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Comments about government overspending $3million on an earmark for an "overhead projector" is one of the big stories that got rid of earmarks entirely, something that has apparently completely frozen the federal government and probably doomed all American prosperity. It was actually for a new projector for the Adler Planetarium. I'm sure the claims of waste from them are totally real this time though  . Don't ever expect honesty or hindsight or introspection out of Republicans.
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Dec 1, 2015 17:43
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Every once and awhile there is news in Hawaii about how lawmakers are going to "do something" about illegal vacation rental properties, but nothing ever happens. Probably because a huge number of homes in nice areas like Kailua or Hawaii Kai are just vacation homes for rich mainlanders and they like the easy income they get for the 50 weeks a year they don't live in them. If you're ever going to Honolulu though you should 100% stay in an AirBnB instead of in Waikiki because Waikiki is a gross shithole.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:28
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I wish Uber and Airbnb weren't run by ruthless libertarian douchebags because they really did make some significant improvements to their respective industries.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:35
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I actually thought that airbnb and vrbo started at the same time (like lyft and uber) so color me wrong and I guess! They really do offer a service that people want (An inexpensive short term rental unit for vacations or work trips, cheaper because it isn't a full fledged hotel) but it also fucks up rental markets something fierce. Sounds like something that can easily be solved by regulation and taxation though.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:50
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Rhesus Pieces posted:Ahem, "disrupts." It disrupts the really obnoxious "tourist islands" that appear in every city around hotels, but it also creates an even more obnoxious landlord class of fat lard fuckers who make enough to live by taking up space and ruining the rental market in an area. Someone should disrupt them next.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:58
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I'm glad Hillary found an independent third party to viciously attack a candidate she is already soundly beating. It certainly would be weird if she herself was accusing people of doing shady electronic things after her whole email fiasco. Also: Democrats: the party of not knowing how technology works apparently!!
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Dec 19, 2015 02:25
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Bernie Sanders just wrote a really stupid article about the Fed, probably in a weird attempt to drum up support from the notoriously reliable Ron Paul crowd? I still dislike him the least but now I officially don't like any of the candidates 
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Dec 25, 2015 02:23
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The Fed was put in a weird position recently with QE and QE2 where they had to, essentially, bail out large financial institutions without any real oversight. But that's really only because the political situation in Washington was so disastrously fanatical about austerity that even with interest rates at zero the dollar was deflating. Bernie is different from the Pauls, as they seem to just really want a poo poo load of deflation, where as Bernie seemingly wants decreases in government spending to immediately cause deflationary harm to the economy, a thing the Fed delays or prevents. Attacking an apolitical institution whose sole purpose is to promote monetary stability seems like something only an idiot or a revolutionary would do.
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Dec 25, 2015 03:57
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I'm sorry, if you knew that Agrabah was fictional and wanted to express it, which one of the only three choices ("Support","Oppose","Indifferent") would you choose? Would you hang up because that is a stupid question? Asking whether you would accept refugees from Agrabah is really super not a poll of if you know whether or not it is a real place. On the other hand, if you say you would bomb a fictional place that doesn't exist, it sort of begs the question of if you actually have a lower limit of who you would bomb and maybe are actually quite keen on bombing literally anyone arabic sounding, which is also interesting to know. The results of that poll aren't "People are dumb and don't know geography", the results are "most Democrats think all refugees are people regardless of location, and most Republicans want to murder every single arabic sounding or looking person, because they aren't people."
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Dec 25, 2015 04:23
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BetterToRuleInHell posted:I'm shocked, utterly shocked that USPol goons would defend the stupidity they agree with. I'm interested why you think "Be nice to everyone" is equivalent stupidity to "Everyone arabic deserves to be bombed"
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Dec 25, 2015 04:35
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I am re-watching the year of This Week Tonight, and everyone should constantly be reminded that America has a shitload of pretty important and easily solvable problems, none of which are ever fixed or discussed in favor of stupid bullshit that ranges from pointless to actively destructive!
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Dec 25, 2015 08:02
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PC LOAD LETTER posted:There is already so much important complex stuff that is exposed to the scrutiny and influence of those idiots that 1 more thing won't make a difference at this point. Why would you think that though? The problems at the Fed you detailed were: politicization, unfair distribution of financial liquidity, and poor regulatory policies. Why would involving a partisan, biased, anti-regulatory body in the institution do anything at all to fix any of those problems, it sounds like a recipe for policy decisions that benefit the party / set of donors that currently control the oversight, and much more dangerously, could completely derail its ability to actually keep the monetary system stable. What exactly is more important and complex than the macroeconomic sovereign monetary policy of the biggest economy in the world, exactly?
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Dec 25, 2015 09:04
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The Fed tries really hard to stay under the radar, because if flyover backwood idiots actually knew the amount of power and responsibility their institution possesses it would be constantly attacked. Sort of like it is now! It's a double edged sword since no one knows the unbelievably instrumental importance of their subtle high level manipulations to their daily lives. If Paul or Bernie actually start loving with the Fed and it results in uncontrolled inflation/deflation, everyone will probably just blame it on immigrants and minorities and taxes anyway and no one will ever learn anything.
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Dec 25, 2015 09:09
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Luigi Thirty posted:he he yeah burn the south, kill everyone in the s People keep posting that like we don't think the problems with the south are all the weird conservative whites who have disenfranchised all minorities.
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Dec 25, 2015 22:07
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Yeah, people DON'T care about statistics. Systematic poverty is reduced to a statistic because no one wants to deal with it. Welfare fraud is talked about with specific examples because people want to systematically dismantle welfare entirely. It is actually a good way to tell if someone is trying to manipulate you, are they using large sample-size statistics? Then probably not. Are they telling you about the poor white poo poo farmer with some cute kids from Ohio who just can't quite make ends meet without the Corn Subsidy? They probably are.
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Dec 25, 2015 22:25
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Dead Cosmonaut posted:Poverty is viewed as entirely tolerable if it is viewed as being a manageable number and even a necessary consequence of the system poverty exists under. The reason why charities exist is entirely a logical extension of the latter. This is also consistent on how Americans view the "middle class" because it helps keep those numbers entirely manageable. I know people are already asking about the second Krugman related weirdness in your posts, but in the first part: why do you think that people are reassured by "tolerable" poverty statistics? Do you think that those volunteering for and giving money to charities support those institutions because capitalism is just inherently flawed and the only possible way of solving poverty is through extra-governmental goodwill of average citizens? Personally I think that it is far more likely that no one has any idea what a "manageable" percentage of poverty is (5%? 20%? These are just math numbers), and only really care when they see poverty negatively affecting someone they are personally connected to. I don't understand why you responded to me either, you didn't really address my thesis of "statistics are inherently unrelatable even though they are much more accurate in describing reality"
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Dec 26, 2015 00:39
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Luigi Thirty posted:he he yeah burn the south, kill everyone in the s Also, to add to the irrelevance of this image as to why people hate the south, each of those states with large black populations have about 25% of their congressional house districts majority black. Surprise, those representatives are all Democrats and never who people complain about (they are actually usually super cool). It's the other 75% of the representatives people have a big problem with.
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Dec 26, 2015 00:58
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I had a super fun night last night drunkenly arguing with three people about how we should allow Syrian Refugees into the US. It ended with one of them loudly and repeatedly exclaiming that I must be affiliated with ISIS. I'm not sure I know how to effectively argue with people.
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Dec 27, 2015 03:54
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My Imaginary GF posted:How can we let individuals into the USA who have lived with and around ISIL, when our agencies don't even have the authority to check their social media accounts in order to deny them a visa? Well they thought that the screening procedure was probably 99% effective, since Americans are good at their jobs, but since there are 10k expected refugees the 1% who fool the vetting process would still be 100 ISIS terrorists coming into the US!
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Dec 27, 2015 04:36
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Well technically right now any DA could use civil forfeiture to seize all guns in america. Doing that even once would be a great way to get rid of civil forfeiture!
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Dec 28, 2015 02:20
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PUGGERNAUT posted:
this is the best thing I've read today.
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Dec 28, 2015 02:52
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hangedman1984 posted:Absolutely horrible and not at all out of character for Romney. Man really has absolutely no sense of empathy Its also completely ideologically consistent with modern conservatism.
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Dec 28, 2015 03:14
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GalacticAcid posted:The book's author cited this GQ article. It comes from a fairly unrelated indictment of term limits; that the practice basically gives the Governor a lot more power since Senators can no longer expect to outlast any given Governor. quote:"The legislature is not its own branch of government anymore," Smith began. "We're Jeb's workroom. Because of the Republican numbers, they can do whatever they want. They don't really negotiate with us. And once Jeb became governor, they laid down for him. They have bent over backward to give him more and more power. They gave him the power to appoint the secretary of state. They gave him the power to appoint all the trustees for the universities. Before, members would tell a governor, 'Screw you, you're out in eight years, and I'll be here for twenty,' but now that we have term limits, members think, 'I'm gonna be out of here in a few years. I don't want to have the governor mad at me.' So term limits have got him in a real good spot." I'd believe that Jeb literally took away money for helping children with cancer.
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Dec 28, 2015 04:11
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Samurai Sanders posted:So I just visited Wall Street for the first time and saw people literally lined up to rub the bull's balls for good luck in business. Is there any more blatant pagan idol worship than that that happens in America these days? Where the hell are all the Christian protesters? It sort of seems like modern organized American Christianity has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible or any biblical teachings, and is entirely about leveraging a convenient group and natural tribalism to consolidate power. Thousands of christians worship a literal golden calf idol, something there is literally a story about in the bible and is literally breaking the first commandment, and yet no one seems to care. However gay people and abortion, which aren't really mentioned in the bible, are huge important topics for weird religious zealots and drive a huge part of the narrative.
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Dec 28, 2015 04:24
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Mr Interweb posted:Does anyone know where one can find monthly job losses/gains by state? I googled "monthly job losses/gains by state" http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cewbd.t06.htm they have lots of statistics there
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Dec 29, 2015 01:55
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There's a reason he didn't want the job.
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Dec 29, 2015 06:41
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Also they keep saying "all lives matter" like they aren't trying to keep war refugees out of America.
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Dec 30, 2015 04:53
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Joementum posted:Yup. Also why Hillary hasn't driven a car in twenty years. Nope, it's because they are rich liberal elite who are out of touch with normal Americans.
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Dec 31, 2015 21:30
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:00 |
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I wonder why I haven't heard about this in the news at all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy
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Dec 31, 2015 22:41
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