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[PhoenixDark]

I think because most people are afraid to contract the crazy from her.
I mean sheeeeeeit -

[in response to a question about what is her plan for healthcare] -
"The plan is to allow those things that had been proposed over many years to reform a healthcare system in America that certainly does need more help so that there's more competition, there's less tort reform threat, there's less trajectory of the cost increases Those plans have been proposed over and over again, and what thwarts those plans is the far left. It's President Obama and his supporters who will not allow the Republicans to usher in free market, patient-centered, doctor-patient-relationship leaps to reform healthcare."
​

It seems like language itself is cracking under the burden of the shit that come out of her mouth.

Simple follow-up: what plan, and can you explain it for us. She gets away with so much, even with hosts/interviewers who aren't "on her side" so to speak. TBH the only person I've seen challenge her lately is Bill O'Reilly. It's pretty obvious he thinks she's a complete dumbass.

Ultimately it doesn't matter. She is irrelevant outside of the far right bubble, and even those people don't want her to run for anything. She'll write books and troll both parties for years while making tons of money, but will have no influence on anything. I'm fine with that.

 

[smokeandmirrors]

I was a 15 year old Republican in 2004. Those days.

12 year old transitioning into that republican that I would be until I turned 17. I just parroted my parents.

 

[jWILL253]

Sarah Palin is the embodiment of the word "scatterbrained".

It seems that most of the posters in PoliGAF are mostly on the progressive side, so I wanna ask this question: is there any merit to the whole "personal accountability" thing that conservatives like to spout? I'd like to consider myself as a liberal, but it kinda bothers me when I go to apply for food stamps, and I see a bunch of other Black people in the DSHS office, and they got Baby Phat, Rocawear, and the newest Jordan sneakers on (that cost near $200 at retail), while rocking a Coach bag with some Gucci shades on... meanwhile, they got a baby wearing expensive baby clothes, and a slightly older kid with an iPhone and a 3DS... yet, this family is coming up here to tell DSHS that they cannot feed their kids without assistance from the government. And, as soon as they get approved for SNAP, they go back to having their conversation about how the government is racist, how Obama is a part of the Illuminati, and how they were about to put hands on the lady who was interviewing the family because she looked at them funny.

And no, that's no exaggeration. That actually happened during a visit to my local DSHS.

Don't get me wrong, I ain't no Uncle Tom, but... as a Black liberal, sometimes I wonder if what they say about the "welfare queen" is right, to a certain extent...

 

[Chichikov]

Here's an article I enjoyed critiquing bicycle commuting although I expect that Poli-GAF will hate it / tear it apart for various reasons .

The thrust of the argument is that in principle we should encourage bicycling for health & economic reasons, but bicyclists currently enjoy the ability to use roads without fees or licensing, and bikes slow down the majority of traffic (cars) to the speed of a tiny majority (largely white, wealthy people).

Choice quotes:

I think car/tab/license taxes are stupid, and I reject the whole idea of tying tax collection to usage of a specific service.
And the claim that car drivers are somehow underprivileged in the US is beyond ridiculous.

But I do agree that bikes and cars don't mix particularly well but the solution should be a more robust and better separated bike lane system.

 

[speculawyer]

Simple follow-up: what plan, and can you explain it for us. She gets away with so much, even with hosts/interviewers who aren't "on her side" so to speak. TBH the only person I've seen challenge her lately is Bill O'Reilly. It's pretty obvious he thinks she's a complete dumbass.

Ultimately it doesn't matter. She is irrelevant outside of the far right bubble, and even those people don't want her to run for anything. She'll write books and troll both parties for years while making tons of money, but will have no influence on anything. I'm fine with that.

Well . . . she is a complete dumbass.

I think even her right-wing pundit/troll/talking-head days may be over soon. Sure, she'll still get to speak at crazy right-wing gatherings. But she is way to polarizing for non-right-wing events. And given that performance on Megyn Kelly's show, I don't even think Fox will want to deal with her much any more because she's become an embarrassment . . . like Glenn Beck. Well at least Glenn Beck got ratings.

 

[speculawyer]

Here's an article I enjoyed critiquing bicycle commuting although I expect that Poli-GAF will hate it / tear it apart for various reasons .

The thrust of the argument is that in principle we should encourage bicycling for health & economic reasons, but bicyclists currently enjoy the ability to use roads without fees or licensing, and bikes slow down the majority of traffic (cars) to the speed of a tiny majority (largely white, wealthy people).

Choice quotes:

I deal with a lot of bikes where I live but I never have a problem with them. Perhaps it is because many of the roads here do have good bike lanes.

But I think people get a weird anti-bike rant going at times. I don't know if it is because they feel guilty that they are not biking themselves, they are jealous of bikes that blow through stop signs and no one is gonna bother them, or they are upset about the 45 seconds they are slowed down by a bike until they can pass. Fucking get over it. I generally don't find the bicyclists or the cars rude. Everyone gets along just fine. But I guess some people are just stewing in their cars and get pissed at the bikes? Losers.

 

[East Lake]

That and the whole gay thing, I sm sure. =P

I remember watching Alan Colmes on Hannity when I was a teenager and thinking "hey at least they show they other side." LOOOOOOL

 

[thepotatoman]

Sarah Palin is the embodiment of the word "scatterbrained".

It seems that most of the posters in PoliGAF are mostly on the progressive side, so I wanna ask this question: is there any merit to the whole "personal accountability" thing that conservatives like to spout? I'd like to consider myself as a liberal, but it kinda bothers me when I go to apply for food stamps, and I see a bunch of other Black people in the DSHS office, and they got Baby Phat, Rocawear, and the newest Jordan sneakers on (that cost near $200 at retail), while rocking a Coach bag with some Gucci shades on... meanwhile, they got a baby wearing expensive baby clothes, and a slightly older kid with an iPhone and a 3DS... yet, this family is coming up here to tell DSHS that they cannot feed their kids without assistance from the government. And, as soon as they get approved for SNAP, they go back to having their conversation about how the government is racist, how Obama is a part of the Illuminati, and how they were about to put hands on the lady who was interviewing the family because she looked at them funny.

And no, that's no exaggeration. That actually happened during a visit to my local DSHS.

Don't get me wrong, I ain't no Uncle Tom, but... as a Black liberal, sometimes I wonder if what they say about the "welfare queen" is right, to a certain extent...

Absolutely no one here wants the government to pay for designer clothing of people who don't even care to ever start working. And in a country as big as the US there's going to be some number of people who take advantage like those people allegedly did.

But personal anecdotes are the only evidence I ever see towards this being a widespread problem. If this were a widespread problem then I feel we would have actual investigations and facts about how and why it's possible to get that much money from the government. I suspect we don't get that because it's literally impossible to find a legal way to live a middle class lifestyle solely using government handouts.

If they are illegally cheating the government out of money, then more auditors and investigators might stop that. Those initiatives always seems to lose the government more money than they get out of it, but maybe they'd still be worthwhile just for the justice of wrongdoers being punished.

What I instead feel is happening is that conservatives want to punish the people who abuse government aid by punishing everyone that uses government aid. If even 25% completely abuse government aid programs, does that justify taking the safety net away from the 75% of people who need it to survive?

 

[Hitokage]

Spun another way:

Isn't it admirable that people would willingly give up assistance money for their own livelihood in order to provide economic stimulus instead? Grocery workers benefit from food stamp use, so why not shoe retailers from welfare money?

 

[ivysaur12]

I have previously bought nice clothing, but went on unemployment this past month. Do people need to be in a burlap sack when they use their EBT card?

 

[bonercop]

What I instead feel is happening is that conservatives want to punish the people who abuse government aid by punishing everyone that uses government aid. If even 25% completely abuse government aid programs, does that justify taking the safety net away from the 75% of people who need it to survive?

The ratio is more like 1% "abusing" goverment aid programs from studies.

also, like hitokage so eloquently spun for us: it's not like welfare abuse does anything besides helping the economy anyway.

 

[The Librarian]

I was a 15 year old Republican in 2004. Those days.

bahahahaha

 

[Karakand]

It seems that most of the posters in PoliGAF are mostly on the progressive side, so I wanna ask this question: is there any merit to the whole "personal accountability" thing that conservatives like to spout?

IANAP, but there is absolutely no personal accountability in my fantasy football league this season and it's 100% fucking bullshit. Bunch of Wesley Mouches have convinced the commish to throw the rule of rules to the wind and those of us that tried to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps got bamboozled.

 

[Diablos]

The 2004 election thread is like a Diablos origin story, look at all that (relative) optimism!

Also, clairvoyance.

"A Diablos Origin Story" haha. You guys. Seriously.

Oh man, I really hope there's a bizarro Diablos out there who was pulling for Romney and made the exact same comment in 2012.

2004 was crazy, man. My first Presidential election where I could vote, too.

Hard to believe it has been 9 years already.

lolol

Haha.

I was a 15 year old Republican in 2004. Those days.

And you joined in 2005! I wonder if we can dig up any old posts. :-D

PoliGAF research team, assemble!

 

[The Librarian]

The underdog of government health care programs is emerging as the rare early success story of President Barack Obama's technologically challenged health overhaul.

Often dismissed, Medicaid has signed up 444,000 people in 10 states in the six weeks since open enrollment began, according to Avalere Health, a market analysis firm that compiled data from those states. Twenty-five states are expanding their Medicaid programs, but data for all of them was not available.

Excellent.

 

[Arrowgigantic]

And no, that's no exaggeration. That actually happened during a visit to my local DSHS.

You know, a family's belongings don't vanish into a puff of smoke after dad/mom loses a job. You want them to sell their clothes and their kid's 3DS before they're eligible for SNAP?

 

[Diablos]

Hey, when I am on healthcare.gov, if I click enroll:

..it doesn't enroll me right away, correct? I am trying to determine if I would pay $144 for that plan a month or if that is before a tax subsidy. I am genuinely curious but have my own insurance through 2014 so I don't want another healthcare plan.

I STILL didn't get eligibility results, but somehow I can continue to enrollment.

 

[Joe Molotov]

It means nothing. It is the trademarked Palin word-salad. Just throw a bunch of buzzwords together that sound good but don't really mean anything specific.

It would be pretty fascinating to see someone diagram that sentence, though.

 

[sc0la]

I have previously bought nice clothing, but went on unemployment this past month. Do people need to be in a burlap sack when they use their EBT card?

Unfortunately, in some cases yes. Food stamps / SNAP in some cases requires you extinguish all your liquid assets and own no property over a certain value.

For instance when my wife and I both lost our jobs we could not qualify for food stamps because we had money in savings and cars worth more than 5k dollars. My problem with this is that there are huge opportunity costs with selling a paid off reliable fairly new vehicle in exchange for a used pos. Nevermind that vehicle would be a necessity while searching for a new job and commuting to said new job in most cases.

We have set up a system where momentary hardships must utterly wreck a family financially before we offer help all so a few people don't "abuse" the system. We would all be better off in the long run if qualification was not tied to the exhaustion of someone's own emergency savings or property. Then when they do find employment again they are on track and actually contributing to the economy again.

 

[Wilsongt]

You know, a family's belongings don't vanish into a puff of smoke after dad/mom loses a job. You want them to sell their clothes and their kid's 3DS before they're eligible for SNAP?

No cars. No microwave. No electricity. No modern convenience. Twenty five job apps out. Then you - might- be eligible to even look at the application.

 

[jWILL253]

I never said I agreed with the "bootstrap" premise. It's just a weird thing to see, and I wonder how often situations like that pop up in the welfare system. I certainly don't think it happens enough to warrant entitlement reform in a very broad manner, like what the House Republicans desire.

And SNAP does require you to list all the assets you currently own; problem is, if you know how to work the system, it's irrelevant. For instance, say you own quite a few expensive assets, and you're fully employed at a decent wage and have very little trouble feeding yourself. All you have to do is claim that you're homeless and use a local shelter as your mailing address, and place zeroes in the right places; you're essentially approved instantly for SNAP if you do this. You'd think there would be some sort of follow-up from DSHS when you put that information into an application, but their never is.

Again, I don't think enough people are doing this to warrant large reform. It just shows that the system can be gamed, to a certain extent...

 

[FyreWulff]

Unfortunately, in some cases yes. Food stamps / SNAP in some cases requires you extinguish all your liquid assets and own no property over a certain value.

For instance when my wife and I both lost our jobs we could not qualify for food stamps because we had money in savings and cars worth more than 5k dollars. My problem with this is that there are huge opportunity costs with selling a paid off reliable fairly new vehicle in exchange for a used pos. Nevermind that vehicle would be a necessity while searching for a new job and commuting to said new job in most cases.

We have set up a system where momentary hardships must utterly wreck a family financially before we offer help all so a few people don't "abuse" the system. We would all be better off in the long run if qualification was not tied to the exhaustion of someone's own emergency savings or property. Then when they do find employment again they are on track and actually contributing to the economy again.

Yeah, it's complete bullshit you have to liquidate all of your tools. Of course, it's sold on the idea that some people will be on foodstamps and be driving a Bugatti.

People need to be told and told hard that there has to be the basic concept of time when assistance is given. Someone can own a car, a nice car too, have it paid off, and fall into hard times. So what do we do? Have them sell it for pennies on the dollar, and now they have to spend money on public transit (not cheap in a lot of places), become limited in the jobs they can go after or even have (better hope the job is in the bus system), limits their utility, and then once you get through it you're handicapped because now you have to figure out how to get a car again without putting yourself under.

Much like cell phones, a lot of these anti food stamp people like to ignore the fact that cars are basically required to be functional outside of NYC in the US.

Again, I don't think enough people are doing this to warrant large reform. It just shows that the system can be gamed, to a certain extent...

Most any system can be gamed. For any program of any type, you're going to have a small section of scammers or absolute leeches. However, I find it worth to trade off having some people that don't belong if it helps me get assistance to tons of people that do. Put some basic checks in, but beyond that, you're spending more money trying to get rid of the fraud than how much the fraud is actually costing you.

 

[WayneMorse]

The 2004 election thread is like a Diablos origin story, look at all that (relative) optimism!

Also, clairvoyance.

I still think if the Dems nominated Howard Dean they would've won in a landslide.

But the Democratic Leadership Council couldn't have that, couldn't they?

 

[Aylinato]

Sarah Palin is the embodiment of the word "scatterbrained".

It seems that most of the posters in PoliGAF are mostly on the progressive side, so I wanna ask this question: is there any merit to the whole "personal accountability" thing that conservatives like to spout? I'd like to consider myself as a liberal, but it kinda bothers me when I go to apply for food stamps, and I see a bunch of other Black people in the DSHS office, and they got Baby Phat, Rocawear, and the newest Jordan sneakers on (that cost near $200 at retail), while rocking a Coach bag with some Gucci shades on... meanwhile, they got a baby wearing expensive baby clothes, and a slightly older kid with an iPhone and a 3DS... yet, this family is coming up here to tell DSHS that they cannot feed their kids without assistance from the government. And, as soon as they get approved for SNAP, they go back to having their conversation about how the government is racist, how Obama is a part of the Illuminati, and how they were about to put hands on the lady who was interviewing the family because she looked at them funny.

And no, that's no exaggeration. That actually happened during a visit to my local DSHS.

Don't get me wrong, I ain't no Uncle Tom, but... as a Black liberal, sometimes I wonder if what they say about the "welfare queen" is right, to a certain extent...

I believe that only a small share of the population are actually able to pull themselves up by themselves, at most 8%, and I'm not talking about only poor people. I'm talking the entire population. Actually 8 is too high, probably 2-4% at most!


Personal responsibility should only apply to those who have been given the chance to succeed in this country. Mostly the 1% and the upper middle class as neither of those two groups should receive any relief for the government that they benefit the most from. Corporate welfare is the biggest scam in the last 100 years, they don't need that extra 1,000,000 dollar tax cut that hampers education programs for the needy.

Welfare queen is a dog whistle for saying that black people are "lazy and don't want to work" and I can back up how the workplace discriminates against black sounding names, and how that black people make up a disproportional amount of inmates because there are systems in place that focus entirely on, as I'll call it, enslaving black people and forcing them to work for less than minimum wage. When those black people come out of prison they can't find jobs for three reasons, one they are black and we are a racist country, two inmates are normally associated with black people as white people are not put in prison as much as black people(even though white people in America are more likely to commit violent crimes, and be repeat offenders), and that add on top of that the discrimination against black sounding names and the push against the back-slide reform of affirmative action. The entire system has been setup for black people to be openly discriminated against and you bought into the term "welfare queen."

America losing its compassion for helping out it's own poor peoples is one of the most tragic things in current history, I wish we had an LBJ, JFK, or and RFK that understood the poor needs.

 

[The Librarian]

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...b05-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html?hpid=z2

 

[thefro]

I still think if the Dems nominated Howard Dean they would've won in a landslide.

But the Democratic Leadership Council couldn't have that, couldn't they?

I definitely think Dean would have beaten Bush had he won the primary. Not sure if it would have been a landslide or not.

It'd be interesting to see how that timeline would have played out if the media would have properly miced the Iowa speech. It plays totally differently if you see the video of how loud the crowd was there. It really was a great speech marred by the way it was covered.

 

[Joe Molotov]

They're not racists, miscegenation just causes them to have a gag reflex is all.

Kinda like:
I’m Kind Of OCD About Always Serving White Customers First

 

[Wilsongt]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...b05-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html?hpid=z2

 

[AndyD]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...b05-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html?hpid=z2

What I don't get is why he equates "conventional views" with "cultural conservatives."

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

What I don't get is why he equates "conventional views" with "cultural conservatives."

I do. He's trying to stake out "normalcy" as the domain of cultural conservatives.

Basically a propaganda term.

 

[The Librarian]

"The FDA has banned unilaterally -- some unelected bureaucrat has banned trans fats," he said. "So I say we need to line every one of them up. I want to see how skinny or how fat the FDA agents are who are making the rules on this."

Paul added that any FDA agents with an unhealthy body mass index should exercise with "somebody from maybe OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] lashing them while they're on the treadmill."

"If we're gonna have a nanny state, and everybody's gotta eat the right thing and you can't eat a doughnut, maybe we ought to just enforce it on the government workers first," he said.

#DonutCliff

 

[Aylinato]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...b05-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html?hpid=z2

Says not racist then goes to say that people are disgusted about biracial couple who have kids together. Racist to the core.

 

[zero shift]

That TIME magazine thread is going to make me kill somebody.

"But but temp jobs!"

 

[FyreWulff]

#DonutCliff

Why can't I hold all of these dog whistles

 

[Aylinato]

#DonutCliff

FDA did it's god damn job.

 

[ClassyPenguin]

FDA did it's god damn job.

Libertarians hate the FDA/USDA, like utterly despise them for doing their job. For some reason I doubt many epidemiologists are libertarians.

 

[ivysaur12]

bahahahaha

And you joined in 2005! I wonder if we can dig up any old posts. :-D

PoliGAF research team, assemble!

You're both evil.

 

[Wilsongt]

#DonutCliff

Oh look. A republican who doesn't understand science. Who'd have thunk it?

 

[The Librarian]

You're both evil.

Don't worry! Teasing you on Twitter is as far as I'll go.

 

[ivysaur12]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...b05-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html?hpid=z2

And my response to them is: tough shit.

 

[thezerofire]

Here's an article I enjoyed critiquing bicycle commuting although I expect that Poli-GAF will hate it / tear it apart for various reasons .

The thrust of the argument is that in principle we should encourage bicycling for health & economic reasons, but bicyclists currently enjoy the ability to use roads without fees or licensing, and bikes slow down the majority of traffic (cars) to the speed of a tiny majority (largely white, wealthy people).

Choice quotes:

This was an article I enjoyed better:

Is it O.K. to Kill Cyclists?

In stories where the driver had been cited, the penalty’s meagerness defied belief, like the teenager in 2011 who drove into the 49-year-old cyclist John Przychodzen from behind on a road just outside Seattle, running over and killing him. The police issued only a $42 ticket for an “unsafe lane change” because the kid hadn’t been drunk and, as they saw it, had not been driving recklessly.

My own view is that everybody’s a little right and that we’re at a scary cultural crossroads on the whole car/bike thing. American cities are dense enough — and almost half of urban car trips short enough, under three miles — that cities from Denver to Miami are putting in bike-share programs. If there’s one thing New York City’s incoming and departing mayors agree on, it’s the need for more bike lanes.

But studies performed in Arizona, Minnesota and Hawaii suggest that drivers are at fault in more than half of cycling fatalities. And there is something undeniably screwy about a justice system that makes it de facto legal to kill people, even when it is clearly your fault, as long you’re driving a car and the victim is on a bike and you’re not obviously drunk and don’t flee the scene. When two cars crash, everybody agrees that one of the two drivers may well be to blame; cops consider it their job to gather evidence toward that determination. But when a car hits a bike, it’s like there’s a collective cultural impulse to say, “Oh, well, accidents happen.” If your 13-year-old daughter bikes to school tomorrow inside a freshly painted bike lane, and a driver runs a stop sign and kills her and then says to the cop, “Gee, I so totally did not mean to do that,” that will most likely be good enough.

So here’s my proposal: Every time you get on a bike, from this moment forward, obey the letter of the law in every traffic exchange everywhere to help drivers (and police officers) view cyclists as predictable users of the road who deserve respect. And every time you get behind the wheel, remember that even the slightest inattention can maim or kill a human being enjoying a legitimate form of transportation. That alone will make the streets a little safer, although for now I’m sticking to the basement and maybe the occasional country road.

 

[B-Dubs]

That TIME magazine thread is going to make me kill somebody.

"But but temp jobs!"

Same. I'm not even going to bother posting again.

 

[speculawyer]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...b05-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html?hpid=z2

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children.


WTF? Didn't some editor read this?

ThatsRacist.gif

 

[Dram]

I thought he was being sarcastic?

 

[The Librarian]

 

[Wilsongt]

NeoGAF has had more errors lately than Rand Paul has had plagiarism scandals.

 

[WayneMorse]

Please tell me that isn't real.

 

[TacticalFox88]

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children.


WTF? Didn't some editor read this?

ThatsRacist.gif

So...13 % of the country?

 

[FLEABttn]

Please tell me that isn't real.

It features stereotypical "I'm not sure they understand what humor is" type comedy that the right is known for, so my guess is yes.

 

[WayneMorse]

It'd be interesting to see how that timeline would have played out if the media would have properly miced the Iowa speech. It plays totally differently if you see the video of how loud the crowd was there. It really was a great speech marred by the way it was covered.

Dean's campaign was in trouble well before Iowa. After the Gore endorsement the DLC hacks realized that Dean could actually win and they didn't want anyone else in the White House other than some god damn neoliberal corporatist, so they went all out in their attacks on Dean as "unelectable." By Iowa the DLC had successfully branded Dean as a far-left liberal like McGovern and his campaign was beginning to unravel even before the results came in.

One of the upsides of Kerry's loss in '04 was that it turned the tide against the DLC as the main political force in the Democratic Party.