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PoliGAF 2017 |OT4| The leaks are coming from inside the white house

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Sorry, but tying yourself to an artificial one sided cash restrictions is just stupid.
I agree, but the media tried to make the tea party in 2010 seem like these scrappy underdogs when Wisconsin proved that clearly wasn't what happened.

Feingold didn't hold himself to those restrictions in 2016 and he still lost, but perhaps Johnson just got an incumbency assist.

Just wish so badly we could have had Sanders and Feingold forming a progressive caucus in the Senate pushing President Clinton to the left.
 
Also the NYT wants you to know how much the families of people who were killed by the actions of people who happen to be undocumented appreciate compassionate Donald Trump.

For Grieving Parents, Trump Is ‘Speaking for the Dead’ on Immigration https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/us/trump-undocumented-victims.html

Somewhere in there is a paragraph on how immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. But that's quickly brushed away because facts don't matter.
 
"Both sides" has infected print media to some extent, which surprises me. Conservatives watch TV, but I can't imagine many of them read the NYT.
 
I think from now on I'll replace the term oppo with TICK TICK BOOM. It feels so much more visceral and exciting.

27TICK-master675.jpg
 

Wilsongt

Member
Hey, if Ron Johnson's monstrous ideas about pre-existing conditions keep him from voting for this bill, more power to him.

What sort of human being can you be to think that, though?

A rich white man who doesn't have to worry about mentral cycles, pregnancy, hormones, or not having money to have medical conditions taken care of properly.
 

Teggy

Member
If their argument is that there's nothing wrong with colluding with a foreign country to affect our election and America buys that, well I guess I don't know what I'll do anymore. Go hide in a basement I guess.
 

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
If their argument is that there's nothing wrong with colluding with a foreign country to affect our election and America buys that, well I guess I don't know what I'll do anymore. Go hide in a basement I guess.

I hear Toronto is nice this time of year...
 
Probably talking about Brit Hume, who earlier today was talking about how collusion isn't a crime (although he did acknowledge it was still concerning. This isn't the first time that argument has been used to downplay it, either.

Video at: https://www.mediamatters.org/video/...aign-did-collude-russia-it-s-not-crime/217024

HUME: But what crime? Can anybody identify the crime? Collusion, while it would be obviously alarming and highly inappropriate for the Trump campaign, of which there is no evidence by the way, of colluding with the Russians. It's not a crime. So are we talking about here the president's firing of Comey being and obstruction of justice? And they got a grand jury on that? Is that was this is about?


I've talked before how there's a conga line of whipping those less extreme and crooked than oneself on the Right that got them to this spot that's under scrutiny and attack lately, but I'm upping the timetable on this. We need more people fired or investigated NOW.
 

Teggy

Member
Of course there's also the fact that if collusion is found, trumps constant refrain that there are no ties between trump and Russia is a big lie. Of course no one seems to care if he lies.
 
Collusion isn't a crime. But it's vaguely a high crime that Congress can impeach over. That's why a select committee is better than a special prosecutor - because it's focused and about the soul of the country and its governance. [I agree with you now, Pigeon.]
 
Kicked off your insurance for 6 months if you miss a payment?

That sounds super annoying for insurance companies to enforce.

I don't even know how that would even function at all. It literally makes no sense at all.

A few years ago there was an awkward one month where I didn't have insurance because I was aged out of my dad's insurance, but my work insurance hadn't quite started yet. So I guess in that case, despite all people in the process agreeing that I was fine and good to go, I'd just randomly need to wait 6 months to start my new insurance?

Also every time you get laid off, even if you have a job that offers insurance right off the bat, you need to wait 6 months? What kind of company would want their employee to go 6 months without insurance? My company requires me to have some form of insurance to ensure we don't suddenly die or whatever.
 
People on the left and right are still fighting like it is 2016 all over again.

This election froze us in time. It is a stake in the ground and we are all on leashes. We can only go so far from it, and when we reach the end up our rope, all we can do is run in circles.

This is what happens when people can't cope with what they thought was impossible. The election was a point of immense trauma for people. America is experiencing collective PTSD. It is the most generationally defining event in American history since 9/11.

People don't know how to move on. How can they? Lots of media and satire prepared is for an "Idiocracy" future. There were sitcoms and movies and TV shows that joked about a post-modern politics based on total degradation of reality in favor of dangerous cartoonery. But none of this media prepared us for what would come next. We are in territory uncharted even by fantasy.

This gripping fear of the modern unknown is what keeps people trapped in 2016. 2016 was the last time things made sense. People don't have the stomach to power through current day. Instead, they relentlessly pedal backwards with their gaze fixed on the last time they weren't afraid.

When this grips even the most passive progressive, and dominates their rhetoric, the right responds directly to it. This keeps the conversation stuck in the past. It also helps that the election was the big and triumphant argument that the right WON. So of course they will continue to milk it and reference it and cling to it for reassurance and validation. Why don't all these liberals fall in line? Don't they know they lost? Remember the election??
 
But it's not a Mandate so it's all good!

It's just such a crushing punishment for something that could just be an honest mistake.

Right now

"Oh man, it must have slipped my mind last month, I could have sworn I paid. Oh well, I'll just eat the 20 dollar late fee"

In the future
"Oh man, it must have slipped my mind last month, I could have sworn I paid. Now I have to figure out what the heck to do for the next 6 months, oh god, please don't let me die"


Imagine how scary it would be if you have a bank error or something when your payment is due. Something completely out of your control. Imagine if you're pregnant during this and you absolutely know you will have medical bills in the next six months.
 

gaugebozo

Member
Collusion isn't a crime. But it's vaguely a high crime that Congress can impeach over. That's why a select committee is better than a special prosecutor - because it's focused and about the soul of the country and its governance. [I agree with you now, Pigeon.]
I bet if serious crimes are found, the GOP narrative becomes that they are not "high crimes", and so we can't impeach.

Or maybe that he hasn't been found guilty, so we can't do anything.

The point is they'll grab onto anything. Of course, Trump is going to tweet or give an interview the next day and say, "I did that, it was my idea first. They were the HIGHEST crimes. The highest."
 

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
IT IS PASSING

HERE IS WHY

A) no one gives a shit about poor people
B) old racist white people will continue to vote republican anyway
C) bad effects are delayed
D) DID YOU SEE HOW BERNIE SANDERS WAS SCREWED BY DEBBIE? I CAN'T ORGANIZE AROUND THIS WHEN INJUSTICE IS IN THE WORLD
E) the appeal of getting rid of obamacare is too great for Rethuglicans
F) mitch mcconnell always wins

I believe McConnell is correct in assuming that the rage from his base of partially functional deplorables would be greater (for some reason...we don't really know WHY) is going to be a bigger deal than the obvious backlash down the road from regular people who will lose their health insurance.

and G for good measure

G) BUT HA EMAILS
 
Kev: Are your posts satirical or pages torn out of my secret diary? I can't even tell.

I can't even say it's like looking into a dark mirror because it's just like looking into a regular mirror.
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
I still believe there will come a point where the Republican Party will pivot on a dime about Trump. They need to play this entire thing very carefully if they are going to save face and minimize damage, but until the time is right they are going to put up the front that they are in it for the long haul. Once solid evidence comes to front and is presented to the public, and if the public "Believes it", they will instantly pivot and downplay any support they ever had for Trump. Unless they believe they can pretend everything is fine for 2 to 4 more years, but I doubt they believe its possible.

A key part of this is likely to get Fox News on the side of the Establishment Republicans when it is time to remove Trump, if the network sides with Pro-Trump Republicans the party will be forced to maintain its front and go all in. But I think the network will side with the Establishment, and do its best to paint Trump in bad light when the party as a whole is ready to pivot.

But its hard to really say who holds the cards in this entire situation, and who they stand with. To me, Trump looks to be in an incredibly weak position, but if someone like the Koch Brothers support him, he may have far more power behind him than I am giving him credit for.
 

NeoXChaos

Member
I still believe there will come a point where the Republican Party will pivot on a dime about Trump. They need to play this entire thing very carefully if they are going to save face and minimize damage, but until the time is right they are going to put up the front that they are in it for the long haul. Once solid evidence comes to front and is presented to the public, and if the public "Believes it", they will instantly pivot and downplay any support they ever had for Trump. Unless they believe they can pretend everything is fine for 2 to 4 more years, but I doubt they believe its possible.

A key part of this is likely to get Fox News on the side of the Establishment Republicans when it is time to remove Trump, if the network sides with Pro-Trump Republicans the party will be forced to maintain its front and go all in. But I think the network will side with the Establishment, and do its best to paint Trump in bad light when the party as a whole is ready to pivot.

But its hard to really say who holds the cards in this entire situation, and who they stand with. To me, Trump looks to be in an incredibly weak position, but if someone like the Koch Brothers support him, he may have far more power behind him than I am giving him credit for.

McConell will drop him like a rock if he wins the nomination or Outlandish X statement Trump said will stop Trump or Hollywood access tape will surely finish Trump or the delegates at the RNC will surely stop Trump or the EC will stop Trump.

The Republicans will never flee from Trump.
 
Kicked off your insurance for 6 months if you miss a payment?

That sounds super annoying for insurance companies to enforce.

I don't even know how that would even function at all. It literally makes no sense at all.

My bet is that insurance companies develop a black list to track people who lose them money and they get automatically dropped if a payment comes in. Folks who they may money can slide though.
 

Kevinroc

Member
Please tell me that stupid senate health bill isn't passing.

I wish I could. But I just don't know. Republicans would be quite happy cutting taxes for the very wealthy and raising their middle fingers to Obama. But this bill is so unpopular it would be like the entire party injected electoral poison.
 
McConell will drop him like a rock if he wins the nomination or Outlandish X statement Trump said will stop Trump or Hollywood access tape will surely finish Trump or the delegates at the RNC will surely stop Trump or the EC will stop Trump.

The Republicans will never flee from Trump.

Sure they will. Many tried to flee and criticize Trump in the past but he won without their support. Now people like Ted Cruz are kissing the ring.

If Trump stumbles or loses next time, they'll scramble with no shame and throw him under the bus like a dog.
 
Are companies even able to drop people in this bill?

I'm not expert but I don't think they can just drop people for no reason. You can already lose coverage for not paying though. So a sick person misses a payment, gets dropped and bam no insurance for six months. Plus the senate bill brings back lifetime limits so people with serious health issues could just run out of insurance.
 

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
I'm not expert but I don't think they can just drop people for no reason. You can already lose coverage for not paying though. So a sick person misses a payment, gets dropped and bam no insurance for six months. Plus the senate bill brings back lifetime limits so people with serious health issues could just run out of insurance.

I am buttfucked if that goes through.
 
This election froze us in time. It is a stake in the ground and we are all on leashes. We can only go so far from it, and when we reach the end up our rope, all we can do is run in circles.

This is what happens when people can't cope with what they thought was impossible. The election was a point of immense trauma for people. America is experiencing collective PTSD. It is the most generationally defining event in American history since 9/11.

People don't know how to move on. How can they? Lots of media and satire prepared is for an "Idiocracy" future. There were sitcoms and movies and TV shows that joked about a post-modern politics based on total degradation of reality in favor of dangerous cartoonery. But none of this media prepared us for what would come next. We are in territory uncharted even by fantasy.

This gripping fear of the modern unknown is what keeps people trapped in 2016. 2016 was the last time things made sense. People don't have the stomach to power through current day. Instead, they relentlessly pedal backwards with their gaze fixed on the last time they weren't afraid.

When this grips even the most passive progressive, and dominates their rhetoric, the right responds directly to it. This keeps the conversation stuck in the past. It also helps that the election was the big and triumphant argument that the right WON. So of course they will continue to milk it and reference it and cling to it for reassurance and validation. Why don't all these liberals fall in line? Don't they know they lost? Remember the election??

Something needs to be done about the way political discourse is handled in this country because the way things came to a head last year was completely unacceptable. Even before Election Night, there were studies of people getting incredibly stressed out and even bullying increasing in schools.
 

chadskin

Member
Perhaps most interestingly, the White House was really quick to respond to this story:
One month before Election Day, Jared Kushner’s real estate company finalized a $285 million loan as part of a refinancing package for its property near Times Square in Manhattan.

The loan came at a critical moment. Kushner was playing a key role in the presidential campaign of his father-in-law, Donald Trump. The lender, Deutsche Bank, was negotiating to settle a federal mortgage fraud case and charges from New York state regulators that it aided a possible Russian money-laundering scheme. The cases were settled in December and January.
The White House, in response to questions from The Post, said in a statement that Kushner “will recuse from any particular matter involving specific parties in which Deutsche Bank is a party.” Kushner and Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...4f3acc-4f88-11e7-b064-828ba60fbb98_story.html
 
Something needs to be done about the way political discourse is handled in this country because the way things came to a head last year was completely unacceptable. Even before Election Night, there were studies of people getting incredibly stressed out and even bullying increasing in schools.

I can quibble over tax code and not get worried, but when one party is waging a culture war and I've got minority students (people of color, LGBT, religious minorities) who are near tears some days, I get pretty stressed out.

I wish I could just talk tax code.
 

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Can we talk about how Our Wisconsin Revolution purity tested Paul Ryan challenger David Yankovich and then kicked him out this weekend? Voting Bernie in the primary and Hillary in the general was not good enough. I'm actually asking, because talk about the Bernie faithful sometimes goes bad.

https://mobile.twitter.com/davidyankovich/status/879033602843037697

The more I think about it, the more I think Finale Fireworker is right about the nation having some form of collective PTSD. People can't move on because that would require acknowledging the current state of the country and the fact that we're far more racist and misogynist than we thought we were. People thought we were making great strides and that progress was inevitable, that the moral arc of the universe really did bend towards justice, but then Trump happened and shattered the illusion the left had allowed itself to collectively build. The right may be insane and in a crazy bubble of their own creation, but we were as well (to a certain extent).
 
That Yankovich guy rubs me the wrong way, and not just because he's a carpetbagger (he's barely been in Wisconsin for a month) but he seems to have beef that the Iron Stache is daring to run in the primary at all.
 

Ogodei

Member
Something needs to be done about the way political discourse is handled in this country because the way things came to a head last year was completely unacceptable. Even before Election Night, there were studies of people getting incredibly stressed out and even bullying increasing in schools.

The stakes are higher. Half the country told the other half that their humanity is of little value compared to their racial anxiety/tax cuts.

America's been blessed by relatively non-acrimonious politics since the Civil War, but that's not the norm in many other countries. We're just reverting back to an era where comity is impossible until the fever breaks, because there's no reasoning with the redcaps.
 
"Both sides" has infected print media to some extent, which surprises me. Conservatives watch TV, but I can't imagine many of them read the NYT.

The most impressive feat the right pulled off is convincing enough people that the media has a left wing bias...

This a) Justified the existence of Fox News because "someone's got to be on our side"

and b) Caused a lot of media sources (Hi CNN and now NBC/MSNBC) to really dive into both sides, to run stories like that ridiculous NYT story, to go hard on left and softer on right, and to generally give coverage to nonsense because they want some of those conservative dollars and because they don't want to look like "leftist media" when contrasted to Fox News. Media groups are so desperate to not look left that they give far more credibility to the right then reality should dictate and the irony is they're still called the leftist media and they don't really get those sought after conservative bucks either... yet they continue on muddying up the discourse.
 
Can we talk about how Our Wisconsin Revolution purity-tested would-be Paul Ryan challenger David Yankovich and then kicked him out this weekend? Voting Bernie in the primary and Hillary in the general was not good enough. I'm actually asking, because talk about the Bernie faithful sometimes goes bad.

https://mobile.twitter.com/davidyankovich/status/879033602843037697
Yankovich is the carpetbagger from Ohio. If the far left wants to eat him alive they can have him. Bryce all the way.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
The more I think about it, the more I think Finale Fireworker is right about the nation having some form of collective PTSD. People can't move on because that would require acknowledging the current state of the country and the fact that we're far more racist and misogynist than we thought we were. People thought we were making great strides and that progress was inevitable, that the moral arc of the universe really did bend towards justice, but then Trump happened and shattered the illusion the left had allowed itself to collectively build. The right may be insane and in a crazy bubble of their own creation, but we were as well (to a certain extent).

This. They kept it silent for years and needed somebody like Trump to show them it was OK to go public with the racism/sexism. I feel like we regressed 25 years in a matter of months.
 

kirblar

Member
Can we talk about how Our Wisconsin Revolution purity-tested would-be Paul Ryan challenger David Yankovich and then kicked him out this weekend? Voting Bernie in the primary and Hillary in the general was not good enough. I'm actually asking, because talk about the Bernie faithful sometimes goes bad.

https://mobile.twitter.com/davidyankovich/status/879033602843037697
No seriously, these people fucking suck, can't be reasoned with, and you have to form a coalition without them.
 
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