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PoliGAF 2013 |OT2| Worth 77% of OT1

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P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Yes, the overwhelming crush of traffic is behind many of the Web site's failures. But the Web site was clearly far, far from prepared for traffic at anywhere near these levels. That's a planning flaw: The Obama administration badly underestimated the level of interest. The fact that the traffic is good news for the law doesn't obviate the fact that the site's inability to absorb that traffic is bad news for the law.

Part of the problem, according to a number of designers, is that the site is badly coded, which makes the traffic problems more acute. There's a darkly amusing thread on Reddit where web designers are picking through the site's code and mocking it mercilessly. "They're loading 11 CSS files and 62 (wat?) JavaScript files on each page, uncompressed and without expires headers," writes Spektr44. "They have blocks of HTML inexplicably wrapped in script tags. Wtf?"
Click to expand...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...4/wonkbook-obamacares-web-site-is-really-bad/

One of the dumbest unforced errors I've seen in awhile, especially considering how high the stakes are. There are people who are going to keep trying, as they've been without health insurance for years/decades, but this fail is doing nothing to promote the law.
 
T

theprodigy

Member
mightynine said:
If you'd like to enjoy a politican falling directly on his face, watch this.



http://youtu.be/eVnMCguL04k
Click to expand...

*oops*
also PD stop before you give Diablos a heart attack

edit:
pg4p80q3.gif


it begins
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
Maybe the dems can't run anecdote stories about hurt business because it will backfire?

Millions of visitors tour the region each year for what can be once-in-a-lifetime vacations.

Those visitors didn't stop with the government shutdown, which forced officials to close down roads, campgrounds and tourist centers at national parks dotting the landscape.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has offered to use state money to keep the Grand Canyon open, and several businesses made similar pledges — all of which have been politely rejected by the national park.

"Looks as though both sides are having a bit of a childish tantrum," says Englishman Neil Stanton.
Click to expand...

http://news.yahoo.com/shutdown-ruins-vacations-hurts-local-economies-041811789.html

Clinton let Arizona open the park, why cant Obama?
 
G

gcubed

Member
nooo! what did corbett say? I dont have headphones at work to listen. Voting Corbett out and seeing his weasly face embarrassed is the ONLY thing i miss about leaving PA
 
K

KingK

Member
JesseEwiak said:
The moderates are basically suburbanites who don't care about the gay couple across the street, want their daughter to get an abortion if her birth control fails, and thinks scientists should be listened too, but still cross the street when they see more than three black guys and believe the story their friend's friend told them about a welfare queen.
Click to expand...

This is very true in my experience.

Fenderputty said:
IMO people don't see the self serving benefits of welfare. Even if someone does game the system, it's better than them resorting to crime. Maybe they don't live near an area with poverty. Who knows. Either way I think most people don't get that there are societal benefits to welfare that go beyond compassion for poor people.
Click to expand...

The problem is conservatives don't see the connection between poverty and crime. Crime has nothing to do with poverty in their view, it's just the result of personal moral failings of (black) individuals.

It's part of the larger issue of conservatives in general just not accepting the fact that society at large can and does have an impact on individuals. You're living in poverty? Structural problems in society that increase wealth disparity and make it harder to be socially mobile don't exist, you obviously just aren't working hard enough! You resorted to crime for income? Obviously poverty has nothing to do with it, you just lack morals! You don't have healthcare? Quit blaming society for your problems and get a job!

And in the case of poor conservatives it's just a matter of exploiting religion and racism. "The only reason I haven't been successful yet is because the government keeps burdening us hard working folks with helping lazy minorities!"
 
B

Black Mamba

Member
Dax01 said:
They're just saying that gerrymandering isn't the *sole* reason we're in this mess, and that it's been given too much weight as to why we're here.
Click to expand...

But get second article isn't evidence of this at all. That's my problem with it. There's an obvious omitted variable there which is made obvious by the shutdown.
 
C

Crisco

Banned
PhoenixPause said:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...4/wonkbook-obamacares-web-site-is-really-bad/

One of the dumbest unforced errors I've seen in awhile, especially considering how high the stakes are. There are people who are going to keep trying, as they've been without health insurance for years/decades, but this fail is doing nothing to promote the law.
Click to expand...

I mean sure, that sucks, but people say the same thing about code from any large companies. Leaked Windows source code from Microsoft is fucking terrible. It looks like something written by a 1st year Comp Sci student.
 
T

Tamanon

Banned
gcubed said:
nooo! what did corbett say? I dont have headphones at work to listen. Voting Corbett out and seeing his weasly face embarrassed is the ONLY thing i miss about leaving PA
Click to expand...

He was asked about the analogy someone used to describe gay marriage as "being like a union of 12-year olds" and he said he disagreed with it.

Instead he said it was like "a brother and a sister getting married". Que idiota.
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
Dax01 said:
Huh. I know gerrymandering has been thrown around a lot here, but here are two good articles on it.

Nate Cohn
You don't have to look far to find people diagnosing gerrymandering as the source of all of our nation’s woes, including (but surely not limited to) the shutdown. From this perspective, Republicans are gerrymandered into districts so conservative that the GOP is held hostage by ultraconservative primary electorates. Even President Obama has blamed the GOP "fever" on gerrymandering. These concerns are not totally misplaced. Gerrymandering is undemocratic, and it did help consolidate the GOP’s House majority in 2012. But, as I’ve written before, the significance of gerrymandering is exaggerated. Republicans are in safe districts for an incredibly simple reason: Most of the country just isn’t competitive.

Take Texas, a famously gerrymandered state. If you want to create competitive districts, you don’t have many great options. Of the state’s 254 counties, 244 were won by either Obama or Romney by at least 10 points. That's not how it used to be: Back in 1996, 92 counties were within 10 points. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these non-competitive counties tend to be extremely Republican. A whopping 176 of Texas’ 254 counties voted for Romney by more than a 40 point margin (at least 70-30). 81 of those counties voted for Romney by at least 60 points (ie 80-20). So, even a fair map would create plenty of incredibly red, safe, ultraconservative districts.

As a result, it’s very difficult to draw competitive districts that retain geographic and demographic coherence. In fact, one would need to gerrymander Texas to make competitive districts, connecting heavily Democratic cities with large minority populations to the deeply conservative countryside. And even that strategy might be struck down under the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority-majority districts.​

John Sides
In a recent interview in The New Republic, President Obama said this about the politics surrounding gun control:

That does not mean that you don't have some real big differences. The House Republican majority is made up mostly of members who are in sharply gerrymandered districts that are very safely Republican and may not feel compelled to pay attention to broad-based public opinion, because what they're really concerned about is the opinions of their specific Republican constituencies.​

Obama expressed a common view: that gerrymandering has created a bunch of safe seats for each party, making representatives responsive only to their partisan base and unwilling to forge bipartisan compromises.

It would be nice if this view were true, because it would suggest a clear solution to our polarized politics: draw more competitive districts. But unfortunately it is not true. The most important influence on how members of Congress vote is not their constituents, but their party. This makes them out-of-step not only with the average American -- the "broad-based public opinion" that Obama mentioned -- but also, and ironically, with even their base. Members are more partisan than even voters in their party.

The easiest way to see how little constituency matters is to compare how representatives vote to the partisanship of their constituents. Here is what the 113th House looks like so far, based on calculations (pdf) by Stanford political scientist Simon Jackman

jackmanhouse113.png


The vertical axis is a measure of candidate ideology based on roll call voting. Higher numbers indicate more conservative views, and lower numbers indicate more liberal views. The horizontal axis captures how well Obama did in that district in 2008. The red dots are Republican House members and the blue dots are Democrats. All of the red dots are higher than all of the blue dots. Polarization in the 113th Congress is already evident.

The important thing in this graph is the black lines that capture the relationship between, essentially, how liberal or conservative the member's constituents are and how liberal or conservative the member is. Those lines should slope downward: the more liberal the district, the more liberal the member. But the lines are mostly flat, with only a slight downward slope among Republicans. No matter whether Obama won 20 percent or 50 percent of their district, Republican representatives have voted similarly -- that is, they have taken conservative positions on average. No matter whether Obama won 50 percent or 80 percent of their district, Democratic representatives have taken liberal positions, on average. Constituency hasn't affected anyone's overall voting behavior that much.​
Click to expand...

Ending Gerrymandering puts maybe 7-8 seats nation wide up for contesting. Doesn't do anything to depolarize the parties and congress.

The issue is geographically-defined single member districts. My thought is the founders didn't foresee strict ideological party lines. They predicted regional/cultural differences as the chief divisions in the nation. They were right up until recently when post cold war parties became much more ideological and polarized.

My solution would be to bring back multimember districts or eliminate districts altogether and have proportional state delegations chosen by a single transferable votes type system. The country has had them in the past but they are currently illegal, by law , not constitutionally as the constitution says nothing on districts just that representatives must be apportioned among the states.

The multimember districts would probably be more realistic as eliminating districts would reduce racial representation in many states. The issue with our current system of district drawing is so many people are concentrated in cities which are difficult to divide geographically. It would help the house represent the current ideological status of the people but at the same time allowing the senate to continue the tradition of states and landed interests having some power. The house is supposed to be the peoples house but its hard to claim that when more people vote for dems and we still get a strong republican majority.

Party primaries are another tremendously damaging portion of our electoral system, it again empowers a minority to exert too much control. I'm not in favor of a parliamentarian system and I do like some protections of the voting minority but I can't help but think there is far too many stops on any type of change no matter how small and the most frustrating is so many of these are extraconstitutional which is why I can't help but shake my head at people who are so quick to blame it for our problems.
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and local businesses are fighting to reopen the Grand Canyon after access was closed as a result of the government shutdown.

Brewer has offered to pay for the reopening of the National Park with state money, but her plan was rejected Thursday by a park official who maintained that it is not possible as long as the federal government remains closed, reports Fox News.

"I appreciate the support and I thanked them for the offer, but it’s not an offer we can accept," said park superintendent Dave Uberuaga.

More than 2,000 employees of the Grand Canyon National Park and its hotels have been furloughed since the shutdown began.

"And that’s not counting the economic impact in the gateway communities, all of the related businesses, the bus tours, hiking companies, the jeep tours, all of those associated functions are suffering economically as well," Uberuaga said.

Several of those businesses are also fighting to reopen the park. Red Feather Properties, which operates lodges in the nearby town of Tusayan, has pledged $25,000, to do so, urging others to follow suit, according to the Grand Canyon News.

"I just think that if private entitles are able to step up and say that we’ll help and fund to keep the Grand Canyon open for a while, I think it should be considered," she told the newspaper, adding, "We need our governor, Congress, Senate, everyone to not use our National Park Service as a pawn in this."

The Tusayan town council reportedly announced on Thursday night that it had committed $200,000 to reopen one of the park’s viewpoints, but Uberuaga rejected that offer as well.

"Bottom line, any third-party funding of the national park opening will not occur. This is a fundamental core operation of the federal government provided for by government appropriations by the U.S. Congress," he said.

But Brewer is not giving up just yet. The governor wants "to see the Grand Canyon opened as soon as possible,” said her spokesman, Andrew Wilder, “but its gates are closed because there’s a failure in Washington, D.C."
Click to expand...
http://www.newsmax.com/US/US-Shutdown-Grand-Canyon/2013/10/03/id/529249


Whoever advised Obama to turn down private offers like this is an idiot.
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
Tamanon said:
What happened the last shutdown that you're referring to?
Click to expand...

Arizona paid to open the Grand Canyon during the shutdown.

They're trying to do the same thing. Obama is saying no.

It flips the messaging. Now Obama is deliberately preventing tourists from visiting, and is hurting businesses.


Yes, the GOP took the ball and ran home, but when the neighbor stopped by and offered to buy Obama a new ball, he kicked it away and ran off, because he's not getting his way.
 
D

Diablos

Member
lol, the look on Corbett's face.

He doesn't care because he has gone on record saying re-election does not matter to him.

Then again, so did Obama. But Obama spoke of helping people being his #1 priority, Corbett spoke of conservative Pennsylvania drivel being peddled onto the state as his.
 
S

sc0la

Unconfirmed Member
PhoenixPause said:
How many would you approve though? The obvious point of this is to fund the "good" parts of government and thus defuse the crisis, then keep Obamacare/"bad" parts of government shuttered. I agree with paying the troops obviously, but I wouldn't support opening any other piece of government in a piecemeal approach.

This is a crisis, and should remain a crisis until it is completely resolved.
Click to expand...
Yep.

It's like "Hunger Strike!! .... Except cheesecake is okay because that shit is delicious, and everybody loves cheesecake right?"
 
H

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
PhoenixPause said:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...4/wonkbook-obamacares-web-site-is-really-bad/

One of the dumbest unforced errors I've seen in awhile, especially considering how high the stakes are. There are people who are going to keep trying, as they've been without health insurance for years/decades, but this fail is doing nothing to promote the law.
Click to expand...
Crisco said:
I mean sure, that sucks, but people say the same thing about code from any large companies. Leaked Windows source code from Microsoft is fucking terrible. It looks like something written by a 1st year Comp Sci student.
Click to expand...
Should've hired the team that did Obama's campaign website, it was freaking immaculate.

Kidding, this is a much, much more complex application and god knows how many consultations had to be done for .gov compliance

Really though, as much fun as reddit might be having by mocking the code (and (inefficient as it indeed is), the site's design from a UX perspective is extremely functional and attractive and does a lot of things right. It needs fixing and more capacity but technical glitches are growing pangs of a new platform like this.

From a media perspective, it's a bit of a 7-10 split. Raw web traffic indicates there's even more demand for the HIM than even the most liberal (heh) estimates predicted. "Conscientious objectors" to Obamacare do not appear to be a factor.
 
C

Crisco

Banned
Is this news?

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/360413/emerging-offer-robert-costa

But details are floating to the surface as the leadership reaches out to internal power brokers about what’s within the realm of the possible. What I’m hearing: There will be a “mechanism” for revenue-neutral tax reform, ushered by Ryan and Michigan’s Dave Camp, that will encourage deeper congressional talks in the coming year. There will be entitlement-reform proposals, most likely chained CPI and means testing Medicare; there will also be some health-care provisions, such as a repeal of the medical-device tax, which has bipartisan support in both chambers. Boehner, sources say, is expected to go as far as he can with his offer. Anything too small will earn conservative ire; anything too big will turn off Democrats.
Click to expand...

I don't see why in the hell Obama or the democrats would take this. It's basically a wish list of GOP demands in return for absolutely nothing they won't get eventually if they just let the shutdown continue. It's ludicrous.
 
empty vessel

empty vessel

Member
Crisco said:
I don't see why in the hell Obama or the democrats would take this. It's basically a wish list of GOP demands in return for absolutely nothing they won't get eventually if they just let the shutdown continue. It's ludicrous.
Click to expand...

Absolutely ludicrous. As somebody impacted by sequestration and the shutdown, fuck the GOP. Let them die a slow, painful death.
 
G

gcubed

Member
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
Is there no better voice in Government for progressivism than Warren?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTxWMkW8s_c

Plus, FOX News Spinning this Poll hard though the numbers look great for Democrats as pointed out by Dave Weigel. I can't help but think voters are going to be tired of the issue by next November as people aren't going to be seeing and the apocalypse the GOP promised and especially by 2016

It was sort of lost in a swirl of similar rotten news for the Obama administration, but the last Fox News poll, represented an Obama nadir. At the close of the Syria escapade, Barack Obama's approval rating had crashed to 40 percent—by a 14-point margin, voters viewed his job performance negatively.

The new Fox News poll is another story. There's an obvious lede, with fantastic news for Republicans.

Several provisions of the health care law have already been delayed. Setting aside how you feel about the law, do you think implementation of it should be delayed for a year until more details are ironed out, or not?
Yes - 57%
No - 39%
Hey, that's the GOP's current message, complete with the "since Obama has already delayed part of it" preamble.

But the rest of the poll shines for the Democrats. Obama's approval has ticked up to 45 percent, with 49 percent disapproval, a 10-point shrinking of the negative margin. Congress's approval number has sunk to its lowest level since the failure of the "supercommittee"—down from 17–75 to 13–81, minus 58 to minus 68.

There's more:

- A bounce in Obama's approval rating on health care, from 38–58 to 45–51. (This is the highest Obama number since before the 2012 election.)

- A tumble in the GOP's favorable rating to 35–59, with 59 percent unfavorable marking the highest level in the history of the poll. (The Democrats' numbers mirror Obama's.)

- John Boehner overtaking Harry Reid as the least popular congressional leader. Their last ratings, respectively: -18, -21. The new ratings: -22, -13.

- A 9-point drop in the percentage of people wanting full repeal of Obamacare, down on 30 from 39.

- A 53–41 margin in favor of keeping the law, versus repealing it.

Honestly, the second-best number for Republicans is a 42–32 margin on the question of whom to blame for the shutdown. I see some proof, here, of the theory that a tightly messaged "we just want to delay the law" theme can work. But week one of the shutdown has cut hard against the GOP, in this poll.
Click to expand...

Tamanon said:
Mechanism could easily just mean a committee.
Click to expand...

Another SUPERCONGRESS!
 
B

bodyofanamerican

Member
gcubed said:
that paragraph just says that they want to talk about these things if they pass a clean CR, nothing about having to abide by them.
Click to expand...

Agreed, I see this as edging every so agonizingly closer to a deal, but as you say, the "deal" will be that they talk about this stuff, not enact it. As Obama has said though, CR and DL are going to have to be passed with these talks agreed upon on a handshake, not as a part of the actual DL/CR bills. That's where I think we have to get to wrap all this up.
 
D

Doc Holliday

SPOILER: Columbus finds America
Man these guys are nuts! At what point do we all agree that it's about the tea party being so being pissed that they got out maneuvered by a black man. Trust me I'm the last guy to bitch about racism, but how can you not come to this conclusion after witnessing the behavior of these idiots.
 
G

gcubed

Member
Doc Holliday said:
Man these guys are nuts! At what point do we all agree that it's about the tea party being so being pissed that they got out maneuvered by a black man. Trust me I'm the last guy to bitch about racism, but how can you not come to this conclusion after witnessing the behavior of these idiots.
Click to expand...

i'm not a huge proponent of race in these cards. Conservatives today are much more conservative then they were during Clintons years... and they went batshit insane on him as well. The tea party bump turned a lot of purely stupid people into politicians... I think that has more to do with it then race.
 
D

Doc Holliday

SPOILER: Columbus finds America
gcubed said:
i'm not a huge proponent of race in these cards. Conservatives today are much more conservative then they were during Clintons years... and they went batshit insane on him as well. The tea party bump turned a lot of purely stupid people into politicians... I think that has more to do with it then race.
Click to expand...

You know what, you might be right. They haven't impeached Obama....yet lol. Thank god he is squeaky clean when it comes to his personal life.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...o-force-republicans-to-reopen-the-government/

I guess Dems might try and use a gop bill to file a “discharge petition” and bring a cr vote to the floor. how fucking crazy is that??
 
T

teiresias

Member
Tamanon said:
Mechanism could easily just mean a committee.
Click to expand...

Agreed this whole thing almost sounds like a Republican cave wrapped in language to make it palletable to the Tea Party Nuts. So the Republicans will pass the CR if the Democrats give them a conference committee like the Democrats have wanted for months?
 
empty vessel

empty vessel

Member
gcubed said:
i'm not a huge proponent of race in these cards. Conservatives today are much more conservative then they were during Clintons years... and they went batshit insane on him as well. The tea party bump turned a lot of purely stupid people into politicians... I think that has more to do with it then race.
Click to expand...

It is mostly about race, just not necessarily Obama's race in particular. It is about all the black deadbeats conservatives stupidly think their tax dollars go to support.
 
C

Clevinger

Member
gcubed said:
i'm not a huge proponent of race in these cards. Conservatives today are much more conservative then they were during Clintons years... and they went batshit insane on him as well. The tea party bump turned a lot of purely stupid people into politicians... I think that has more to do with it then race.
Click to expand...

Agreed. While some, or even a lot, of them may be racist, right wing propaganda has imbued a level of hate in them for Evil (democrats) that makes that Evil much worse than -insert racial slur-. Obama being black is just the hateful cherry on top.
 
R

remist

Member
APKmetsfan said:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...o-force-republicans-to-reopen-the-government/

Looks like the Dems found a GOP bill to discharge. It won't get signatures but it helps muddy up the message that the Dems are just saying no. And gives them the message they're voting for a GOP bill that the GOP now is against.
Click to expand...

Props to whatever staffer came up with this. I think there's still hope that they can get the signatures but even if they don't, as you say it helps with the messaging battle.
 
empty vessel

empty vessel

Member
Clevinger said:
Agreed. While some, or even a lot, of them may be racist, right wing propaganda has imbued a level of hate in them for Evil (democrats) that makes that Evil much worse than -insert racial slur-. Obama being black is just the hateful cherry on top.
Click to expand...

Who do you think they think "Democrats" are?

APKmetsfan said:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...o-force-republicans-to-reopen-the-government/

Looks like the Dems found a GOP bill to discharge. It won't get signatures but it helps muddy up the message that the Dems are just saying no. And gives them the message they're voting for a GOP bill that the GOP now is against.

Didn't see Doc's post
Click to expand...

I hope it doesn't get signatures. The bill has a built-in mechanism to reduce government spending over time without Republicans having to life a finger.
 
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