sort of positive agenda beyond 'the status quo is good and we're not Republicans' so I don't see how this changes. IMO it's possible you'll see some sort of catastrophic collapse in Republican support or in its platform, I don't think Paul Ryan obstructionism is a particularly stable political strategy, but it's also entirely possible they'll be able to keep it up for another 8 yearsRadish posted:Something has to break here because it's a totally unsustainable situation and I don't know it will be first. Changing demographics suggest the Republicans can't just appeal to hateful white people and remain in control. However their strategy of being so bad at government that they make people hate all government until they worm their way back into power as the "anti-government party" (as ludicrous as that moniker is) just once and then go all out bonkers looting the nation while burning everything to the ground seems like it's inevitable. Given their overwhelming control of state and local government it seems they can icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Oct 27, 2016 |
# ? Oct 27, 2016 15:59 |
icantfindaname posted:the only legislation hillary will get passed, and that if she's lucky, is an emergency patchup of obamacare Yeah the presidency is pretty much the only thing holding them back since the SCOTUS will be stuck with no more than 8 members for at least eight more years (unless they beat Hillary in 2020) if the democrats don't take the Senate since they are not going to get or keep it in 2018. Middle America loves Republicans especially their own and rural/suburban areas are massively over represented so there's basically no check on local Republicans or Congress.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 16:03 |
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Shbobdb posted:I'm pretty sure the fwd:fwd:fwd groups we're all part of count for this thread, but does MoveOn know about Mail Merge functions? All of Obama, Bernie and Hillary's people do. Do that want to keep that old-timey feel with "Dear MOVEON MEMBER"? I've done a couple distributions of 2,000 letters using a mail merge. When your database isn't super well-maintained (say, because you're pulling from tax records, or an online form) you can end up with some weird entries and information in odd places. It's possible they checked out the state of what they had and decided it's better to send out a generic salutation than send out a bunch of "Dear Mr. Mister Smith, John" letters or spend the time cleaning up the database.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 16:07 |
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Devor posted:I've done a couple distributions of 2,000 letters using a mail merge. When your database isn't super well-maintained (say, because you're pulling from tax records, or an online form) you can end up with some weird entries and information in odd places. My favorite instance of this was where some youtube celebrity's fan letter/submission PO box ended up on one of those evangelical preacher mailing lists. The guy's actual name is Stuart Ashen but his channel name and PO Box are marked "Ashens". So whatever mail merge software the scam artist used decided to do this with a single "name" as input:
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 17:02 |
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Scott Adams has pulled out the "puppetmaster" defense again.quote:A few days ago I tweeted a message that induced cognitive dissonance in a lot of Twitter users and some of the bottom-feeding media (Salon, HuffPo). This is a good case study for understanding the phenomenon. Here’s the tweet: On his first point, didn't a poll show people in general thought Clinton was better on terrorism? I thought I heard that somewhere. I will agree on one thing Scott said though. It is pretty ridiculous to interpret that tweet, no matter how much of a Trump supporter he is, as "Scott Adams wants a terrorist attack to happen so Trump can get elected."
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 19:29 |
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It's starting to really annoy me that Scott doesn't actually know what cognitive dissonance means.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 20:03 |
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Curious what Dilberitto think about Trump supporters being on the same side as Vladimir Putin, Julian Assange, and the KKK.
Deified Data fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Oct 27, 2016 |
# ? Oct 27, 2016 20:24 |
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 20:32 |
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Deified Data posted:Curious what Dilberitto think about Trump supporters being on the same side as Vladimir Putin, Julian Assange, and the KKK. Also these same people are tweeting Edward Snowden tweets. The same people who also wanted the death penalty for Snowden for treason 4 years ago.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 20:40 |
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I mean, poo poo, joking aside I unironically like George Soros (for a gazillionaire) and his initiatives. He just cannot be allowed to cross the threshold of the US Mint, because that would break the circle of protection and let him absorb its power.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 20:45 |
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Twelve by Pies posted:Scott Adams has pulled out the "puppetmaster" defense again. Sure, fair enough, he probably wasn't in his heart of hearts hoping for a terror attack. I can give him that much of the benefit of the doubt. But he's going full bore for the puppetmaster defense? Glad to see the corncobbing is going well.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 21:11 |
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# ? Jun 1, 2024 09:19 |
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God I made the mistake of watching a Crowder video. It was about Samantha Bee and the highest rated comment was about wanting to "go Negan" on her. Oh and if you're a guy who supports abortion you're a beta - tough words coming from a guy who took 30 years to lose his virginity but whatever. I miss the days before Trump made half the country sound like Crowder.
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# ? Oct 27, 2016 21:38 |