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PoliGAF 2017 |OT6| Made this thread during Harvey because the ratings would be higher

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T

tedtropy

$50/hour, but no kissing on the lips and colors must be pre-separated
Protesters against the proposed health are now at Capitol Hill, many of them wheelchair bound, presently being dragged out by security. Not a great look for a GOP pretending to give a shit about their health.
 
A

AntraxSuicide

Banned
BoogieWoogie said:
The GOP as a whole isn't. They're just part of a fucking hivemind that has one leader and the rest, minus one to three actual thinking people, manage to fall in line.
Click to expand...

I actually think it's the opposite. The GOP hasn't had a real leader setting policy in almost ten years at least, and so you get all these factions at war with each other. I mean, right now Trump and Pence are warring against Bannon in Alabama.

The five ring circus of the GOP is as wide as it can be before people start getting primaried. If Trump could actually lead, then he'd be able to steer the car in some direction. But since nobody respects him, he's just another voice yelling from the backseat of a car with no driver.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
AntraxSuicide said:
I actually think it's the opposite. The GOP hasn't had a real leader setting policy in almost ten years at least, and so you get all these factions at war with each other. I mean, right now Trump and Pence are warring against Bannon in Alabama.

The five ring circus of the GOP is as wide as it can be before people start getting primaried. If Trump could actually lead, then he'd be able to steer the car in some direction. But since nobody respects him, he's just another voice yelling from the backseat of a car with no driver.
Click to expand...

Yup.

The modern GOP is a party with a few specific unifying principles. Unfortunately, they're the unifying principles from the George W Bush administration, and they were such catastrophic failures they literally created a generation of angry anti-war socialists.

Sending W into hiding after his terrible presidency was over was necessary for the GOP to maintain the facade that they could do a good job in government -- but it also led to a refusal to reckon with his actual failure and rethink the party's ideas. They've just been living in denial ever since, and it hollowed out the party to the point where National Socialism was the closest thing they had to an ethos.
 
O

Ogodei

Member
pigeon said:
Yup.

The modern GOP is a party with a few specific unifying principles. Unfortunately, they're the unifying principles from the George W Bush administration, and they were such catastrophic failures they literally created a generation of angry anti-war socialists.

Sending W into hiding after his terrible presidency was over was necessary for the GOP to maintain the facade that they could do a good job in government -- but it also led to a refusal to reckon with his actual failure and rethink the party's ideas. They've just been living in denial ever since, and it hollowed out the party to the point where National Socialism was the closest thing they had to an ethos.
Click to expand...

It's more that there's a continued widening of the gap between the party and the donor class (who are basically Objectivist/Ancap) and the base, which is going full Nazi at an alarming tilt. Leadership really only cares about the Ancap stuff, but there's no audience for it, hence G-C, BCRA, and Skinny Repeal all being disastrously unpopular.
 
A

Atomic Playboy

Member
Mobius and pet octopus said:
Didn't they say the bans were temporary in order to review and rework the process? And wasn't it supposed to be 90 days of which is nearly completed? Shouldn't they have no longer any need for the ban? Not really asking for answers here, just pointing out that the ban should be about over at this point lol.
Click to expand...

It's the oldest play in the book. Introduce something as temporary (it's easier to sell something with a definite end-date). Once it's been established, just keep renewing it for a few months at a time until people can't remember that it was ever temporary in the first place. I had a co-worker who used this strategy to get a permanent 10x4 workweek at an organization that had a policy specifically banning non-standard schedules.
 
J

Jeels

Member
Can someone help me understand why the idea of block grants going to the states for healthcare is a bad idea? If it gives a state like Texas with the highest uninsured rate more money, why wouldnt we want that?
 
A

AndyD

aka andydumi
Jeels said:
Can someone help me understand why the idea of block grants going to the states for healthcare is a bad idea? If it gives a state like Texas with the highest uninsured rate more money, why wouldnt we want that?
Click to expand...
It's a welfare vs. healthcare point of view that largely makes a difference. There are potential benefits to block grants and potential negatives. And without central governance the states could end up implementing wildly different systems.
And don't forget that states that did not expand Medicaid simply left money on the table. So the inequity is somewhat self inflicted.
 
P

Plumbob

Member
Jeels said:
Can someone help me understand why the idea of block grants going to the states for healthcare is a bad idea? If it gives a state like Texas with the highest uninsured rate more money, why wouldnt we want that?
Click to expand...

Many federal programs automatically increase spending* in response to need.

Block grants are a fixed allocation that will get squeezed over time.

It shifts responsibility for helping the poor away from the federal government, which can spend money as it pleases, to local governments, many of whom are controlled by budget hawks and bigots.
 
P

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Jeels said:
Can someone help me understand why the idea of block grants going to the states for healthcare is a bad idea? If it gives a state like Texas with the highest uninsured rate more money, why wouldnt we want that?
Click to expand...

I trust a state like California to put that grant money to good use for the people. I don’t trust some other states to do the right thing. They may decide that certain things shouldn’t be covered, that certain things should have a much higher premium, etc.
 
R

Randolph Freelander

Member
Jeels said:
Can someone help me understand why the idea of block grants going to the states for healthcare is a bad idea? If it gives a state like Texas with the highest uninsured rate more money, why wouldnt we want that?
Click to expand...

You know what would have also helped Texas with their uninsured rate? Expanding Medicaid, which they chose not to do. That was free money they didn't take. If they cared about the uninsured, they had an option.

Block grants are taking money away from states that did the right thing by expanding Medicaid, giving it to states that said "screw poor people," and overall spending less of it in the process.
 
P

Poodlestrike

Banned
Jeels said:
Can someone help me understand why the idea of block grants going to the states for healthcare is a bad idea? If it gives a state like Texas with the highest uninsured rate more money, why wouldnt we want that?
Click to expand...

The whole reason why the states with the highest uninsured rates have the highest uninsured rates is because they chose not to take advantage of the tools in Obamacare to drive them down, e.g. Medicaid expansion. No particular reason to think a cash infusion would change that now.

Also, if the block grants were matching dollar for dollar in well-insured states, and increasing funding in poorly insured ones, that'd be something. But as is, states that did a good job of expanding coverage are being punished, which is just fucking nuts.
 
N

NeoXChaos

Member
Poodlestrike said:
The whole reason why the states with the highest uninsured rates have the highest uninsured rates is because they chose not to take advantage of the tools in Obamacare to drive them down, e.g. Medicaid expansion. No particular reason to think a cash infusion would change that now.

Also, if the block grants were matching dollar for dollar in well-insured states, and increasing funding in poorly insured ones, that'd be something. But as is, states that did a good job of expanding coverage are being punished, which is just fucking nuts.
Click to expand...

how many more have yet to expand? who is the most recent to expand?
 
S

StopMakingSense

Member
Jeels said:
Can someone help me understand why the idea of block grants going to the states for healthcare is a bad idea? If it gives a state like Texas with the highest uninsured rate more money, why wouldnt we want that?
Click to expand...

Also generally whenever the GOP proposes block grants, for anything, it's designed in a way that spending will always increase over time at a far greater rate than the block grants. It's a "starve the beast" tactic they like to propose every now and then.
 
H

Hopfrog

Member
"Block grants" is Republican code for "we want to cut spending to allow for tax cuts but we want to do it without actually using the word cut because that sounds bad, also yay federalism!"
 
P

platypotamus

Member
Got the Shakes said:
I'm starting to think that Sarah Huckabee Sanders might not be good at her job. I'm fairly certain she suggested that NFL players should be protesting the police officers on the field instead of the flag.

https://twitter.com/TomNamako/status/912383578192924672


Edit: Too slow, but I did provide a link to the video ;)
Click to expand...

I too believe that NFL players' protest should be repeatedly punching cops in the nuts while the anthem plays and we all get tears in our eyes from the beauty of a bunch of cops getting their dicks punched.
 
E

Ernest

Banned
I'm blatantly stealing this write-up from a friend to post here!

If you’re looking for awesome Democrats—especially women— to support in 2018 as we try to flip the House, you might consider throwing some early financial support to Lauren Baer.

Lauren, a Harvard-Yale-and-Oxford-educated human rights attorney, is an Obama Administration veteran and foreign policy expert who advised Secs. Clinton and Kerry during their stints at State on a range of national security issues, with a focus on human rights.

She and her wife Emily live in the district Lauren grew up in and is running in—the Florida 18th. This is a district that typically votes Republican in presidential elections, but has see-sawed in its congressional reps. The incumbent Republican is vulnerable and this is an excellent chance to gain a seat with an extraordinarily well-qualified and impressive candidate who exemplifies the very best of the Obama Era—smart, thoughtful, compassionate, engaged, progressive, and profoundly sane, with an educated world-view that extends beyond her own backyard. Her opponent, meanwhile, is an anti-choice, anti-environment, anti-U.N., wholehearted Trump supporter who wants to repeal the ACA and defund Planned Parenthood and has voted for Trump’s positions 97% of the time.

Lauren could use some donations prior to the next Sept 30th filing date and I think she’s a solid bet. This isn’t a district where the Dem is a sacrificial lamb, and Lauren is a true local-girl-made-good with a phenomenal resumé and the wind at her back. But the election is no gimme in the 18th, so she needs all the help we can give her if we’re going to take this seat.

Trump and his acolytes are doing everything they can to dismantle the substantial progress we made as a nation since 2008. We need educated, determined, passionate citizens like Lauren Baer, who are committed to reinstating those lost gains, to run and to win and to fix the mess that a nasty combination of Trumpism and sexism and purity politics has left us in.

It’s not enough to simply encourage talented women to run for office... we need to support them in every way possible when they do.
 
B

Brawndo Addict

Banned
Right wing talking points/conspiracies are so deeply embedded in people nowadays that I'm not sure how you can break through anymore. I was on the bus this weekend and I overheard this group of older folks (probably 65+) who got on from a bus stop near a church discussing politics and it was just nonstop Trump praise or Clinton/Obama trashing. They literally said Clinton gave North Korea nukes by secretly providing them with uranium through the Russians and Iran in exchange for cash/donations and help winning the election by framing Trump.

I was debating whether to even bother interjecting but there were two people in this social group who tried pushing back a little and they just got completely nowhere. Here's two abbreviated exchanges that made me depressed about just getting people to think twice, let alone changing minds:

"Hold on, this is the first I've ever heard anything about Clinton giving nukes to North Korea, are you sure that's real, why wouldn't the news have talked about this? Isn't that real treason?"

"Well that's just the liberal media for you, they can't let any damaging story on Clinton get out there so of course it's not going to be reported by the mainstream press. They all wanted to get her elected and did everything they could to keep it secret."

"But Trump is president now, why isn't she being charged or investigated for all of this?"

"Did you forget about her 33,000 'missing' emails? She destroyed the evidence in front of everybody and Comey let her get away with it. Now Trump can't prosecute her because her stooges have got everybody believing this Trump and Russia crap and he can't make any moves on her. She's even got companies like facebook backing her up now with these fake russian ads. So of course nobody is talking about her selling uranium to the russian for campaign donations anymore, just like they're not talking about the Iranians using the Obama deal to send uranium to North Korea, or her getting millions of illegal votes. The clinton machine is using every dirty trick in the book to try and stop Trump."

"That's right, they never did find her emails. It's a miracle Trump won despite everybody trying to sabotage him."

"Exactly. And it's not just the left anymore, the republican establishment is out to get him too. That's why you can't always trust fox these days either. If you want the real news you have to go online now, I can show you some sites later."
Click to expand...

"It's about damn time someone finally stood up for America. Those disrespectful assholes should leave this country if they hate it so much. Play the game and shut up about politics, you're an athlete, nothing more."

"But where do we draw the line? I wouldn't want someone to say we should keep our religious beliefs inside the church and out of politics. I'm a christian and a republican, you can't just tell me to keep it to myself."

"That's completely different, we're a christian nation first and foremost, last time I checked football players didn't found America. What the hell does playing football teach you about politics anyway?"

"I'm not trying to say they should be running for office, but don't they have a right to speak their mind?"

"Not on the job they don't. If I protested abortion at work you think I'm going to get any articles written about me defending my freedom of speech? No sir, I'm getting fired. They can talk all they want off the field when nobody is watching, but they're getting paid to play a game and if they can't even do that they better find a new line of work."

"That seems fair I guess; I didn't think about it that way. Nobody would care if they didn't do it during the game, it makes sense that they would just exploit the attention rather than doing it for real."
Click to expand...

Like I've gone over it a couple of times in my head and I cannot come up with any way I could have interjected in a way that would be constructive. If their in-group members can't get them to deviate from the script, I'm certainly not going to succeed. The way I see it it would have gone one of three ways:

1) I'm just a liberal, so anything I say is going to be false and not worth responding to.
2) I'm referencing fake news/science, so whatever evidence I offer up is untrue in the first place.
3) Anything they can't immediately dismiss as false only seems real because of a clinton or democratic conspiracy.

There's no path to even attempt dialogue there. It's not an issue of finding the right evidence that would get them to rethink whether their position is the best solution to a problem; it's a question of whether evidence can even exist in the first place.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
Plumbob said:
Many federal programs automatically increase spending* in response to need.

Block grants are a fixed allocation that will get squeezed over time.

It shifts responsibility for helping the poor away from the federal government, which can spend money as it pleases, to local governments, many of whom are controlled by budget hawks and bigots.
Click to expand...

Yep. There's a medical emergency exception, but if the economy goes to hell, and more people need to have more help paying their medical bills because they have less money, they're out of luck. The federal government can print money, so it doesn't have to worry about paying more in bad times. States on the other hand get even less money from taxes in bad times, on top of the increased need to give people services, and it is possible for states to go bankrupt and not be able to pay their debts, which would be a very bad thing.

But overall, it's theoretically possible that things like block grants or risk pools could work, but only if properly funded. Republicans really only want to use those as a way to hide their true goal of giving poor people less health care, because they think it makes poor people lazy.
 
P

Pyrokai

Member
Brawndo Addict said:
Right wing talking points/conspiracies are so deeply embedded in people nowadays that I'm not sure how you can break through anymore. I was on the bus this weekend and I overheard this group of older folks (probably 65+) who got on from a bus stop near a church discussing politics and it was just nonstop Trump praise or Clinton/Obama trashing. They literally said Clinton gave North Korea nukes by secretly providing them with uranium through the Russians and Iran in exchange for cash/donations and help winning the election by framing Trump.

I was debating whether to even bother interjecting but there were two people in this social group who tried pushing back a little and they just got completely nowhere. Here's two abbreviated exchanges that made me depressed about just getting people to think twice, let alone changing minds:
Click to expand...

This is incredibly sad. The only hope we can have is that they're a minority.
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Guess who got caught using a personal e-mail to conduct government business?

Hint:
Trump wants to fuck her
.
 
B

benicillin

Banned
B-Dubs said:
Guess who got caught using a personal e-mail to conduct government business?

Hint:
Trump wants to fuck her
.
Click to expand...

I am shocked. SHOCKED!

http://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...ersonal-email-account-for-government-business

giphy.gif
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
Democrats landed a very good, and random candidate for Georgia Secretary of State - John Barrow.

While Barrow was a blue dog in the House, he was fairly supportive of Obama before finally getting turned out in 2014. And frankly if there's one office I'm willing to put up with a nonpartisan schtick, it's Secretary of State.
 
D

dramatis

Member
In theory they can pass another reconciliation budget resolution or some shit like that at the beginning of next year I guess, then this can all start all over again.
 
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