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U.S. Politics-Getting a Handel On Why the DNC Is Pissing Ossof


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Couple of ongoing personal anecdotes relevant to the wage/business situation.

 

I use aging, right-hand drive vehicles in my line of work - rural mail delivery.  Finding parts for said vehicles is a challenge.  Recently had to get some through a specialty outfit on the east coast (Mass).  While chatting with the gal on the phone she said, 'well, you're our last customer.'  I went 'what?' fearing the dang place was about to shut down.  She said, 'We're moving to Nevada because its business friendly.'  Thought about that for a while after the call.  Nevada?  Kansas and Wisconsin are the states that have gone all out businesswise.  Why Nevada instead of one of them?

 

The other thing: my lovely young daughter, busy raising my grandkid this past year, announced she'd like to help out a couple days a week on the route.  I'm not a big spender and could stand some time off now and again, so I set the wheels in motion and looked up the relevant portions of the contract.  I am obligated to pay her $14.97 an hour, plus $4 an hour 'health and welfare,' whatever that means.  I'm not objecting, just pointing out that's what the contract calls for.  And it's apparently been this way for quite a while. 

 

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18 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Delving into a candidate's sexual history is a weapon for religious conservatives I never wish to use.  My best friend in college fucked my longterm girlfriend at the time.  After a few months of drinking a handle a day I got over it.  Dude was and is a great guy, and, frankly, it was a very complicated relationship between all of us I couldn't explain publicly.  And that's the point.  As long as everything's consensual and he's not, ya know, fucking every 18 year old that's willing like Berlusconi, I don't see the point in judging.

Not the best but I looked into a couple polls.  I suppose I should revise my statement to say Trumpcare is significantly less popular than Devos - unpopularity is still TBD.

That is a very real change over the past decade.  I've written papers and consequently conducted research on it - meaning fearing the primary over the general electorate.  But such methods don't matter in this case.  This is the most important vote every GOP Senator will take for their political future.  They know that.  That's my point when I say it's not comparable to DeVos' confirmation.

Yeah that's bullshit. Being unable to abide by the terms of a simple contract because you wanted some instant gratification means you don't have the sort of decision making capacity I want legislators I vote for to possess.

toddler legislstors that fail the grown up version of the Stanford marshmallow test shouldn't be legislators, or running for office.

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2 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Yeah that's bullshit. Being unable to abide by the terms of a simple contract because you wanted some instant gratification means you don't have the sort of decision making capacity I want legislators I vote for to possess.

toddler legislstors that fail the grown up version of the Stanford marshmallow test shouldn't be legislators, or running for office.

It's interesting you describe marriage as "a simple contract."  What you quoted is my take on it.  Obviously this is something everyone comes into with their own experience.

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The AP did a great deeper analysis on the results of gerrymandering in the 2016 election, and it's a good description of why I'm so very pessimistic about Democrats taking back the house in 2018.

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Republicans held several advantages heading into the 2016 election. They had more incumbents, which carried weight even in a year of “outsider” candidates. Republicans also had a geographical advantage because their voters were spread more widely across suburban and rural America instead of being highly concentrated, as Democrats generally are, in big cities.

Yet the data suggest that even if Democrats had turned out in larger numbers, their chances of substantial legislative gains were limited by gerrymandering.

 

 

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14 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The AP did a great deeper analysis on the results of gerrymandering in the 2016 election, and it's a good description of why I'm so very pessimistic about Democrats taking back the house in 2018.

 

The effects of gerrymandering after the 2010 census are well known, static, and factored into any electoral prognostications.  The link cited is simply post-game review on why it sucked for 2016, which is exactly the same unfair goalposts the Dems encountered in 2014 and 2012.  For some glass-half-full analysis of the numbers, see this recent report from Charlie Cook's site:

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If Democrats were to outperform their "generic" share by eight points across the board in November 2018, they would pick up 80 seats. Of course, that won't happen because Republican incumbents will be tougher to dislodge than special election nominees. But these results fit a pattern that should still worry GOP incumbents everywhere, regardless of Trump's national approval rating and the outcome of the healthcare debate in Congress. 

 

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1 hour ago, ThinkerX said:

I went 'what?' fearing the dang place was about to shut down.  She said, 'We're moving to Nevada because its business friendly.' 

Very interesting.  The R Gov, Sandoval brought the ACA with Medicaid expansion to Nevada, also, convinced Elon Musk to build his Tesla 'gigaplant' battery factory in Northern Nevada.  I'm sure Musk got a really sweet deal!  I've been away from Nevada too long, and that's because it might be 'business friendly' but it's right to work and at will labor laws are anything but employee friendly.   :(  

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2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I watched the live press conference with Trump and the Prime Minister of India, and the bizarre nature of his speeches never ceases to amaze me. He made this great build-up about the things he and Modi have in common, and the punch line? They both use social media well.

I mean, wtf?

But then again when the president of Panama was in town last week, Trump, at their press conference, said "we really built that canal well, didn't we?" Geez, what a wtf moment! The president of Panama, in case you missed it, responded by saying "A hundred years ago?"

I recognize the he is the president, he is my president, but at the same time I have the feeling of being on a rudderless ship. I wonder if when Obama was president those who hated him felt the same, but then I think back to W. and remember that I detested him while in office I didn't feel like I do now that there's no one there really running things.

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20 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Delving into a candidate's sexual history is a weapon for religious conservatives I never wish to use.......

 As long as everything's consensual and he's not, ya know, fucking every 18 year old that's willing like Berlusconi, I don't see the point in judging.

Do you see what you did there?

Maybe sometimes a wide stance is just a wide stance.  

Or more seriously, sometimes sexual history could be an indicator of character independent of what team you re on politically.  Especially as it may relate to fidelity and honesty in a monogamous relationship. (Obv different standards apply for less traditional arrangements.)

Also you have to be almost willfully ignorant to think that examining sexual history is a weapon only religious conservatives use.  I started to try to track down a story I vaguely recall from when Chief Justice Roberts got nominated that I think was on Daily Kos or HuffPo where a poster decided that Roberts and his wife appeared embarrassed when their son was mentioned and started speculating that maybe their (8 yr old IIRC) son was gay.  When I started googling it I came across this link.http://underneaththeirrobes.blogs.com/main/2005/08/more_grist_for_.html

I wouldnt call Althouse or Wonkette religious conservatives....and ive no doubt I could find hundreds of other examples of non religious conservatives making political attacks on sexual history with little effort.

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30 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Do you see what you did there?

Maybe sometimes a wide stance is just a wide stance.  

Well that's a blast from the past - no pun intended.

32 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Also you have to be almost willfully ignorant to think that examining sexual history is a weapon only religious conservatives use.

Agreed.  My underlying point was it's hard to call religious conservatives hypocrites when they excuse infidelities on their own side if one starts playing the same game on the left side of the aisle.  Basically, my point is I pretty much uniformly disagree with using consensual, non-felonious sexual history as a "character indicator."  You're exactly right that there's myriad examples of not religious conservatives using it as an attack.  That inconsistency bothers me as well, especially since Clinton, and was kinda what I was trying to point out.

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58 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

I started to try to track down a story I vaguely recall from when Chief Justice Roberts got nominated that I think was on Daily Kos or HuffPo where a poster decided that Roberts and his wife appeared embarrassed when their son was mentioned and started speculating that maybe their (8 yr old IIRC) son was gay.  When I started googling it I came across this link.http://underneaththeirrobes.blogs.com/main/2005/08/more_grist_for_.html

BTW, it would be disgusting if someone used Roberts' son, particularly it involved his sexual orientation.  I'm sure you could find that somewhere online, but all that link shows is someone who's obsessed with the prospect of Roberts himself being gay.  Don't expect me to click on such links in the future.  Use legitimate sites.  You can provide evidence for anything you want if we're just citing random blogs.  Hell, I could make a blog right now to provide support for this post, somehow, then link it.

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10 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Why shouldn't personal integrity and character enter into politics, specifically your voting choices? I'd say it's more important to consider the character of the person for whom you are voting than their specific policies.

The issue is, how do we judge character and how relevant it is to a person's politics? In some cases, infidelity may well indicate larger issues of untrustworthiness and unreliability. In other cases, it may not: that person may, in effect, 'compartmentalise' their behaviour such that they're trustworthy in most respects but not this one. How do we judge?

You can look at someone like Trump and see that he seems to behave pretty consistently in all areas of his life as a self-centred jerk, from the most trivial to the most serious. But others, like Bill Clinton, are more complicated. In the end we have to make a judgment call for ourselves in those cases. So I think you can take your own assessment of character into account - but don't mistake that for an objective standard.

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The Republican Party: Wantin’ to turn legislation into a faith based initiative.

I mean how else could you come up with such marvelous results like the Bush Boom or the Brownback Boom?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/heres-how-well-the-cbo-did-at-forecasting-the-last-big-health-care-bill/

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That insurance prediction apparently didn't sit well with the White House, as the Trump administration put out a statement questioning the CBO's credibility, arguing that its analysis of the Affordable Care Act -- Democrats' 2010 health-care law also known as Obamacare -- was so flawed it proved the agency can't be trusted.

Because you know, the Trump administration can be trusted.

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Meanwhile, although conservative opponents of Obamacare have complained about premiums under the law, premiums have been less than the CBO originally forecast.

Oddly enough, I don’t recall many Republicans mentioning this little fact over the last 7 years. But, hey you know, since they are now interested in a more toned down debate about healthcare (I wonder why) maybe they’ll mention it now?
 

..........................

Something wonderful it’s not.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/06/heres-the-tldr-version-of-the-republican-health-care-bill/

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Next, a comparison of premiums. It’s true that the Republican bill generates lower premiums than Obamacare, but that’s only because its coverage is so skimpy and its deductibles and copays are so high. It’s like bragging that a gas-guzzling old jalopy is cheaper than a new Prius. However, Kaiser has crunched the numbers to come up with average premiums under BCRA and Obamacare for similar policies. Here they are. These estimates are for a current average silver plan after all tax credits have been applied:

...................

The Republican Party recently discovers adverse selection is indeed a problem.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/upshot/how-to-discourage-health-insurance-lapses-gop-tries-new-approach.html

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Senate Republicans made only one big change in a new version of their Senate health bill released Monday: They added a penalty for Americans who let their insurance lapse for 63 days or more.

Under the new provision, those who go without insurance will be locked out of getting coverage for at least six months after they sign up.

It’s interesting that this provision got tacked on at the last minute, when the adverse selection problem is a key issue in healthcare policy. Just goes to show, how unfuckin’ serious the Republican Party has been about this matter the whole time.

The Republican Party: Showing once again what a sorry ass party it is.

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15 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I bet they'll spin it simply as 'these are people who are CHOOSING to not have insurance, which is good!'

Bet you a shiny nickel they are already either already saying it or about to. 

I mean, come on, these are the people who have said repeatedly that this involves no cuts to Medicaid over and over despite it being almost a trillion dollar cut to medicaid. 

I think it will be a moot point because the bill is unlikely to pass, but if it does, not amount of spin will matter. 15 million people will lose their cover age, and those ages 50-64 will see their costs explode, and both of those groups will punish Republicans at the polls in 2018. 

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On 6/27/2017 at 9:26 AM, Tywin et al. said:

I think it will be a moot point because the bill is unlikely to pass, but if it does, not amount of spin will matter. 15 million people will lose their cover age, and those ages 50-64 will see their costs explode, and both of those groups will punish Republicans at the polls in 2018. 

In a sane world this is what would happen.

But, I just can’t help to be a little pessimistic about this. The Republican Party just excels at spewing bullshit and getting people to buy it.

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The alternate reality of the Republican Party:

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-white-houses-international-credibility-collapses-trump-era

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During Barack Obama’s presidency, Republicans chose a strange line of attack. As regular readers know, Obama’s GOP detractors seemed absolutely convinced that the Democratic president had done real damage to the United States’ international standing. The opposite was true, but GOP officials nevertheless argued, with unnerving vigor, that America had forfeited the admiration of the world – and it was Obama’s fault.

............................

Now conservative sorts of people, OGE has been influenced by the likes of Clower, Leijonhufvud, Bennassy, and Malinvaud and other sorts of non Walrasian sorts of people.

Prices simply don’t clear markets because that would require different actors to communicate their intended plans under different price vectors. Of course, we know in the real world, that doesn’t happen (well except Rush Limbaugh and his followers ie “The Republican Party”  probably don’t know that or would disagree).

Quantity adjustments matter. Quantity constraints, financial quantity constraints edition:

http://voxeu.org/article/financial-constraints-and-nominal-rigidities

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In recent work, we argue that the presence of financial frictions makes nominal prices in the economy more rigid by decreasing the average frequency of price changes ceteris paribus (Balleer et al. 2017). Moreover, the way financial frictions affect the economy depends on how one thinks nominal rigidities work. If we have the opinion that financial frictions affect whether (and which) firms adjust prices, inflation reacts less, and output reacts more to aggregate shocks in the presence of frictions. Given aggregate demand, this means that financial frictions make aggregate supply flatter. Financial constraints therefore influence a fundamental trade-off faced by the central bank: to raise inflation, the monetary authority would need to accept relatively stronger responses of average output.

 

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1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

In a sane world this is what would happen.

But, I just can’t help to be a little pessimistic about this. The Republican Party just excels at spewing bullshit and getting people to buy it.

That will certainly happen, but I suspect a large number of center right and independent individuals will lash back at the Republican Party if they lose their insurance or their premiums spike. 

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7 hours ago, mormont said:

The issue is, how do we judge character and how relevant it is to a person's politics? In some cases, infidelity may well indicate larger issues of untrustworthiness and unreliability. In other cases, it may not: that person may, in effect, 'compartmentalise' their behaviour such that they're trustworthy in most respects but not this one. How do we judge?

You can look at someone like Trump and see that he seems to behave pretty consistently in all areas of his life as a self-centred jerk, from the most trivial to the most serious. But others, like Bill Clinton, are more complicated. In the end we have to make a judgment call for ourselves in those cases. So I think you can take your own assessment of character into account - but don't mistake that for an objective standard.

Men being allowed by society to compartmentalize away their entitlement to sexual encounters in spite of restrictions on said is in fact the core of the entire problem.

because it's misogyny. Predators like bill Clinton being allowed to prey on subordinates is wrong but it is a reflection of how much we desire to perpetuate our misogynistic culture.

A society and culture that encourages us to say he is allowed to break contracts and promises and trusts but this behavior is allowed to be compartmentalized as having no relevance to anyone else because the victims had vaginas is fundamentally wrong and a sickening statement steeped in cultural misogyny and male privilege.

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21 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

That will certainly happen, but I suspect a large number of center right and independent individuals will lash back at the Republican Party if they lose their insurance or their premiums spike. 

Hah no

ETA: told ya

 

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Can $188 billion buy 50 votes?

Quote

If GOP leaders can wrangle the votes, it will happen Tuesday. If they can’t get it Tuesday, they will try for Wednesday.

And if that doesn’t work, it may get pushed to beyond the July 4 recess, which would give opponents time to pressure GOP senators over the holiday break.

“We may not know if we have the votes to pass it until we bring it up,” said Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.), the third-ranking member of the GOP leadership.

...

Paul is the only senator who’s viewed as a certain no.

...

Johnson, Lee and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are demanding regulatory reforms for their votes, which risks upsetting the political balance that has kept moderates on board so far.

But conservatives would face a backlash if they blowup the ObamaCare repeal and replace effort, Weaver said.

“Their demands are tougher to meet but the political pressure on them to support it is greater. I think that’s why they’ll support it,” he said.

...

Placating moderates such as Collins, Heller, Portman and Capito could come down to guaranteeing resources for constituents who face the biggest potential impact, such as people who rely on Medicaid to treat opioid addiction.

I think it's virtually impossible for Collins and Heller to get to yes in the next 48 hours based on their recent statements, but $188 billion is nothing to sneeze at.

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