USNEWS: Put a ratty-looking paperclip on the stimulus bill

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USNEWS: Put a ratty-looking paperclip on the stimulus bill

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mystes: May 31, 2006

All these attempts to consolidate power to the state legislatures really just show how fundamentally screwed up the American system of government it.

The US constitution does a terrible job of preventing stuff like this because the US wasn't designed to be an actual democracy in the first place.

Probably the only solution is a constitutional amendment that massively curbs states governments' ability to do bullshit like this.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2018 20:49

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 05:16

mystes: May 31, 2006

I mean ideally we would have already enshrined stuff like this in the constitution before we got this point, because it's not like an amendment is going to be possible now except for maybe the constitutional convention route which is a terrifying idea.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2018 21:31

mystes: May 31, 2006

marshmonkey posted:

https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1070438427089354752

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/can...b+Article+Links

So much for ending the trade war. Also, this is going to suck for the US citizens in China who get arrested in retaliation.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2018 23:51

mystes: May 31, 2006

Grouchio posted:

Buckle up for next year stockholders.

More like buckle up for tomorrow.

China is probably going to arrest like 10 american CFOs and announce 100% tarriffs on american cars.

Edit: I honestly think this may be the worst foreign policy move the trump administration has made so far, which is saying a lot.

mystes fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Dec 6, 2018

# ¿ Dec 6, 2018 03:48

mystes: May 31, 2006

Kale posted:

The electoral college was basically set up at a time when travelling the United States to vote in presidential election and transporting a bunch of votes to be validated and confirmed in D.C would have more or less been unfeasible so a representative was sent in the states stead to cast a vote on their behalf to make sure D.C and the other states were in sync on who voted for who and where.

The electoral college was set up because the founding fathers didn't care about boring stuff like democracy or having a popular vote for the president.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2018 22:03

mystes: May 31, 2006

We can't even agree about stuff like ubi in a post scarcity economy. Of course we're not going to be able to decide how to put people out of work if we suddenly have to scale down the economy. It's hopeless.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2018 01:49

mystes: May 31, 2006

The Glumslinger posted:

I don't understand why everyone freaks out about a tiny niche economy that is coal

Arbys employs more people than the coal industry

Government numbers from 2017 put the entire coal industry at 50,800 down from 170K 30 years ago.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jul/21/how-big-coal-mining-compared-other-occupations/

Journalism has lost double that many jobs in the last 15 years alone
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/m..._eid=e49f1168cb

When Toys R Us went bankrupt, 30K people lost their jobs
https://money.cnn.com/2018/03/16/news/companies/toys-r-us-employees/index.html

Sears alone fired more people that the entire coal industry last year
https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-sears-employee-cuts-store-closures-0324-story.html

Why the gently caress do we let one niche industry dictate our entire loving national policy, but we barely even think about all of the people getting fired from retail jobs despite it vastly dwarfing the job losses in coal? Was there a huge national debate about how to help horse and buggy drivers? How about asbestos miners? Or the lead miners when be banned leaded gas and paint?

Like, I know its callous as gently caress to just say fuckoff to 50K people, but economy does it all the loving time

I didn't really mean that about coal specifically. We will need to cut a lot more than that because we need to get to 0 carbon emissions to survive.

mystes fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Dec 7, 2018

# ¿ Dec 7, 2018 02:55

mystes: May 31, 2006

Fritz Coldcockin posted:

Fine, we'll just throw him in a deep, dark hole for the rest of his life.

Of course, Trump will probably pardon him then give him a nice sloppy blowjob in the middle of Times Square while the chuds look on and go "Yes, yes, this is very Presidential and triggers the libs."

Maybe Russia can do a spy swap for him at the same time as for Maria Butina?

# ¿ Dec 7, 2018 16:33

mystes: May 31, 2006

eke out posted:

i know what you mean, I think the reason it's an arrest is there's fraud involved (or something along those lines)
e: yeah, fraud is the allegation

This makes a lot more sense than just arresting her because Huawei violated sanctions as company.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2018 02:02

mystes: May 31, 2006

Meatball posted:

Countdown to trump nominating himself as chief of staff. "I know how I want to run my white house best".

Iirc he said he was going to be his own chief of staff like a year ago, but since it didn't happen here must have already realized it's a bad idea.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2018 15:13

mystes: May 31, 2006

Lightning Knight posted:

I�m Sorry But This Is Just Sheer Propaganda by Nathan Robinson for Current Affairs, on the whitewashing of HW and how American media sands the edges off our imperial leaders.

Well yeah. Why do you think those ABC anchors couldn't help but laugh when they started imagining Trump being given the same treatment in a few more years?

# ¿ Dec 10, 2018 21:04

mystes: May 31, 2006

Skippy McPants posted:

Yeah, the torture we engaged in after 9/11 was as much or more about revenge as it was extracting information.

It's also important to "extract" "information" that justifies additional military operations even if that "information" is not based in "facts."

# ¿ Dec 11, 2018 04:46

mystes: May 31, 2006

Interesting possible development in the Huawei case:

quote:

A former Canadian diplomat now working for the International Crisis Group is missing in China, news that could further complicate an already tense diplomatic standoff over the arrest of a senior Chinese tech executive in Vancouver last week.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...8fc2_story.html

I was expecting that they would retaliate more directly against the US but I guess for now they're just trying to put pressure on Canada to prevent extradition.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2018 18:55

mystes: May 31, 2006

Sabotage marxism by doing things everyone routinely does in capitalist economies.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2018 04:34

mystes: May 31, 2006

Ah yes, the imminent demise of Trump that we've been hearing about every day since he declared his candidacy.

# ¿ Dec 16, 2018 19:50

mystes: May 31, 2006

I had a right wing coworker who repeatedly insisted liberals were sexist for thinking it was time for a female president because it was sexist to care about the gender of the president. :smug:

I don't see Republicans addressing this issue in the near future.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2018 18:01

mystes: May 31, 2006

Discendo Vox posted:

https://twitter.com/darreldrowland/status/1074829503476756481

Another article about the same set of report materials as I linked yesterday. This is getting published and leaked to maximize public coverage, and with very good reason; it's explosive.

Everyone already knows that Russia used social media to meddle in election. Why do you think anyone is going to care about this report?

# ¿ Dec 18, 2018 02:43

mystes: May 31, 2006

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Mattis I�m sure wanted to stay on as long as possible to try and do damage control. This is Trump being a piss baby and outright firing him instead of allowing him to resign with dignity.

I'm sure Mattis knew it would happen since it's what Trump always does, though.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2018 18:18

mystes: May 31, 2006

Grouchio posted:

A good majority of the effects felt by the next recession will be traceable directly to Trump. Just as Planned (in my head).

The republicans always screw up the economy and then the democrats take over and get blamed for it. If a democratic president wins in 2020 this time will be no different.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2018 00:40

mystes: May 31, 2006

evilweasel posted:

he's not a weathervane in the sense that he has a keen understanding of the common man, he's a weathervane in the sense that any position he has is up for negotiation if he thinks it's in his political interests. so what's interesting is that he sees this sort of op-ed as in his political interests. it is not that because he has swung this way the rest of the american public will swing that way as well.

i think we're just disagreeing over what we think "weathervane" implies, i'm using it as an insult and i think you're taking it in a sense that is less insulting.

Romney was elected in the first place because Mormons in Utah like Republicans but aren't that fond of Trump. This means that he isn't risking antagonizing the people who elected him with this op-ed. It's not like he's necessarily betting on Trump being ousted, either; even if Trump stays it will be beneficial for Romney to send a message that he's prioritizing Utah's interests over the party line.

mystes fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jan 2, 2019

# ¿ Jan 2, 2019 19:55

mystes: May 31, 2006

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

It�s crazy how Fox News is the literal opposite of State Media.

In the sense that it tells the president what to think rather than the other way around, yes.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2019 18:19

mystes: May 31, 2006

Relentless posted:

https://twitter.com/UtilityDive/status/1084846047007043584

Turns out, cutting costs until you burn down several forests and an entire city and killing several dozen folks is not a great long term business model.

I'm sure Chapter 11 will do a good job of somehow ensuring the investors get out with their money, which is what's important in a business model anyway.

Edit: Oh wait, it's publicly traded? Nobody cares about poor people investors.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2019 18:03

mystes: May 31, 2006

Relentless posted:

This one is super great from an accounting standpoint, too.

So a if a federal worker, working unpaid, gets a grand in unemployment, that has to be repaid to the unemployment office when they get backpaid after the shutdown ends.

The correct way to handle this is to withhold a grand from that paycheck, and send that to to the unemployment fund. It will have 0 net effect on the budget aside from some lost interest. It's a giant paperwork mess because they're not going to do it correctly, but in a sane and just world this would be fine.

Unfortunately the typical view in this country is something like "People collecting unemployment are lazy people stealing from the government so you have to make it as hard to collect as possible" (even though in reality it's paid for by people's previous employers).

# ¿ Jan 18, 2019 20:13

mystes: May 31, 2006

Previa_fun posted:

They're not wrong

It's sort of true in that every day people seem to think the next day will be the reckoning when Trump will be arrested, which is really similar to qanon conspiracy theory stuff.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2019 16:17

mystes: May 31, 2006

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Nobody thinks this, there is no parallel, and peddling that kind of false equivalency means you're making GBS threads up the discourse (regardless of intent).

Like, seriously, I don't mean this as a personal dig at any individual poster (yourself included) but

https://twitter.com/dril/status/473265809079693312

I'm not saying "the Mueller investigation is the same thing as qanon" because that would be dumb, but there has some stuff like the politico article saying that Trump was the defendant in that sealed court case that has descended to qanon levels of speculation/fantasy about the ramifications of aspects of the investigation.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2019 18:47

mystes: May 31, 2006

James Garfield posted:

I don't think "until 1866 it was legal to make people work for free" is a good description of slavery.

Yes if someone had proposed that as a description of what slavery was that would have been dumb. That doesn't meant that "Never in the history of this country has it been legal to make people work for free" is accurate.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2019 19:38

mystes: May 31, 2006

Zachack posted:

Uhhh.... *reaches for floss on desk*

It's probably dumb but I seriously thought about buying toothpaste with triclosan after reading that article last night. (I actually bought toothpaste with stannous fluoroide which is supposed to also have antibacterial effects).

I'm sure this will end up being disproven or something, and even if it isn't hopefully the vaccine will actually come out, but yikes.

mystes fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jan 24, 2019

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 19:42

mystes: May 31, 2006

mdemone posted:

It reminds me of a number of historical scientific discoveries that came flying in out of left field. It's so stupid it almost has to be true.

There has recently been a lot of interest in the idea that it's caused by a virus, but there have been lots of other random theories like it being fungal (literally, there was a very similar paper a year ago where the authors claimed to find some sort of fungal infection in almost all brain samples from people with alzheimer's or something). I think partly it's just that the drugs based on the amyloid plaque hypothesis all failed so people are looking for other possibilities that would enable drugs to be developed quickly, and it's much too early to be optimistic.

As with attempts to stop aging, the money to develop drugs goes to ideas that would enable easy cures (programmed aging) and not necessarily the ideas that have the most solid evidence but would be hard to cure.

That said, in this case as long as the vaccine can prevent periodontal disease that would be pretty awesome even if it can't prevent/cure alzheimer's.

mystes fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Jan 24, 2019

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 19:51

mystes: May 31, 2006

Insanite posted:

Neat!

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1088608140277542912

Unfortunately, all classification is under the authority of the executive branch so if Trump wants him to get a clearance he'll get a clearance in the end.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2019 03:51

mystes: May 31, 2006

The best part of the post was this'

predicto posted:

its well below freezing in Chicago, and two bad guys who just happen to be out wandering around wearing ski masks

Yeah this is pretty unlikely.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2019 04:39

mystes: May 31, 2006

VitalSigns posted:

No it would not be fair.

The Democrats won the election, it's a whole lot more fair for the state Democratic Party to pick a Democratic governor like the people voted for rather than for the guys that lost the election to take power

It wouldn't be good for a Republican to become governor this way, but having the current elected governor, lieutenant governor, etc. resign and appoint someone who was not elected by the people of the state the new governor is really not good at all either either.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2019 18:51

mystes: May 31, 2006

Charlz Guybon posted:

Yikes

https://twitter.com/ByRosenberg/status/1095809462202298368

They should have just given him what he wanted and run this as their front page story.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2019 18:11

mystes: May 31, 2006

PerniciousKnid posted:

Having never employed a nanny myself, how would you know if they have/require a visa?

If you're employing a full-time nanny directly, they would presumably be your employee rather than an independent contractor, so I would imagine you have to get appropriate documentation from them and use e-verify or whatever just like any other employer.

mystes fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Feb 17, 2019

# ¿ Feb 17, 2019 04:24

mystes: May 31, 2006

Grouchio posted:

My mother still won't let me eat Cheerios again because ROUNDUP.

You should only eat healthy organic foods containing brown rice flour/syrup to make sure you get your RDA of arsenic.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2019 18:39

mystes: May 31, 2006

Shifty Pony posted:

Apparently the FBI wasn't even looking for this sort of thing but stumbled across it in the course of another investigation. I imagine the entire field office got into a fight over who got to take the easy case.

I guess when they accidentally come across something this blatant they have to pursue it even if it's rich people.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2019 22:15

mystes: May 31, 2006

I've been reading a bunch of stuff about the 737 max issue and the most interesting details seem to be as follows:

1) Boeing seems to have had a huge incentive to downplay the differences from normal 737s, because otherwise they would have had to go through a lot more effort to get the 737 max approved and pilots would have to get certified separately to fly it. (It sounds like this may be a general industry trend.)

2) Lots of pilots have been surprised/confused by the behavior of the 737 max and complained that it is significantly different from a normal 737, and that they really needed much more training than the 1 hour powerpoint presentation they were given.

3) Apparently if pilots followed all the steps (which they are required to memorize) they are supposed to perform in this situation, they should have successfully disabled the system that was causing the problem. However, it sounds like on normal 737s pilots wouldn't have had to follow the complete procedure in situations like this so maybe they had effectively learned not to do this even if they were supposed to?

# ¿ Mar 13, 2019 18:29

mystes: May 31, 2006

Apparently Southwest uses a lot of 737 maxes and after the news about the first crash they had special indicators added to the HUD to show problems with the angle of attack system and also did additional training for their pilots. This was pretty smart of them and Boeing probably should have added something this to all the planes.

https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines-is-adding-new-angle-of-attack-indicators-to-its-737-max-fleet/

There's no way to get around the fact that even if pilot error is partially to blame, the first crash pretty clearly showed that some sort of additional measures were called for.

mystes fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Mar 13, 2019

# ¿ Mar 13, 2019 21:38

mystes: May 31, 2006

Snazzy Frocks posted:

Do you think he'd accept paying $10k and community service if he was innocent? Moreso if he was actually attacked in a hate crime?

Maybe if it was the only way to get them to drop the charges quickly and save his career?

# ¿ Mar 27, 2019 14:57

mystes: May 31, 2006

VitalSigns posted:

Well no, I think evidence like "Smollett gave these guys a check to stage a hate crime" is fake because it turns out he gave them a check for their personal training fee to personal train him.

I think evidence like "they're on camera buying red hats and rope" is fake because they are on camera buying ski masks in the cold. Also that piece of ""evidence"" never made sense, because why would they need to buy MAGA hats if the attack was made-up in the first place and they weren't videoing it.

If Smollett didn't pay them to stage a hate crime, and they didn't actually buy ski masks for the purpose of attacking him, does that mean that you think they aren't the people who attacked him and the real culprits are still at large?

(I don't mean this as a rhetorical question; I'm really not sure what to make of this whole thing.)

# ¿ Mar 28, 2019 21:38

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 05:16

mystes: May 31, 2006

predicto posted:

Yep. It's a rorschach test for me too.

I read it as an indication that the cops had hired the brothers to get at Jesse, and paid for a hotel room before the attack.

What are you taking about. After the alleged attack the police arrested them, released them, and temporarily put them up in a hotel because they were important witnesses for the case. It's really not that weird.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2019 00:37

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USNEWS: Put a ratty-looking paperclip on the stimulus bill

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