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PoliGAF 2013 |OT2| Worth 77% of OT1

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S

sc0la

Unconfirmed Member
Black Mamba said:
Some medication is cheaper without prescription coverage. At least in Cali. I recently learned this when I took my grandmother off her supplemental and shopped around to see how much no insurance would cost. Granted these are almost all generics but the price dropped from $25 for 2 months to like $4 for 3.

Great system we have.

On the flip side with a $800 a month supplemental she still paid about $3 a day for a certain medication til we stopped it.

America fuck yeah.
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While this is true the phenomenon of Walmart generic prices regardless of coverage was not a thing when I didn't have insurance unfortunately :/
 
M

Myansie

Member
jamesinclair said:
Article about how every decent country required paid vacation except the US

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...t-doesnt-guarantee-paid-vacation-or-holidays/

Does the president have the power to, for example, require via executive order, 5 paid holidays a year?

(New Years, Memorial, 4th, Labor, Thanksgiving)
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Whoa that sucks! We (aus) get paid for public holidays plus 4 weeks of whenever we want leave. Then at my job I get every second Friday off, still paid, just cause. America has such a live to work culture.
 
J

jamesinclair

Banned
empty vessel said:
Only by the grace of their employer. The law only requires that employees be paid extra for working holidays, not that they actually have them off. You can be fired for refusing to work on Christmas or any other holiday.
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No, I mean the federal agents.

Obama needs to executive order that executive orders have the full power of law.

And then executive order that no business shall open from 2pm to 10am from Thanksgiving to black friday, and from 10pm july 3rd to 2am july 5th.

Its time to go Switzerland on the evil retailers.
 
B

Black Mamba

Member
jamesinclair said:
No, I mean the federal agents.

Obama needs to executive order that executive orders have the full power of law.

And then executive order that no business shall open from 2pm to 10am from Thanksgiving to black friday, and from 10pm july 3rd to 2am july 5th.

Its time to go Switzerland on the evil retailers.
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not sure if you're trolling or you don't understand how executive orders work.

Executive orders can only be enforced on federal agencies. It can't be used on businesses.
 
G

Gotchaye

Member
At least we can all agree that it'd be perfectly legal for Obama to ask businesses to close on holidays
and then order the assassinations of the CEOs of the corporations which don't close
.
 
I

Incognito

Troll
After numerous attempts to fill vacancies on the all important D.C. Circuit Court only to be thwarted by Republican intransigence President Obama will finally nominate three judges at once. Although recently Obama was successful with his latest nomination to the court, Sri Srinivasan, other attempts to nominate judges with a decidedly liberal judicial philosophy have been stymied. For example, neither Goodwin Liu or Caitlin Halligan were afforded an up or down vote. Let's hope, however, that the confirmation of Mr. Srinivasan doesn't represent a strategy by Mr. Obama to placate the GOP by nominating candidates with tenuous partisan backgrounds.
 
Rhomega Beta

Rhomega Beta

Member
I rather like this article: http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/27/opinion/avlon-patriot/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

New York (CNN) -- On Memorial Day, we honor those patriots who gave "the last full measure of devotion" -- in Abraham Lincoln's words -- and died defending our freedom and union.

But this Memorial Day is partly clouded by the resurgence of partisan scandal in Washington. At the IRS, employees filtered through the exploding number of tax exemption applications by politically associated organizations by being on the lookout for groups that had the name "Tea Party" and "Patriot" in their name. This was improper, illegal, unethical and outrageous.

But hold on -- when did the word "patriot" become a partisan pejorative? How did such a bipartisan positive word get identified as a sign of hyperpartisan politics?

It's actually an interesting story.

Over the past few years, you might have noticed more than few political fundraising e-mails addressing you as "Fellow Patriot." They ain't from the ACLU. They tend to be from conservative activist groups, and there is more than a little self-congratulation in their tribal identifier.

The idea, of course, is that their fellow travelers on the right side of the aisle are the "real" patriots -- related to Sarah Palin's "Real Americans" -- defenders of a political faith and traditional way of life under attack by liberals, Democrats, demographics and above all, President Barack Obama.

The fact that many of these self-styled superpatriots seem to hate their twice-elected president is itself a sign of just how dumb the false dualities that dominate our politics can be.

But it's nothing new. Like so many themes in our politics, there are echoes of the past in our present debates. Going back to at least the virulently anti-Catholic "Know-Nothing" Party of the 1800s, conservative populists have always styled themselves as superpatriots whose commitment to our country outpaces their neighbors and especially our country's newest arrivals.

There has always been an anxiety -- most recently articulated by Pat Buchanan and Anne Coulter -- that immigration will change the complexion and cultural character of our country. It has always been ultimately exposed as xenophobia poising as patriotism.

Three of my grandparents arrived to the United States more or less a century ago from Southern Europe, and they were derided as "garlic eaters" and far worse by some earlier immigrants, but welcomed with open arms by many more. Their achievement of the American Dream is why I proudly count myself as an almost cheesy patriot of the Norman Rockwell variety.

But history teaches us to be wary of people who lord their patriotism over others and use it to divide rather than unite.

The precursors to some of today's more cultish conservative groups emerged during post-war anxiety about the legitimate threat of communism and the McCarthy-ite excesses that flowed out of that era's right wing politics. The us-against-them, "enemy within" rhetoric of the John Birch Society endures today in the polemics of Glenn Beck, Alex Jones and others.

The early growth of self-styled paramilitary groups began in the early 1960s during the presidency of John F. Kennedy -- a committed Cold Warrior, but not incidentally a Catholic and a Democrat.

The "Minutemen" were one such group who thrived off survivalist drills and a supposed plan to "confiscate all private firearms by the end of 1965."

We hear similar strains of fearmongering today in the attempts to block the universal gun background check bill. Notably, the Minutemen's founder, Robert Bolivar DePugh, briefly tried to form a political party called -- you guessed it -- The Patriot Party. They fell into some discredit when DePugh's followers were implicated in a half-baked plot to attack the United Nations.

At the time, former President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, felt compelled to weigh in by saying, "I don't think the United States needs Super-Patriots. ... We need patriotism, honestly practiced by all of us and we don't need these people [who pretend to be] more patriotic than you or anybody else."

Ike's advice was good then and now.

He had the credibility that comes from leading our troops in World War II. Nobody with half a brain was going to accuse him of being anything less than a full-fledged patriot (which didn't stop the founder of the John Birch Society from accusing him of being a Soviet agent just as Obama is called a Muslim Marxist by some today.)

Over the past decade, we've seen the explosive growth of paramilitary style "patriot" groups -- to more than 1,000 according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. This dynamic definitely didn't help the word "patriot" recover its bipartisan bona fides. Neither did the impulse of some on the far left since the late 1960s to denigrate patriotism and military service as signs of what they call American imperialism.

The fact that the word "patriot" was used as a filter by IRS workers is a sign of the persistence of culture wars in our politics, perhaps more prevalent now than ever because of the rise of partisan media.

It is a deep breach of the trust that the IRS has struggled to rebuild since the audit scandals of the Nixon administration. And it is a particular irony that the completely inappropriate partisan filter they used will no doubt actually impede investigations of what might ultimately be revealed to be a more widespread scandal -- the illegal abuse of tax-free status by partisan political groups. But the damage has been done.

When the word "patriot" becomes a pejorative, it is a sign of how much our shared civic faith has been denigrated by the rise of hyperpartisan politics.

The very emotion that should unite us all as Americans is too often used as a wedge to divide us. On this Memorial Day, that's worth reflection and a determination to do better as one small way of honoring those whose sacrifice makes all our bitter political battles seem small and self-indulgent.
Click to expand...
 
T

teiresias

Member
jamesinclair said:
No, I mean the federal agents.

Obama needs to executive order that executive orders have the full power of law.

And then executive order that no business shall open from 2pm to 10am from Thanksgiving to black friday, and from 10pm july 3rd to 2am july 5th.

Its time to go Switzerland on the evil retailers.
Click to expand...

Federal employees in the US earn annual (aka paid vacation) and sick leave at a certain amount of hours per pay period dependent on the amount of time they've been a civil servant, and only a certain amount of annual leave hours can be carried over from year-to-year - the rest is "use or lose" meaning you lose it if you don't use it by the end of the year. I can't remember the rates off the top of my head, I'm sure it's one Google search away though.

Generally, you're credited all of the leave you'd earn during the year at the start of the year though rather than having to wait and actually accrue it. Obviously, if you know you'll be leaving service prior to the end of the year you need to take that into account when using leave so that you don't go over what you'd actually earn.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
If anyone still cares about the Trayvon Martin case, I read that Zimmerman's lawyer was planning on using texts from Martin saying that he was planning on getting a gun, in order to make Martin look bad.

Thought that was amusing.


Also, wtf, y'all? We're on page 2 in the friggin community forum! That's pretty embarrassing.
 
T

Tamanon

Banned
jamesinclair said:
No, I mean the federal agents.

Obama needs to executive order that executive orders have the full power of law.

And then executive order that no business shall open from 2pm to 10am from Thanksgiving to black friday, and from 10pm july 3rd to 2am july 5th.

Its time to go Switzerland on the evil retailers.
Click to expand...

So, what about gas stations? And restaurants?
 
T

The Librarian

Banned
"Xbox, what stupid shit did Michelle Bachmann say today?"
"Xbox, your Kinect mandate is unconstitutional."
"Xbox, I choose not to support your expansion of DRM functions."
 
R

RustyNails

Member
If it's that close with undecideds, McConnell will pull through using voter caging and fraud like giving wrong booth information and dates. Democrats better be proactive about this.
 
N

NewLib

Banned
PPP is apparently learning from Conversative Pollsters on making extremely loaded questions as some of the questions in that survey are clearly skewed against McConnell
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
NewLib said:
PPP is apparently learning from Conversative Pollsters on making extremely loaded questions as some of the questions in that survey are clearly skewed against McConnell
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If it was a push poll, the head-to-head would have been buried later in the poll. Here it was one of the first questions.

It's an internal for the DSCC so of course they're going to see what attacks might stick onto McConnell. The fact that half the electorate would be less likely to vote for him based on his support for cutting entitlements and opposition to raising the minimum wage is pretty damning, and probably what Democrats should build their 2014 campaign on (if Obama isn't triangulating the whole time, but I think he's done).
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Aaron Strife said:
If it was a push poll, the head-to-head would have been buried later in the poll. Here it was one of the first questions.

It's an internal for the DSCC so of course they're going to see what attacks might stick onto McConnell.
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Yeah, this is key. It's not a push poll if the important questions come before the more partisan ones. However, as always, remember that the DSCC would've killed this poll if it was bad, so we can't take this as perfectly representative. It's still a good number, though, especially if you think Dem numbers are likely to improve over the next year instead of collapse.
 
J

Jack Remington

Banned
That article wasn't bad, but I take issue with this part:

At the IRS, employees filtered through the exploding number of tax exemption applications by politically associated organizations by being on the lookout for groups that had the name "Tea Party" and "Patriot" in their name. This was improper, illegal, unethical and outrageous.
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Still waiting for someone to point out what law was broken. Additionally, and I might be in the minority here, but I wouldn't consider it improper at all, let alone unethical or outrageous.

IMO, the IRS was completely justified in its actions, and I wish more people would take up this standard.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
On this court nomination issue...wouldn't it benefit republicans to block the nominations (assuming the nominees are more liberal than Sri Srinivasan) and call Reid & Obama's bluff on the filibuster? If it's a bluff they expose it. If it's not a bluff either John McCain gets to spoil the process again with another Gang of # swindle, or the rules are actually changed...and republicans get to howl about an unprecedented power grab, Obama "out of control," poisoning the well, etc.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
pigeon said:
Yeah, this is key. It's not a push poll if the important questions come before the more partisan ones. However, as always, remember that the DSCC would've killed this poll if it was bad, so we can't take this as perfectly representative. It's still a good number, though, especially if you think Dem numbers are likely to improve over the next year instead of collapse.
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Contra my earlier post, from The Fix:

wapo said:
“Polls can and should include negative messages that you might want to use in a campaign,” tweeted Logan Dobson, a staffer at a GOP polling firm. “It’s good to test how effective they are.” However, he argues that the head-to-head numbers may be skewed by the negative questions, even if they come after the straight ballot test (as they did here), because supporters of a candidate are more likely to hang up after they hear an attack line.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/05/28/no-its-not-a-push-poll/

I did forget this aspect of polling -- if PPP drops any datasets that are incomplete, then later questions will indeed affect the results of earlier questions. It's still not a "push poll" in the traditional sense, but it may change the reliability of the questionnaire. (PPP called 7,405 people to get that 556 respondents, which is only an 8% response rate -- but that's a pretty standard response rate nowadays for an autodialer poll, I suspect.)
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
UH OH.

Wall Street major indexes tumble upwards under Obama's reign:

In the 84 years that the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index has been calculated, it doubled during the terms of only four presidents before Barack Obama's election in 2008. This month that number rose to five as the index climbed to more than twice what it was when he took office.

Through Friday, more than 52 months after he took office, the index was up 105 percent during his term in office, for a compound annual gain of 18 percent.
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http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/05/28/18558265-obama-is-clearly-the-worst-socialist-ever?lite


Once again, worst socialist ever.
 
C

CharlieDigital

Banned
Oblivion said:
Once again, worst socialist ever.
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I know this is meant as a joke, but this has more to do with Bernanke and the QE program than anything Obama has done.

Oblivion said:
Also, wtf, y'all? We're on page 2 in the friggin community forum! That's pretty embarrassing.
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My faith in government has been shaken by how ridiculous Congress has gotten. The whole thing with Inhofe and Oklahoma wanting federal aid dollars is just yet another example of the bullshit hypocrisy and fundamental issue with how one side of our government works today and it's fucking disheartening.

Having been through Superstorm Sandy and then having to read and hear all of the bullshit from the GOP on funding for the recovery and Boehner's delay of the vote...makes me fucking sick that these bastards now expect the rest of the country to treat them differently and with greater compassion than they showed the people of tri-state area after Sandy.

I have no confidence that we can do amazing things any more.
 
B

Black Mamba

Member
Fox News Channel hosts Eric Bolling and Geraldo Rivera blew up at each other on Rivera’s radio program on Tuesday amid an argument over the appropriateness of President Barack Obama’s response to the attacks on American diplomatic and service personnel in Benghazi in 2012. Bolling and Rivera battled over Obama’s personal culpability in the attacks until Bolling hung up after being accused by Rivera of alleging that the president was “a damn murderer.”

Rivera opened the interview by criticizing Bolling’s focus on Obama’s actions on the night of the attack. He said that Bolling is buying into a “false narrative” suggesting that Obama was personally disengaged on the night of the attack.

Bolling said that there are multiple legitimate questions relating to the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack, including who gave the order to not respond to the second attack and why the White House first blamed the attack on a YouTube video.

Bolling said that the military abandoned its 237-year-old motto to “leave no one behind.”

“You just heard Eric Bolling make an inflammatory statement alleging the worst kind of comment by the president and the secretary,” Rivera said to former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

“It’s not alleging. It’s what happened,” Bolling fired back. “There’s nothing alleged about that, Geraldo.”

“What you’re alleging is an intentional failure to intervene when they had the opportunity to do that,” Spitzer agreed.

Bolling contested that he ever said that either President Obama or former Sec. Hillary Clinton gave the order to “stand down,” but that order was given. Rivera asked Bolling “what movie are you watching” to make such a claim?

The group exploded when Rivera said that Bolling was making Obama “look like a damn murderer.” Bolling asserted that a “verbal stand-down order was given” on the night of the Benghazi attack.“You made that up,” Rivera contested.

“I’m not doing this,” Bolling fired back. “These are the facts. You guys can look them up and I’ll talk to you about it next week.”

At this point, Bolling hung up the phone. Spitzer and Rivera concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that Obama personally acted in bad faith on the night of the Benghazi attack.
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You know it's bad when you are with Geraldo and you're the crazy one.
 
Link

Link

The Autumn Wind
Stock market doing better than ever, corporate profits at all-time highs, unemployment still way up. Job creators, ladies and gentlemen.

Black Mamba said:
You know it's bad when you are with Geraldo and you're the crazy one.
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I wonder how long before Fox News sandbags Geraldo.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
Jeraldo says a lot of dumb things but he's infinitely better than most of the shitheels at Fox.
 
E

el retorno

Member
Link said:
I wonder how long before Fox News sandbags Geraldo.
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they've muted him before for challenging the benghazi narative and challenging bolling

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/b...the-scenes-at-fox.html?ref=brianstelter&_r=1&

Mr. Rivera did so on the conservative morning show “Fox & Friends” on Nov. 2, the Friday before Election Day. As the three hosts criticized the administration for failing to save the ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans who died in Benghazi, Mr. Rivera protested. He accused the co-host Eric Bolling of lying, calling him “a politician trying to make a political point.”

“After the argument continued for several minutes, Ailes called the control room and told the producers to cut Rivera’s mic,” Mr. Alter writes.
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P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Black Mamba said:
You know it's bad when you are with Geraldo and you're the crazy one.
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The “leave no one behind” comment is especially stupid/simplistic. The US military is not a 911 hotline, and reinforcements do not work like spawning points in Call of Duty. The military doesn't send anyone into ambushes until they have some semblance of what's going on. Perhaps the most recent, memorable (reported) example happened in Afghanistan with Dakota Meyer (who won the Medal of Honor for heroism). His patrol group was ambushed and they called for immediate backup but were refused; he wound up saving many of his guys under enemy fire and killed a bunch of insurgents. If you read his book or listen to interviews, he's very critical of the decision not to send backup, which is only natural; he lost friends and almost died. But that's not how our military operates in most ambush situations.

Libya is an even worse situation considering it's not a battle theater (like Afghanistan). Sending soldiers to "save" Stevens could have backfired big time, and more importantly they would not have arrived in time. Someone needs to ask Bolling straight up if he believes Obama willingly let Stevens die, because that's ultimately what he is saying.
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
el retorno said:
What movie?
Click to expand...

It's about the guy who was arrested in Iran for being an American spy, except he wasn't and the proof the Iranians had against him was an appearance on The Daily Show. I remember watching the interview after the guy finally got back, he went back on the Daily Show and Jon just apologized a lot for it. You could tell he felt real bad about it.
 
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