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PoliGAF 2014 |OT| Kay Hagan and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad News

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W

Wilsongt

Member
Oh ffs. One bad quarter and Fox News is losing even MORE of their shit.

This whole attack the president deal for every single thing mentality is going to get far worse before it gets better. Especially if Hilldawg is in the WH.
 
A

alstein

Member
jamesinclair said:
A 3% contraction is pretty big news. I dont think blaming snow can fly for this.

Recession soon?


An official recession being announced in September would kill the democrats in the election.
Click to expand...

The consensus is that was due to weather conditions being unusually harsh. I don't think a recession would help Republicans much- people would blame them for it right now.
 
B

Black Mamba

Member
Dax01 said:
Weather, decrease in medical spending, consumer spending being lower than expected.

Should be temporary.
Click to expand...

The biggest driver was exports which were revised down a big way. Can't really pin that on anyone on the US. If other countries import less, well, oh well.
 
S

Shosai

Banned
I was watching The Five's roundtable discussion on Fox news, and they cited a statistician who calculated the probability that 7 hard drives would crash at the IRS to be an astronomical 1 in 3,139,250. Considering that the IRS already testified that their IT department recorded hundreds of hard drive crashed in the past decade, that math seemed off. So I looked up their statistician blogger cited:

http://drakedirect.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-statisticians-view-on-irs_1432.html

And yeah, I'm no mathematician but this math is terrible. The calculations were done with a sample size of just 7 hard drives with an assumed failure rate of 11.8%. Which is generously high, but ignores the fact that the IRS has thousands of computers running and not just 7, which makes at least 7 crashed hard drives an inevitability. Anyone else want to take a look to assure that I'm not just crazy?
 
S

smokeandmirrors

Banned
Yeah. How old were the drives in question? Do they do a i/o writes? Are the computers left on 24/7? Are they in a climate controlled environment? How many drives are employed by the IRS? What's the average number of drive failures per day at the IRS? Per month? Per year? What kind of cases are they in?

You can't just take the 7 drives and multiply by the failure rate, that is entirely disingenuous and bad science.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Shosai said:
I was watching The Five's roundtable discussion on Fox news, and they cited a statistician who calculated the probability that 7 hard drives would crash at the IRS to be an astronomical 1 in 3,139,250. Considering that the IRS already testified that their IT department recorded hundreds of hard drive crashed in the past decade, that math seemed off. So I looked up their statistician blogger cited:

http://drakedirect.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-statisticians-view-on-irs_1432.html

And yeah, I'm no mathematician but this math is terrible. The calculations were done with a sample size of just 7 hard drives with an assumed failure rate of 11.8%. Which is generously high, but ignores the fact that the IRS has thousands of computers running and not just 7, which makes at least 7 crashed hard drives an inevitability. Anyone else want to take a look to assure that I'm not just crazy?
Click to expand...

You don't even have to go that far. The article the blogger links to contradicts his own argument.

blogger said:
If you have been following the congressional investigations on the IRS practices, you may have heard that seven individuals who are under investigation, all had hard drive failures on or about the same time. In addition to that, the IRS further claimed all failures resulted in an inability to retrieve any data from each of the seven drives.
Click to expand...

Miami Herald said:
Once Congress learned this week that six other IRS officials have had hard drive issues, at least one lawmaker leaked to the media that Nikole Flax also had lost emails. Flax was chief of staff to Steve Miller, the IRS chief fired by President Barack Obama last spring at the start of the scandal.

In fact, Flax’s damaged hard drive operated in tandem with the hard drive on her work computer and the same information was on both hard drives, Koskinen said. Flax lost no emails, the IRS chief said, and incorrect information was disseminated widely.
Click to expand...

In other words, seven hard drives had failures, of which two belonged to people who've been investigated, and one had permanent data loss as a result. This is totally different from what the blogger claims the article says.
 
benjipwns

benjipwns

Banned
SMOKING GUN:
Congressional investigators say they uncovered emails Wednesday showing that a former Internal Revenue Service official at the heart of the tea party investigation sought an audit involving a Republican senator in 2012.

The emails show former IRS official Lois Lerner mistakenly received an invitation to an event that was meant to go to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

The event organizer apparently offered to pay for Grassley's wife to attend the event. In an email to another IRS official, Lerner suggests referring the matter for an audit, saying it might be inappropriate for the group to pay for his wife.

"Perhaps we should refer to exam?" Lerner wrote.

It was unclear from the emails whether Lerner was suggesting that Grassley or the group be audited — or both.
Click to expand...
 
C

Chumly

Member
Shosai said:
I was watching The Five's roundtable discussion on Fox news, and they cited a statistician who calculated the probability that 7 hard drives would crash at the IRS to be an astronomical 1 in 3,139,250. Considering that the IRS already testified that their IT department recorded hundreds of hard drive crashed in the past decade, that math seemed off. So I looked up their statistician blogger cited:

http://drakedirect.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-statisticians-view-on-irs_1432.html

And yeah, I'm no mathematician but this math is terrible. The calculations were done with a sample size of just 7 hard drives with an assumed failure rate of 11.8%. Which is generously high, but ignores the fact that the IRS has thousands of computers running and not just 7, which makes at least 7 crashed hard drives an inevitability. Anyone else want to take a look to assure that I'm not just crazy?
Click to expand...
Are they for real? I can't believe anyone would use math this dumb. The ONLY reason why you would take it to the 7th power if you were looking to see the probability of those EXACT 7 people having hard drive failures. Complete ignoring the fact that if you have a thousand employees and you take an 11.8% failure rate on average 11.8 of them are going to have a hard drive failure. There would be a ridiculous number of combinations of hard drive failures that could occur within the IRS.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
How did she "mistakenly" receive his invitation though? That's the only odd thing about the story to me. It's front page news on Drudge but...it went nowhere. She strikes me as...a duteous employee. She asked if it should be pursued, was flagged down, and she moved on.
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
PhoenixDark said:
How did she "mistakenly" receive his invitation though? That's the only odd thing about the story to me. It's front page news on Drudge but...it went nowhere. She strikes me as...a duteous employee. She asked if it should be pursued, was flagged down, and she moved on.
Click to expand...

Seriously, most people would do exactly the same thing given that context.
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
I'm pleased with the courts decision today. I will of course change this tomorrow or Monday when they gut ACA.

The recess appt I actually think the conservatives have a strong case. I think practically Obama is right but the white house being able to dictate when congress is and isn't in session is potentially offy,.
 
benjipwns

benjipwns

Banned
Apparently this is the flier that was being distributed in heavily black areas:
pic_corner.jpg


2500 angry at the GOP establishment comments available at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/381187/flier-got-thad-cochran-elected-john-fund
 
T

The Librarian

Banned
PhoenixDark said:
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/481592793156964353
jeez. I doubt Thad is a model citizen on race relations but he's better than that at least, and more importantly he's better than this tea party POS. Even if McDaniel gives dems a 10% chance of winning, the mere fact that that he'd be a senate candidate would disgust me too much. Fuck him.

also, LBJ displaying his non-racist qualities for dax.
Click to expand...

Don't really see anything racist coming from LBJ there, just quoting what Eastland would say as he made fun of him.

Go back to making terrible predictions.
 
benjipwns

benjipwns

Banned
Other things I found on NRO:
Is Kay Hagan Too Extreme for N.C.?
The Susan B. Anthony List’s Women Speak Out PAC has put out a powerful new ad against Senator Kay Hagan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSxBOaVxmTc

This kind of ad is a rebuke not only to Hagan but to those GOP strategists who think the answer to the Democrats’ ”war on women” attacks is to cower, retreat, and change the subject.
Click to expand...
x986 • 4 hours ago
Superb ad. The pro-abortion side has been allowed to make the issue about "warring against women" instead of murdering babies. The war is fake. The murders are real. It's wonderful that the free ride for abortion advocates like Hagan is belatedly ending.

ebohnet • 4 hours ago
Very nice ad. Much better than the strategy of acting like you're embarassed by your own position.
Click to expand...



Rand Paul Defends Constitutionality Of Congress Giving The Vote To Felons
Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) defended the constitutionality of his plan to restore the voting rights of some felons, making an argument for the authority of Congress to regulate federal elections that is analogous to his theory for why he can run for president and reelection to the Senate simultaneously.

Paul invoked the Supreme Court’s decision invalidating an Arizona attempt to add a requirement to how people register to vote in federal elections. “The Supreme Court in the Arizona case said that Arizona could not add additional regulations to federal elections but they could to state elections,” Paul told reporters Wednesday. “So the Supreme court said state and federal essentially are different jurisdictions. So, federal elections, congress does have jurisdiction. We wouldn’t be affecting state voting rights.”

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that Arizona could not “requir[e] a federal form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself,” as Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.

“If the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Arizona case is concluded out you’d actually have two ballots,” Paul said. ”It’d be a little weird, but, you’d have a federal ballot and a state ballot and there’d be different rules. I don’t think state legislatures are allowed to legislate on federal ballots, and the federal is not on the state, but I think we are allowed to make restrictions on what the rules are for voting for federal ballots.”

Paul’s argument in this case is analogous to the one his team is making against a Kentucky law that bans a candidate from running for two electoral offices at the same time.

“I hadn’t thought of that, but maybe there is a little bit of analogy,” the prospective presidential candidate allowed. “The Supreme court said Washington state could not pass a term limit on federal legislators because that would make them different from the rest of the states. It would probably be the same with regard to someone running for president.”
Click to expand...
Which results in these comments:
The Zman • 2 hours ago
This another example of why you can never trust libertarians. Of all the pressing issues facing the country, this guy picks felon voting to champion. Maybe he was concerned that he had not secured the wacko vote and decided this was the winning issue.

The Doctor The Zman • 2 hours ago
Are we sure he's really a libertarian, and not an agent from the looney-left trying to screw things up for conservatives again?
Click to expand...
Jalamanta • 2 hours ago
Rand Paul: Establishment RINO/Democrat/Socialist/Communist
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Amatorem Veritatis Combat Override • an hour ago
The Founders had a vigorous and legitimate debate regarding the appropriate basis for earning the privilege to vote, including whether women, felons and those who are not property owners have the requisite sense of responsibility to exercise the vote. They got it right regarding women & felons, and should have also required property ownership as well. Things have been going to Hell since women received the franchise (truth sometimes is painful, Sweetie), and we can certainly see the effects of those who have no sense of ownership regarding their time, talent and treasure. Adding convicted felons only makes a bad situation worse.
Click to expand...
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
This week in bootstrapping....

In a story about Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and head of the Tea Party Patriots, Martin recalls her recent bankruptcy. She and her husband somehow managed to end up owing $500,000 to the IRS after their company failed. Martin is not an evil person; her story is just, well, a bit sad. She is indeed a wellspring for that odd tea party message of anti-government self-reliance even while availing oneself of the safety net the government provides, the muddled indignation at the thought of having to pay taxes for other people's safety net coupled with the blithe assumption that the same safety net will of course be there for you if you need it.

“I was very frustrated by the TARP bill, because nobody bailed us out, and we weren’t looking for a bailout,” Martin says in a coffee shop outside of Jackson. It’s a message she uses often, saying that no one bailed out her husband’s company when it failed. As for being bailed out themselves, Martin has had to publicly contend with the fact that she and her husband filed for bankruptcy, a bailout of its own sort.

...
Less well known is the fact that her husband accepted unemployment for a time, something else she has explained.

“I’ve never said that there should be no safety net,” she says. “That decision was more difficult for him than the decision not to stay in our house. ... We were scraping by.”
...

At rock bottom, Martin and her husband cleaned houses to get by. Then, Rick Santelli, a CNBC commentator covering financial markets, gave his famous rant, asking viewers: “How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”

That resonated with Martin, as did Santelli’s use of the term “tea party.” “We were quite literally cleaning our neighbor’s house so they wouldn’t have to take care of us,” she says.
Click to expand...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/...of-the-Tea-Party-Patriots-got-government-help

tl:dr Teabagger husband and wife who run teabagger organization bitching about government bailouts, got bailed out of paying $500k in back taxes by the government.

It's not welfare if you're a Republican.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
PhoenixDark said:
How did she "mistakenly" receive his invitation though? That's the only odd thing about the story to me. It's front page news on Drudge but...it went nowhere. She strikes me as...a duteous employee. She asked if it should be pursued, was flagged down, and she moved on.
Click to expand...

Yeah, she gave up pretty easily. A little too easily, don't you think?
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
The report […] shows that more than 80% of the 960,762 people who signed up for coverage through New York’s health care exchange did not have insurance at the time they enrolled. More than half of the enrollees—52%—came from New York City.
Click to expand...

Day-um.
 
D

Diablos

Member
Um, what does Boehner think he's going to accomplish by suing Obama? He seems to be speaking in broad terms, not even narrowing in on orders but action altogether.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
He's hoping that by doing this it'll make the mouthbreathers in his caucus back off the impeachment thing.
 
C

Chumly

Member
PhoenixDark said:
How did she "mistakenly" receive his invitation though? That's the only odd thing about the story to me. It's front page news on Drudge but...it went nowhere. She strikes me as...a duteous employee. She asked if it should be pursued, was flagged down, and she moved on.
Click to expand...

Its one of those no win situations. Can you imagine if she got an email that should have been investigated and did nothing?
 
T

Tamanon

Banned
Oblivion said:
He's hoping that by doing this it'll make the mouthbreathers in his caucus back off the impeachment thing.
Click to expand...

Fuck that. Let the impeachment idiots do their thing. That would require them to actually detail some sort of criminal activity instead of just throwing shit at the wall. They have nothing.
 
R

RustyNails

Member
Diablos said:
Um, what does Boehner think he's going to accomplish by suing Obama? He seems to be speaking in broad terms, not even narrowing in on orders but action altogether.
Click to expand...

There was a quick opinion poll on CNN Crosfire about the lawsuit. 78% of the viewers were against it, and the remaining 22% for. Although not a scientific poll by any means, it does gives you an idea where the public will lean. So at this point, lets hope the GOP thinks this is a good idea.
 
D

Drakeon

Member
Diablos said:
Um, what does Boehner think he's going to accomplish by suing Obama? He seems to be speaking in broad terms, not even narrowing in on orders but action altogether.
Click to expand...

He has to be doing it to appease the Tea Party crowd. I have a hard time believing he thinks its a great idea, but who knows.
 
S

speculawyer

Member
Averon said:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-reifowitz/sam-brownback-kansas_b_5310331.html

http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/state_tax_issues/kansas/

http://www.kansas.com/2014/06/15/3507373/eagle-editorial-states-fiscal.html

It seems almost every fiscal policy the GOP dreams of have been enacted in Kansas and the results have been disastrous.
Click to expand...

Yep.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/sam-brownbacks-tax-cut-push-puts-kansas-out-on-its-own-1402448126

For the first 11 months of its fiscal year, tax collections were down $685 million, or 12%, from a year earlier, at a time when U.S. states, according to the nonpartisan Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, are expected on average to see annual revenue growth. Moody's Investors Service cut Kansas' debt rating in April as the state draws down its reserves to make up for lost revenue.

In a recent interview, the governor pointed to a record number of Kansans employed in the private sector and a jump in new business starts, all while one of the state's largest industries, aviation manufacturing, struggles. The governor added that employment is particularly strong along the Kansas-Missouri border, where it is easiest for businesses and people to cross state lines to respond to the tax cuts.

"It's like going through surgery. It takes a while to heal and get growing afterwards," Mr. Brownback said in his office, a painting of Ronald Reagan hanging behind him. "The left in the country desperately wants this to fail. They want to say, 'You can't cut taxes and grow your way out of things.' "
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No, Mr. Brownback, I don't want that to fail. I would love for it to succeed. Who wouldn't want to pay less taxes and have the economy prosper?

I just do some arithmetic and conclude that I don't believe that such a tactic works in most cases.
 
D

Drakeon

Member
speculawyer said:
Yep.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/sam-brownbacks-tax-cut-push-puts-kansas-out-on-its-own-1402448126


No, Mr. Brownback, I don't want that to fail. I would love for it to succeed. Who wouldn't want to pay less taxes and have the economy prosper?

I just do some arithmetic and conclude that I don't believe that such a tactic works in most cases.
Click to expand...

Oh gee, who would've thought drastically cutting taxes would leave the state in huge debt? It's almost like taxes are there to fund the government...
 
Joe Molotov

Joe Molotov

Member
Drakeon said:
Oh gee, who would've thought drastically cutting taxes would leave the state in huge debt? It's almost like taxes are there to fund the government...
Click to expand...

It's like going through surgery, you just hack a big chunk of flesh and maybe a few surplus organs out and then it takes a while to heal and get growing afterwards.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Drakeon said:
Oh gee, who would've thought drastically cutting taxes would leave the state in huge debt? It's almost like taxes are there to fund the government...
Click to expand...

Too bad the dem who wins will get blamed as things crumble, and the republican legislature will refuse to work with him.
 
Z

zero shift

Banned
Averon said:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-reifowitz/sam-brownback-kansas_b_5310331.html

http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/state_tax_issues/kansas/

http://www.kansas.com/2014/06/15/3507373/eagle-editorial-states-fiscal.html

It seems almost every fiscal policy the GOP dreams of have been enacted in Kansas and the results have been disastrous.
Click to expand...

This almost makes me hope that the Tea Party has 90% of the house, senate, and Rand Paul win the presidency during the 2016 election. American economy crumbles and the Democrats dominate.

speculawyer said:
Yeah, that's how you REALLY get power hungry assholes running things.
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Come on. There have been plenty of democratic communist countries like
 
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