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computer parts posted:On average, he's on time for the past two months. Which means he has horribly discriminated against August - starting its thread 6 days late, starting September's thread 2 days early. Fried Chicken is the real calendarist here. SavageBastard posted:Free Amergin! Wait, what? I thought that Amergin-only thread got killed? Jackson Taus fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Aug 30, 2014 |
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Aug 30, 2014 19:01
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Cythereal posted:And a lot of people who work for the federal government. I suppose not paying government employees for a few months every year is one way towards small government. They get paid eventually. Some conservatives/reactionaries threaten to try to fight the efforts to get those workers back-pay, but it's never at serious risk of failing. Grondoth posted:I wish you people would just accept that Fried Chicken made a sensible title that he could get through the mods. The perfect is the enemy of the good you know. Are the mods are well known for their aversion to the word Taupe?
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Aug 31, 2014 06:20
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Mitt Romney posted:I think you have to worry more about democratic senators leaking votes to surpass the veto threat. Dems were fractured all the time 2002 to 2006. Even ignoring that most of those Blue Dogs in vulnerable districts got toasted in 2010, it takes a lot of aisle-crossing to override a veto. Republican goals this cycle are 245 in the House, and let's assume a 75th percentile result in the 538 model which is 53 in the Senate. That still means overturning any veto needs 14 Dems to break ranks in the Senate and 45 Dems in the House to cross the aisle. That'd be a quarter of the House Dem caucus and 30% of the Senate Dem caucus. That's a simply massive defection and probably not that likely. This isn't picking off one or two Blue Dogs or grabbing the 60th vote to break a filibuster.
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Sep 3, 2014 23:53
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Fried Chicken posted:And the web 2.0 points didn't come close to covering the most egregious valuations of the "app economy". That is such an obvious bubble I have to wonder how many are really just scams to embezzle money and dodge taxes. Never mind AirBnB, how is Yo! worth 10 million? Does this matter to the broader economy? It seems like very few of those companies have IPO'd at all. Aside from Groupon (probably headed down the tubes eventually) and Facebook (profitable for the last couple of years) most of the assets in that bubble are held by venture capitalists or angel investors. It'd suck for all these "startup hubs", but aside from San Francisco it's not like the bubble companies are major employers in those areas. Plus some of that money is literally pretend-money: a $10M valuation on Yo! means someone bought 15% for $1.5M, and a total bankruptcy just means that guy lost his $1.5M, not that folks threw $10M at it. Fried Chicken posted:It makes me wonder about things like Twitter, which hasn't turned a profit but as we've seen has a lot of social value (great for getting information out from the ground and mobilizing the voice of communities). Bubble pops, then what? Hopefully someone will develop a version that can last as freeware that doesn't need the central infrastructure, like what pirate bay has done with their stuff. There's enough value-add to the web ecosystem that someone like Google would probably buy it or build a clone but you can only use their link shortener, image hosting, or Youtube or something, so now they get the analytics of all the links you clicked on Twitter. Jackson Taus fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 14:11
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computer parts posted:They've "shot up" but not nearly to the extent of the housing crisis: That graph still shows housing prices as being ~15-20% above trend. Which doesn't sound terrible until you think about how many folks have less than 20% equity in their homes. Wouldn't take a huge drop for even more folks to end up underwater. Jackson Taus fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 14:51
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Guess which Ebola-ridden ISIS terrorist entered the US illegally. I don't doubt folks can boat across from Canada with good odds of not getting caught, but knowing James O'Keefe, I'd almost bet there's an edited out stop by the Coast Guard or a suspicious cop or something.
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Sep 8, 2014 21:31
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Mr Interweb posted:Nice. Tom Ashbrook did a great job handling Dinesh D'Souza when he was on a few weeks ago. Will give it a listen. Obama has quantum intelligence - his IQ fluctuates between 75 and 175 minute-by-minute in accordance with whatever makes the most sense with a given conspiracy theory. This also explains how he develops dastardly plans but then leaves obvious evidence in plain sight if you know where to look or something I don't know I'm not a crazy person.
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Sep 10, 2014 04:29
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Berke Negri posted:Not really because all the members are probably undercover FBI agents. Who will proceed to all arrest each other when someone's wires in Quantico get crossed.
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Sep 12, 2014 21:25
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joeburz posted:The younger DC Democrat crowd I know already scrubbed their poo poo years ago, despite being on the opening wave of facebook in 2003. Sure there will be plenty of train wrecks in the future but most the up and comers on the left are reasonably tech savvy, careful with their online posting, and also just not poo poo lords with disgusting opinions to tweet out slurs. Yeah, I feel like if you've got a credible chance of winning a seat at the state level you've probably been laying groundwork for a year or two before your election, so you've got plenty of time to get a handle on that stuff and you've probably been careful about what you post under what ID. By the time you're nearing the Congressional level you've been planning for several years and should have this poo poo on lockdown. Plus it's harder to go from RL => account than account => RL person. And if folks don't really know what they're looking for, well, it's a freaking huge internet. DoubleDonut posted:Yeah, some of these are pretty good! But I would also argue that most of these barely even count as progress - they might count as undoing a lot of bullshit, which has its own worth, but we are going to need more than that. In a vaccuum, yeah, the Fair Sentencing Act is great! But the War on Drugs is still hugely awful, so no, a bit of fairness involving cocaine doesn't count as half a win; it counts as a little bit less of a loss. I realize this is from earlier today and thus like 4 pages back, but honestly if you're expecting Obama to have rolled back all the poo poo from Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II, that's asking for a lot. When you realize he had only a few months where he had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and control of the House, you're talking about a legislative blitz comparable to, if not bigger than, FDR's 100 Days. And that's assuming Obama's got mind control powers over the Blue Dogs. The reason it took a freaking year to get Health Reform is that they couldn't even line up all the Democrats.
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Sep 18, 2014 05:54
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Miltank posted:how does the party allocate money to be spent on campaigns? What sort of actions are prohibited by law? There are obviously donation limits from individuals to campaigns, parties, or committees, but there are also donation limits from parties to a campaign. For instance, my Congressional candidate can only take $10K from the state or local parties - our CD committee already sent him that, so none of the local committees can now. Additionally, while parties and committees can spend side-by-side with candidates in multiple races, a donor can't specify which race his donation to a larger party should support. Parties circumvent this in a few ways:
I'm not an expert on campaign finance law at all, so I really can't say a lot more. Parties generally allocate support based on perceived winnability - they'll throw a lot of money at races they think will be or could be close, and barely any at races that are seen as sure things or lost causes. This actually has sort of snowball effect - candidates who get a lot of early donations will look a lot more viable to donors and to party higher-ups, which will cause more donations, etc. Miltank posted:I understand that the parties are not part of the government, but I still would like to know how they work. What its power structure is and how party decisions are made for example. Better yet, tell me what route I should take on my far left infiltration of the dems/gop. Parties are fundamentally going to be dominated by folks willing to put in the time. Showing up and putting in the hours to help elect candidates while also not being a freaking moron is going to make you very popular very fast. Since jobs like local party chair or CD party chair or state executive board or whatever are unpaid, the folks who tend to seek them out tend to be the folks who can sink a lot of time and money into them. For instance, just in my low ranking position in the state party I've got to travel to weekend state-wide meetings (and often get hotel rooms since I'm in a big state) 4 times a year, and go to another 6 or so more regional meetings. And that's without actually doing any work for those committees, that's just the meetings. Plus while fundraiser attendance isn't mandatory, it's an opportunity you need to take advantage of often - I've probably spent $500 or so on fundraiser tickets at the local and state level, and that was as a single dude buying entry-level tickets. And that's before you actually do any work for the higher-level stuff, which doesn't supersede doing front-line work on campaigns. If you're the chair of an active committee, expect it to be almost a part-time job. Party committees completely reorganize every few years. If you stack those reorganization meetings you can pick the officers. So if you show up and campaign for a while and make friends, then get a bunch of your buddies from outside the party to show up at the reorganizational meeting, they combined with your in-party friends can get you an officership (assuming such a position is even contested). It works the same way for the higher-level committees too - showing up at whatever caucuses select those members (or select delegates to a convention to pick those members) can get you a slot. Usually those sorts of caucuses get cancelled because chairs will do behind-the-scenes work to encourage/discourage applications, but there's nothing stopping you from telling them to go gently caress themselves and showing up en masse. 40 or so people willing to show up on two particular weekends could stack the state-party representation for an entire CD. The downside to that is that party committees on the state level seem not to hold a lot of power, because staffers and politicians are able to work on this poo poo full time and have to handle day-to-day while party members spend a few hours a quarter on it. Maybe it's different in other states relative to mine, but I doubt it. Most folks tend to be the go-along-to-get-along type and not boat-rockers so if party staffers and the Chair say something's a good idea it'll often get rubber-stamped. Plus politicians tend to control most of the fundraising so they have de facto veto power if they decide they won't help the state party raise money. Berke Negri posted:If you're not 16 and have to go the party PC route you also need to make up that lost time by A) already being rich, or B) successful in whatever you spent your 20s and 30s doing instead of working for the party. Party politics is about time put in for the organization and contacts, so you need to play catch-up with cash if you didn't spend all those youthful years doing bullshit and star loving. Very true. The ability to show up with $5000 checks yearly or to raise five-figures by having a fundraiser with your extended network is going to get you more loved than the guy who works his rear end off most weekends. If you actually want to run for an office like state legislator you've got to be able to rack up $50K or so in "friends and family" money to start out, and that goes into the six-figures and up for higher offices. My Imaginary GF posted:If you have any questions about finance, specific questions, I'll gladly answer them to the best of my ability to recall details at this time. Or, I could write up a methodology you can use to determine which staffer has influence with which elites in America so that you can use that staffer's employment through the years as a proxy for presidential ambition and which clustered networks are backing whom for president. Coordination between parties, party committees, and campaigns - the FEC website seems to imply that there's a money limit, but there doesn't seem to be on a practical basis just seeing how the DCCC/RNCC/state parties work. Unless only some fraction of the actual party-candidate coordination is getting counted. My Imaginary GF posted:He means literal star loving. Whoring yourself out is a well-known career move in politics, and in some circles, expected more than the exception. It depends. Exactly how high up counts as the "star" side of this equation? EDIT: Do we have a "political parties as organizations themselves" thread for party chat? Jackson Taus fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 06:50
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My Imaginary GF posted:In money and politics, there's 'illegal' and then there's "HOLY gently caress ILLEGAL AND SUPER EASY TO CATCH DO NOT DO THIS EVER YOU loving IDIOT WHAT THE CHRIST." What I actually meant was more "the FEC says parties can only do $50K in coordinated expenditures or whatever, why am I seeing Party field staff, Hill Committee field staff, and campaign staff working side-by-side?" which Trabisnikof partially answered.
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Sep 18, 2014 07:00
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Ratoslov posted:Yeah, it sounds like you're basically useless to the Democrats if you aren't upper-middle class at least, better if you're independently wealthy or merely wealthy and well-connected. If you're trying to single-handedly change your entire state party, sure. So don't be single-handed about it, and get a bunch of like-minded friends involved. Or start on it, make like-minded friends along the way, and drag them with you.
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Sep 18, 2014 13:05
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Petr posted:Why is it okay for Democrats to take leftists for granted? Because there aren't enough of them to matter. You live in a representative democracy, and if you're significantly left of the general population, you have to accept that you're also going to be left of the mainstream political parties. You're always going to be either voting for someone who has no chance or holding your nose and voting for (from your perspective) the least bad candidate. Your options are to try and move the general opinion leftward (which you don't do from the top-down, so doesn't involve getting leftists into power) or to advocate a non-democratic system. Public opinion is pretty malleable though. What the public will support is in large measure determined by what politicians say and do. You probably can't convince the general public to start redistributing the means of production in a top-down manner, but if the Democratic Party comes out in favor of nationwide All-Day Kindergarten and our candidates start stumping on it, that's going to move the polls on the issue. Also, while America is a democracy, that's no guarantee that popular stuff is necessarily going to happen - 90% of Americans want less money in politics, but that's not going to happen in the near future unless we get better parties and a better Supreme Court. Pot legalization gets narrow majorities nationwide now, but you know our politicians at the national level will have to be dragged into it kicking and screaming unless it hits 70% support or something. NSA/FISA reform is another one - dramatic cutbacks in spying are broadly popular, but it's not going to happen if our politicians just refuse to talk about it. Jackson Taus fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 15:11
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Oracle posted:Isn't this now the norm? I haven't seen half-day kindergartens since I was in one over thirty years ago. Half-day daycares, yeah, but anymore full day K seems to be the norm, at least in public school. Too many people work anymore and lots of kids come in right from daycare already knowing the drill, as it were. Not in my area - some counties have it, some don't. And I'm in a relatively wealthy county in a purple state, it's not like I'm in Backwater Parish, Louisissippi. Oracle posted:If Democrats really wanted to make Americans sit up and take notice, they'd offer to pay one parent to stay home with their kids til age 5. No income requirement, just if you choose to stay home, you get x dollars a month. This would appeal to the people who whine about the deterioration of the nuclear/traditional family as well as those who can't make enough to earn money for child care, help single mothers immensely, and people who'd make more working can just keep doing what they're doing. The problem is that the folks who whine about the deterioration of the nuclear family are the same folks who whine about handouts to single blah-people mothers.
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Sep 18, 2014 15:32
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JT Jag posted:So from what I'm gathering from My Imaginary GF's posts, House of Cards is literally our reality. Except none of the backstabbers are as charming as Frank Underwood. A disturbing number of folks in politics think Frank Underwood is a role model.
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Sep 18, 2014 22:05
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hangedman1984 posted:Oh snap! No she di'int! This is the greatest thing. I'm glad to see Grimes pressing this message. "All that obstruction you bitch about in Washington? It's literally Mitch McConnell."
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Sep 19, 2014 04:57
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/dinesh-d-souza-sentenced-five-years-probation What are the terms of his parole, that's not mentioned in the article. Like if all the parole terms are is "don't commit felonies" then he's likely fine. But if it's like "no political activity" or "no lying in the media" then you're right he's hosed. 1stGear posted:Source Wait, does he get to count his usual douchewhistling as "gainful employment" or are they going to make him flip burgers or something?
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Sep 23, 2014 20:55
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Okonner posted:Is there any chance the approval hearings for the new AG could happen in time to get heavy media coverage before the election? Anything that puts the attention given to foreign affairs back squarely on congressional republicans being unreasonable has gotta help the democrats in November, right? No - I'm pretty sure Congress wont even be back in Session until after midterms. Maybe Obama could order them back into session but that'd be unprecedented to do for a cabinet-level nominee when the previous guy's staying on anyhow, and it'd likely hurt Dems since they have a lot of Senators on the defense who need to be back in their home districts campaigning.
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Sep 25, 2014 19:12
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SnakePlissken posted:Y'all think the Democratic Govenors' rear end'n is a good place to throw a couple bucks for this election? No. If you're in a state with a competitive Governor's race, donate to your Democratic candidate directly. Otherwise, donate to the DSCC or directly to a competitive Senate race. Yeah, groups like DGA or DCCC are doing great work, but if you don't have a competitive Governor's race, 99% of the benefit to you in this election comes from Dems holding the Senate. Edit: If you live in VA-10 or IL-3 or something, one of the couple dozen super-competitive House races, donating to your Dem candidate there makes a lot of sense if you don't want to risk being represented by a Republican. Jackson Taus fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Sep 30, 2014 |
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Sep 30, 2014 16:41
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LolitaSama posted:Flipping or holding on to a House seat or two won't really change the fact that the GOP has an iron grip on the House of Representatives. The Senate really is the only consequential battleground this cycle. Right, but I can't really begrudge someone wanting to donate to their local House candidate if the race is at all competitive. I'd very much not like to be represented in the House by a jackass. Of course I'd like a Republican Senate even less. LolitaSama posted:The bottom line is, even as Republican try to resist electoral pressure through sheer power of will and zeal, they aren't immune to democracy. At some point their survival instinct is bound to take over their ideological drive. Plus, even if it doesn't bring them to their senses this time, when 2016 rolls around, if Hillary smokes Rick Perry or something then it'll be 3-in-a-row that they faced setbacks nationally because of their radical wing.
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Sep 30, 2014 17:59
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SedanChair posted:The right wing can't even figure out how to deal with Murdoch, they fear him and he controls them. Hillary controls him, by getting in a room with him. Hang on, pause. Rupert Murdoch and Fox News are Hillary's bitch? Because I thought they were hyping all the Benghazi poo poo or faux health concerns to hurt her as a 2016 candidate. hangedman1984 posted:Warren Court 2.0 No. There shall be no appointing of AARP members to the Supreme Court! All potential liberal justices must be in their early 40s or something, so we can have them on the bench forever. This is agist and I'm a bad person. I don't care.
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Oct 1, 2014 06:17
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