US Politics April: A Series of Fantastically Bad Ideas

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Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

zxqv8 posted:

re: Demographic shift chat from earlier on page 2

I see a lot of despair over the lack of action from the left and these millenials who are trending so much more in that direction, but isn't the reality that the rightward bent of politics over the course of our development has left us perpetually unmotivated to enact any change? Not to engage in generating a victim complex here, but all the awful regressive policies you hear about in this thread (largely enacted by the Republican party) are beating down entire generations of children, leaving them less and less educated and more and more in debt. And that's not even getting into the apparent futility of trying to legislate change; it's clearly not working if you watch congress try to do anything constructive. How do you really motivate people who seem so thoroughly beaten in general?

Mind you, I don't have any data to support this notion, but when you're crushed by mountains of unforgivable debt you mounted in response to the commandment from your preceding generations to get an education and find a job to pay off the mountains of debt you undoubtedly build when getting said education, it's pretty hard to do more than muster a little about "them politicians!" and go back to worrying about how you're going to pay the next bill and find the next meal. Multiply this by a few million, and well, you're all paying more attention than most...

It kind of sounds like you're talking about yourself here, so think - 'what, that is reasonably plausible, would motivate me?' It would probably best to think in terms of "successful organization for a local candidate" rather than "Getting Congress to actually do something to help America in the next couple of years," obviously

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 17:41

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 07:16

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

tbp posted:

Man, I hate it when conservatives think in this illogical manner. It's actually just one example of many of broken thought that comes from that ideological bloc. Shameful in my opinion.

Glad you're on board, teebp

I really do kind of wonder to what extent actual Calvinist theology is at the root of a lot of this stuff, though. Like do the Southern Baptists have a theological connection to Calvin somewhere that I'm unfamiliar with? All of this seems to be the very essence of Calvinism made into (unfortunately) a political policy.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 18:59

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

ReidRansom posted:

That's what has me scratching my head too. Relations with Cuba are at the lowest level of animosity in a half century, we've made slow progress toward reopening proper diplomatic relations, and we go doing this sort of poo poo. Why? Not just because it's dumb and could backfire on you why, but what's the point why.

I wonder if they're courting the Cuban expat vote in Miami (again).

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 21:05

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

mdemone posted:

I was just eye-rolling to myself about how it seems like the CIA has never done anything useful, but then I realized that it may be literally true. Can anyone name a morally-defensible operation they haven't hosed up?

Back when they were the OSS they at least focused on killing Nazis.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2014 22:15

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

enbot posted:

Cockfighting is a really silly thing to wring your hands about. It really shows how little perspective people have.

I think the comedy value coming from this is the existence of not one, but two cockfighting trade groups, as well as the existence of "chicken boxing" being raised as a serious counterproposal to a minor issue regarding animal cruelty

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 00:19

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Corrupt Politician posted:

I've been thinking about the possible consequences of this year's elections, and I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a net good in the long run for the GOP to take the senate in 2014 by a slim margin. If the Dems manage to narrowly hold their majority, the next two years will basically go the same as the last two, with both parties falling in public opinion. Worst of all, as the party not in power, Republicans can continue to criticize without having to actually govern or vote on workable solutions.

On the other hand, a GOP house and senate would be an even bigger shitshow, with the possibility of more shutdowns, debt ceiling fights, maybe an impeachment hearing, perhaps an extremely visible supreme court nomination fight. The focus for 2016 would shift from the stalemated "do-nothing congress" to how terribly the Republicans have overreached with their thin majority, and how incapable they are of actually governing and working with the president. And in 2016 the Dems will almost certainly take back the senate.

Thoughts?

In a purely tactical manner you may have a point, but keep in mind that, first, the economy could poo poo itself for some arbitrary reason (student loans, war in Ukraine, China explodes, mass dogecoin adoption) and gently caress up everything's trajectory, and second, there are a whole lot of people actually out there hurting. Our bridges will keep rotting in either case but it seems like foolishness to EMBRACE that; two years is a long time.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 18:12

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Dapper Dan posted:

I don't think it is a good idea, I just think that a lot of people have given up and don't know what else to do. You look at the billions and billions of dollars flooding into politics, the Supreme Court's hilariously out-of-touch with reality decisions, the rich taking more and more of what little everyone has left with no signs of stopping and it feels like you're a person stacking grains of sand to stop a tsunami. So why not just step aside and let the tsunami just wash everything away?

Of course, the problem with that is the tsunami is basically going to kill everyone you're trying to save since they're the most vulnerable. You're also hoping the assholes get washed away with it and nothing worse will replace it. And you have to hope you don't drown in the process. Even then, there might not be anything to rebuild. It is an ultimately self-defeating prospect and basically learned helplessness. I sympathize with the feeling though, since I really don't know what to do. I live in the liberal North and can't really afford to do much but vote.

Well the best conclusion I can get is that a lot of these people don't give a hot piss in a tin pot for any of the people who their precious acceleration was supposed to harm. That or they've gotten hooked on electoral despair the way some of the RWNM people have gotten hooked on rage at the LIBS

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 20:54

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

UberJew posted:

Unfortunately his phylactery is the original copy of the US constitution.

Then we must roll, and smoke, a giant blunt using that Constitution.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 21:12

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Fried Chicken posted:

I don't know what a "phylactery" is, is it like a horcrux?

Aye, same idea

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 21:20

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Chris Christie posted:

Friendly reminder that those wonderful sweet justices on the left side of the SCOTUS have no problem making GBS threads all over things like property rights or 2nd amendment rights. They think it's perfectly OK for government to take your land or home and sell it to the highest bidder, and perfectly OK for a city or state to ignore the bill or rights and strip its citizens of their constitutional rights.

The Supreme Court is going to be awful no matter which way the 4-4-1 split eventually breaks.

So by #1 are you talking about eminent domain or are you being more generic and including things like environmental restrictions? As for #2, ah yes, I recall this coming up-- though I'd ask, how do you expect to defend the 2nd Amendment if the billionaires ever decide they don't like it?

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 00:01

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

To be fair, it might've been a generic piece of counter-sass, because really when have we NOT just had some random public massacre?

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 02:31

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

It's poo poo now

Statewide unemployment is 6.5%, Milwaukee is at 9.8%. Compare this to Minnesota's rate of 4.8% and MSP at 4.6%.

Well you see, under Austrian theory, that is malinvestment, so really the UNSKEWED rate is--

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 05:12

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Ofaloaf posted:

loving hell and goddamn. I went to Mitt Romney's old private school (with a scholarship bringing the cost down tolerably) and the moment from that which sticks out the most was during a class discussion on social divisions, income and so forth, one bright student from a monied family confidently stated that the middle class began at $250k a year. This has a slightly lower bound than that, but goddamn, how far out do you have to be to seriously think that everyone below $71k are the poors? How can people be so out of it?

Well, another way to take that is that Richie Rich there was entirely correct, and that is where the middle class begins, and we're all proletarians :ussr:

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 05:30

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

mr. mephistopheles posted:

Literally not one single person did that.

Well if it's his genuine religious belief that someone did, then we have to accept that as having the force of law.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 09:30

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

I think one of the issues here is that there isn't much shared experience or knowledge of economic hardship. The media certainly doesn't have it show up, and social stratification means that people may genuinely have no idea about it. My stepmother once expressed horror and shock at the prospect that, while a student, I lived on less than $15k a year (outside of school costs) - it was just inconcievable to her. Education would probably help, though I imagine most of this is well meaning ignorance rather than knowing snobbery.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 20:01

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Defenestration posted:

I appreciate you actually looking up the Boston numbers, unlike some people itt, but what in the hell is this?

Those must be some office jobs. I suppose it is barely possible if they got into finance at 21-22, lived like Trappists, and perhaps made some cunning investments.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 20:44

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Captain_Maclaine posted:

I believe it technically is, but good luck actually invoking the law when, a few weeks after your boss finds out you've been doing that, you get fired for some other totally-not-related-we-swear reason.

Indeed. To do otherwise would jeopardize the sacred freedoms allowed to you in a right-to-work state.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2014 20:11

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

FilthyImp posted:

The broader issue of vouchers and Michele Rhee-like "student choice" just moves the poo poo around. It's a stopgap fix for a systematic failing of students in the public school system. I mean, somewhere along the way you realize that some kid can't read because they didn't receive foundational support and hit a wall in high school.

There's also a lot to be said about alternative schooling to deal with fringe cases -- (like the student that shows up twice a week, spends most of the time hiding out in the bathroom, etc etc).

None of any of this poo poo, at least on the right, has Thing One to do with helping those edge case kids. If they do so it is by accident. Their goal is to break the teacher's unions because organized labor is offensive to them, and to turn the public school system into another source of distributable patronage.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2014 18:13

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Fried Chicken posted:

Charter schools are economic rent seeking. You have to go to school, I have the school, so pay up because you have to go to school. It is as textbook as the literal textbook example of the baron guarding the river.

And if you think we will get competition from rent seekers rather than cartel actions to lock in a relative margin look at every other rent seeking body out there.

Well, we can look forward a little ways down the pike, if they succeed in their plan, to a bitter struggle between the charter school barons and the people who just don't want a single thin dime of their precious tax dollars going to educated nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnight club going students.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2014 18:23

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Chris Christie posted:

Ideally, no, but more people like Ginsburg, Sotamayor, and Kagan could mean tipping the 5-4 balance when it comes to the second amendment. And the 5-4 balance already is against property rights (Kennedy joined the majority in Kelo). The former 3 don't have resumes any more impressive than the latter when it comes to bad decisions and pissing on civil liberties.

When it comes to SCOTUS nominees, it's a wash either way, unless I get selfish and only think about which side's terrible civil liberties rulings are more apt to impact me personally.

Good news, your money got given a bunch of new civil liberties lately

But more seriously I am sure there are Democratic groups that will be about as pro-2A as you could want, although mysteriously many of them may have gotten flipped in favor of Tea Party maniacs lately.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2014 20:28

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Fried Chicken posted:

If bush wins I'm going to end up in a rubber room drawing with crayons held between my toes, coo-ing softly to myself. I will be drawing pictures of a happy world, one where people are able to learn from their god damned mistakes.

No you won't, the rubber rooms will be shut down for lack of funding, you'll be begging for change on the streets! Oh wait that's kind of already true.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2014 20:46

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Dapper Dan posted:

What I don't get is that it is constantly stated that guns are a defense against a tyrannical government. This is when it comes down to its most basic level, above hunting, above self defense and all other pretenses. Like some high and mighty truth. When in fact, in today's day and age, they'd just drone strike and cruise missile your rear end to hell and back if it ever (read: it will never. This isn't a revolutionary fantasy or any such bullshit like that) came to that.

Guns pretty much mean dick in terms of preventing the American government from going all tyrannical. You'd have to make a case for heat-seeking rocket launchers if you want to defend yourself from the American government. And the people that are stockpiling guns in case a revolution ever comes, I want the American government to protect me from them.

Leaving aside the nebulous identity issues which are probably the majority of them, I think the scenarios here are usually 'in the breakdown of law and order which is always just over the horizon, I need to be able to protect my family and/or form a sectarian militia in my subdevelopment.'

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 08:00

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

ColoradoCleric posted:

A lot of libertarians and republicans want to go back to the gold standard under the misguided conception that it would stop inflation and lower speculation. Basically they believe that because of the scarcity of gold its better to back each dollar bill with specific amount gold so each dollar will always have a value equal to the amount of gold. They believe that since inflation eats away at savings that backing currency with gold would prevent the government from trying to issue new currency.

I think the real motivation is a lot more along the lines of "I would really like my three Krugerrands to be worth way, way more than they are now, so I become rich without effort." I have heard, seriously, that the idea is that they'll just say the US owns 800 tons of gold, or whatever, and that now the dollar is backed 100% by those 800 tons of gold, making the price of gold completely ridiculous.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 18:28

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

SubponticatePoster posted:

Remember, these are the same people who think money is speech. But apparently talking about money with your coworkers is infringing on the free speech (money) of employers! Maybe because if you earn more you're taking away speech from the job creators and they have less to ~~buy congressmen with~~ create jobs!

They have more money and are therefore more human than you, easy to comprehend.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2014 00:28

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Radish posted:

I especially like the part where rich people fighting the government legally is a check on tyranny. I'd love to know which court cases they've been fighting that increased my freedom as opposed to limiting it.

Well you can pack around guns as much as you like. You know, if you can afford a gun. Or to go somewhere.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2014 21:24

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

berzerker posted:

It's not at all settled. Here's a video of a professor making the case, then several others responding:
http://millercenter.org/events/2013/explaining-the-iraq-war-counterfactual-theory-logic-and-evidence

Basically, the most likely national security team for a Gore presidency were strong Iraq hawks too, as was Gore himself. Gore going to war is far from certain, obviously, but neither is it a far-fetched idea.

"Far from certain" is a drat sight better than "totally looking for the slightest loving excuse, to the point of abandoning something actually relevant to a national tragedy to focus on their pre-planned war scenario," which I gather accurately describes the Bush White House's op plan there. I believe to some extent this line of argument is a pushback against the "oh they're all the same anyway, man, who gives a gently caress, they're all corrupt *stays home, Bush appoints supreme court justices*" types of folks.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2014 00:40

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

SedanChair posted:

It's really not clear at all, and I think expecting Gore to have been less war-crazed than Bush by 2003 is committing the old error of comparing an incumbent to a politician who never held the office. The neocon narrative was pretty much the only one going in foreign policy circles after 9/11. They asserted that they had been proven right, and the only people with a counternarrative were the war protesters that everybody was ignoring and calling traitors. Imagine the pressure Republicans would have put on Gore to invade. Imagine the invective they would have hurled at him unceasingly until he capitulated.

I think at a certain point you're saying it is axiomatic that the US invades Iraq in ~2003 no matter what, and I don't think that's necessarily a given at all. At some point we are engaging in a bunch of counterfactual hypotheses but I think it is fair to say that Gore certainly would have had less of a hot nut to do it than W., and cooler heads might have prevailed.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2014 01:06

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Monkey Fracas posted:

I think you could more or less objectively prove that the GOP has become more radical (or at least has more radical elements present in it) than in recent times but I tend to dismiss any notions that the Democratic party has also become more radical as truth-in-the-middle horseshit. I attribute the lack of conservative voting among D lawmakers to an unwillingness to compromise due to a history of the R side just being extremely untrustworthy during almost any and all negotiations.

The Blue Dog sorts seem to have either switched sides or been run out in favor of a Tea Party death commando, so if the Democrats have gotten 'more extreme' it's in the sense that they've lost some moderates.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2014 21:27

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Monkey Fracas posted:

The constant banging on the Austerity Drum by the GOP might carry a bit more weight if it actually worked.

Like if it killed a bunch of elderly people and cursed the poor to never leave their socioeconomic class buuuuut actually helped us become strong economically as a country it would at least be a choice. A lovely choice, but a choice.

As is it's the plan where we enact sociopathic policies that do not actually provide any benefit to us.

Depends who you mean by "us." The program sure works out great if you're an investor! :v:

# ¿ Apr 10, 2014 22:22

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Craptacular! posted:

So, I made a reference to Congress in another forum here, and it just dawned on me... Why doesn't the GOP split up Texas?

It seems like you could split Texas up into a number of states, at least three if you turned Houston and Dallas into new capitals. Creating new GOP-controlled states out of one big GOP-controlled state would give you more GOP Senators, which would make it further difficult for Democrats to have any control in Congress. There's not exactly any real equal for the Democrats, as California's liberals are all centralized in two regions and I'm not sure New York is that much better.

I'm probably an idiot. I don't know much about the state economically , and I suppose it's very likely that the state's great expanses of nothing survive off the money made at the ports on the coast. The other issue is that such a proposal can be easily countered by a marketing campaign invoking the popular phrase, "Dont Mess With Texas", which is sort of a sure hit with low information voters.

"We want to exercise a highly questionable clause from an old treaty that's probably illegal in order to pack the Senate, if you don't mind" seems like it'd be a losing cause. I wouldn't be shocked if it got floated rhetorically once Texas starts blueing up though :v:

e: comedy answer, this would constitute "messing"

# ¿ Apr 13, 2014 01:58

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

greatn posted:

The worst thing you can do for your career if you are a party leader is win elections, apparently, given how fast Dean and Steele were fired after massive electoral victories.

Yeah, I don't actually understand this at all - is it because they upset the apple cart? You'd think at a certain point they'd prefer to be the winning party.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2014 17:43

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Fried Chicken posted:

Basing this solely off my own anecdotal experience in 6 years of political and community activism, it is a result of the fact that these things are overwhelmingly volunteer based. Background, since 2008 I've worked Dem campaigns every cycle, was heavily involved in helping returning vets, volunteered with helping troubled LBGT students (with a focus on T because that group was the most strapped for resources, mainly office work), my martial arts group taught self defense groups for women, and I did construction work with habitat for humanity and repairs at the women's shelter. Let me preface it that yes, I know the stuff activists put up with is not anywhere as close to what a lot of people these causes are about go through. But I'm coming at it from the volunteers perspective because that's who we are talking about.

Activism, both community and political, is very much volunteer based. So firstly you never have the level of manpower you want. Then the people come in not professionally trained in things. So they don't know how to do things, or don't know that certain things have to be done, and if they do learn what to do they rarely write it all down to preserve institutional knowledge (that last one is a problem in professional organizations as well). Then the people doing it can get moved to a different job in the group, or the rest of their life means they can't commit as much, or more often they just get burnt out and what they learned leaves with them.

The burn out seems to be the most common. The dirty little secret of activism is that it really sucks. You spend a lot of it reaching out to people to get them involved, win them over, or get a donation, and that usually gets a rejection. No after no after no is hard to take. The work tends to be very manual and rote because resources are tight and you can't afford the great new tools to make it easier. Your organization is effectively opposed by other organizations nominally on your side, because you end up chasing the same donations and grants. Your organization is usually actively opposed by other organizations on some level, so you lose some of your battles, which always hurts. The opposition can be frustratingly terrible too (eg after a trans student hurt themselves due to being harassed we went around and put up listings to contact our group for support, the suicide hotline, and just positive you are loved messages. They were defaced by the college republicans with messages to get right with god, fix yourself, vote republican, and the web address of the local evangelical church). When you win it can see huge blowback (eg we got more funding from the city for the women's shelter. Due to not being able to afford guards the solution was to have the apartments separate from the main office and have the address unlisted so abusers wouldn't show up. The local libertarian brigade found it and published it so "people will know where their tax dollars were going" endangering them and requiring us to get volunteers to stay in one if the open apartments while we got the police to agree to more frequent drive bys). Even in the process of it you tend not to see the best in people (your politicians can be corrupt. You don't help all the people you want to. People relapse and take others down with them). And there really is no end point to it all (there is always poverty. Another tornado destroys homes. Winning the campaign means you now need to fight to push policy and win the next election as well)

You are doing a lot of tedious stuff with a lot of opposition, see a lot of rejection and setbacks, and the problems never really get "solved". Plus since everyone gets frustrated with this you get lots of infighting and faction-ing, particularly when things go bad. It gets to the point where you would rather stay home and grind for bear asses in World of Warcraft than face it again. And when they do that, then the group loses whatever it is you learned and they have to start from scratch, and that makes success even harder so the next group gets burnt out and angry.

Again, yes, I know full well the trans people I met at the counseling center had it worse than me. That's why they were contemplating suicide and came to the group for help. As bad as this might make me feel, actually having to go through this poo poo makes them feel worse. But if you have an ounce of empathy in you seeing people driven to that point takes its toll. So you end up doing things in cycles of volunteering and focusing on you, which hurts the organizations but keeps you on an even keel.

More money would help. Then you can get more professionals in to help get it done, have more manpower, have better tools, and reduce churn. Less hate in the world would help, but I might as well wish for a unicorn. Less infighting would be a godsend, going online to try and learn or coordinate from others involved can be as draining as dealing with the opposition (and gently caress online "activists", you want to claim that title get off your rear end and put up with this same poo poo we do. The core part is the word "active")

And now I spent my lunch hour complaining about pity me the employed straight white American male because activism doesn't always feel good. I am aware of the irony, or whatever the right word is. At least here the "die ________ scum" will be ironic

I don't think you're coming off as particularly entitled really, this was a great look at what it is like to do a lot of this stuff. Also holy poo poo those campus Republicans/'libertarians' are loving devils, Jesus.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2014 19:01

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

anonumos posted:

I was a prominent member of a libertarian/"conservative" group in college and the terribleness was overwhelming. I was just plain disgusted by the intellectual emptiness of that "side", and it has since informed my politics on almost every single issue. When your 'platform' revolves around "OK today we're going to urge those in pain to kill themselves"...well, I still want to go back in time and take a baseball bat to every one of my supposed friends' knees. They were disgusting people.

And here I thought conservatives were against euthanasia!

# ¿ Apr 14, 2014 19:22

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Munkeymon posted:

It'd just be an (open source?*) community-driven software project and there are tons of those to model off of, but you still have to have coordinators or the project dies out, which is also pretty well-established.

*_{I'd ideally want to dick over conservatives by denying them access or forcing them to pay, thanks}

Couldn't you have the "solution" not have a fixed price, and mysteriously the price for Democrats is $1 while the price for Republicans would be a significant fraction of whatever their budget happens to be? (Socialists: a comp copy of their literature; libertarians: dogecoin)

# ¿ Apr 14, 2014 21:51

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Munkeymon posted:

Aren't doge super easy to get, though? I haven't had time to read the Bitcoin thread in YOSPOS in a while

"$100 billion flat rate but we'll knock off a dollar for every dollar your national party wants to expand funding for SNAP, womens' health, veterans benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. by or add a dollar for the reverse. Oh, you're a Republican? Welp..."

You should catch up, but the Bitcoin people hate and fear dogecoin because it makes internet power-waste fun bucks look dumb and goofy.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2014 22:07

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

zoux posted:

Which podcast?

Night Vale is done by maxnmona from are glorious forums here.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2014 22:16

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

zoux posted:

Oh, neat.

CBO has revised it's estimates, saying the PPACA will cost less and insure more than they had predicted. Congratulations on the CBO now being re-labelled as a biased tool of the administration who's work should be questioned always, unless they say things that are bad for the President.

Oh that ship already sailed I thought, because they said the Tea Party budget in 2010 would have been horrible. CBO unbellyfeel Ameri-free or what have you.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2014 22:20

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Lancelot posted:

All of that stuff is substantive tax law that is needed to calculate the tax burden of partners and partnerships in different situations. Basis is literally a way of calculating how much tax you pay when you dispose of your share of the partnership. I'm a tax lawyer, I know this stuff well, it's not just book-keeping or accounting: it's an essential part of calculating tax liabilities.

Tax talk: most interesting talk.

Well then, if you disagree with my proposal then you must obviously be too invested in the system you benefit from to see the advantages of my 9-9- :godwin:

plan.

After all, expertise is no match for what you feel in your heart!

e: Of course, if you agree with me, it just shows how clever my plan is. Obviously!

# ¿ Apr 16, 2014 17:16

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

So I have a dummy email getting RNC messages and I got this fun one today.

Reince Priebus posted:

Paul,

We are suing the IRS.

Obama's IRS targeted, harassed and discriminated against tea party and conservative groups because of their values and beliefs.

This is an outrage and an unprecedented abuse of power. Principled conservatives should not be the victims of an administration that allows the IRS to go after its perceived political enemies.

Obama�s bureaucrats tried to silence our voices and deny us our constitutional rights�but we won�t let them. That�s why we�ve been fighting to expose the truth.

We just filed a lawsuit against the IRS, demanding they turn over the documents we legally requested.

Over 226 days ago, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the IRS to uncover the truth, but they are illegally stonewalling our legal requests for information.

We�ve had enough of the Obama administration�s denials, delays and deceptions. And we won�t stop fighting until we get to the bottom of this unprecedented targeting scandal.

But to ensure our voice is heard, we need you to speak up. Join us, and thousands of conservatives, in the fight to hold them accountable.

We will not stand for this abuse and we will fight until we get the truth.

Add your name in support of our lawsuit against the IRS.

Thanks,

Reince

I'm not sure this appeal has enough keywords to trigger the necessary dronelike compliance. What do you guys think?

# ¿ Apr 16, 2014 17:29

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 07:16

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

zoux posted:

It's cool that you have such a casual first-name basis relationship with the head of the national GOP.

Yeah, my real first name is "Friend" but I just can't bring myself to correct the lovable little scamp, even if Obama always gets it right.

One thing I've noticed is that the Republicans never seem to offer you random raffle prizes.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2014 17:34

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > US Politics April: A Series of Fantastically Bad Ideas

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