Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!
Why bother with justice if it gets in the way of political expedience?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Zeroisanumber
Oct 23, 2010

Nap Ghost

Helsing posted:

Do you have a source for this? Its not that I find your account implausible, I'd just be fascinated to read more about the incident.

Most of the anecdotes come from a book called, "Five Presidents Under the Shadow of Watergate" by Bob Woodward. Woodward's too comfy with his insider status to do much groundbreaking journalism these days, but his years of access to presidents and their various cabinet members and staffs makes him a good chronicler of presidential administrations, and his anecdotes are great.

Barbarossa
Feb 20, 2007

by Y Kant Ozma Post
Pardoning Nixon set a precedent within which it is acceptable for Presidents to violate American law and suffer nothing beyond hurt feelings from people (rightly) calling them out on our illegal activities. I am fine with the country being 'torn apart' if it happens in reaction to injustice being displayed for all to see.

Armyman25
Sep 6, 2005

Zeroisanumber posted:

Bullshit. Watergate poisoned the political discourse in the country, prevented any business from getting done in Washington, and a Nixon trial would've consumed Ford's presidency. What Ford needed was a way to end it while forcing Nixon to admit guilt for what he'd done. A pardon accomplished all of that, and utterly destroyed any chance that Jerry Ford would be reelected.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/22/us/ford-wins-kennedy-award-for-courage-of-nixon-pardon.html

Senator Edward Kennedy posted:


''I was one of those who spoke out against his action then. But time has a way of clarifying past events, and now we see that President Ford was right. His courage and dedication to our country made it possible for us to begin the process of healing and put the tragedy of Watergate behind us.''

Watergate was a tragedy? That makes it sound like a natural disaster or a random event with a huge loss of life. It was a crime that should have been prosecuted.

Eggnogium
Jun 1, 2010

Never give an inch! Hnnnghhhhhh!

Barbarossa posted:

Pardoning Nixon set a precedent within which it is acceptable for Presidents to violate American law and suffer nothing beyond hurt feelings from people (rightly) calling them out on our illegal activities. I am fine with the country being 'torn apart' if it happens in reaction to injustice being displayed for all to see.

There is no precedent. A major presidential scandal will always be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Saint Sputnik
Apr 1, 2007

Tyrannosaurs in P-51 Volkswagens!
I'm gonna interrupt y'all here with some A-grade horseshit from my man Cal.

quote:

“Another one bites the dust
And another one gone, and another one gone
Another one bites the dust.” – Queen

Forgive me if I don’t join the State Department, American officials and world leaders in their euphoric Hallelujah Chorus celebrating the demise of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi. Oh, I’m happy he’s dead, but I have as much faith that things will change for the better in Libya as I do in the Great Pumpkin rising from the pumpkin patch on Halloween night (sorry, Linus).

“Gadhafi’s Death Ushers in New Era,” read the headline in last Friday’s usually sober Wall Street Journal. “West Hails a Turning Point...,” read the sub-headline. The question is, or should be: a turning to what? As Richard Boudreaux sensibly wrote in the Journal, “(Gadhafi) leaves a nation torn by war, devoid of civic institutions and difficult to govern.” What can be built on that rubble when Libyans have no history of practicing any of the values the West holds dear? No functional nation can rise when it rests on such a weak foundation.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has dropped an additional $11 million on Libya ($135 million since the uprising began), no doubt borrowed from the Chinese since we don’t have that kind of money. Why do Democrats think money is the answer to everything? Let’s see if the rebels submit receipts and expense vouchers showing what they spent. It’s a safe bet much of it will go down the rat hole of corruption, as our money has in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

We have been assured by various sources throughout the misnamed “Arab Spring” that these revolutionaries are genuine democrats, who want free elections and will guarantee at least some rights (if not equal ones) for women, religious minorities and perhaps even political opponents. But the attacks by Muslims on Coptic Christians and their churches in Egypt ought to be a warning sign that an Egyptian (and Libyan) version of America is unlikely to bloom in such putrid soil.

Turkey was supposed to be the shining light of 21st-century Islam, a beacon to the rest of the Muslim world. Instead, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been turning more and more to Islam’s conservative wing while rebuffing Israel and behaving in ways not befitting a U.S. ally or member of NATO.

In Tunisia, where the Arab uprisings began, an election was recently held. Initial returns indicate that a once-banned Islamist party, Ennahda, may have won a majority.

And Afghanistan isn’t turning out as many had hoped. The U.S. State Department reports “there is not a single, public Christian church left in Afghanistan,” the last one having been razed in March 2010. In March 2011 a Congressional Research Service report showed that Afghanistan has cost American taxpayers more than $440 billion (and counting), 1,700 lives (and counting) and the country is as intolerant of any faith other than Islam as when it was run by the Taliban. This is progress?

If real progress is to be made in Libya toward representative democracy, women’s rights, religious pluralism, economic stability and diplomatic cooperation with the West, the first step must be to rewrite the National Transition Council’s draft constitution. As I wrote in August following Gadhafi’s ouster, Article 1 tells us all where the rebel leadership wants to take the country: “Islam is the religion of the State and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).”

Should Libya’s new leaders approve a constitution without that clause, if they keep the Muslim Brotherhood at bay – which is now active in other Arab nations experiencing upheaval – and if they turn toward the West for more than economic aid, embracing the most fundamental of human rights, I will move from pessimism to guarded optimism. Confidence isn’t warranted when a headline in the London Daily Telegraph says, “Interim (Libyan) ruler unveils more radical than expected plans for Islamic law.” Than expected? What are they drinking?

I remain a skeptic that Libya is capable of heading in a direction that improves the lives of its people, aligns itself with the U.S. and our interests and lessens tensions in the region.

But I am open to evidence to the contrary, if it’s not based on wishful thinking.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
Maybe it's because I'm a big political baby but I am seriously shocked and appalled how many people who are, on paper 'respectable sources' for their side overtly came out with 'no but really, gently caress this revolution stuff, we can't be sure they won't be America Part 2 in every way we deem fitting, so better stick with the dude who's turning artillery and tanks on you, buddy! It's for the best'.

I get the whole 'we gotta spread freedom and democracy, we spread that by shooting the crap out of random people' thing happened, but how on earth did we get to telling people that they should just suck up and deal with their murdering psychopath leader because it makes us uncomfortable to think about rebellion?

YoungBuns
Feb 13, 2009

Eggnogium posted:

There is no precedent. A major presidential scandal will always be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Bullshit. Glenn Greenwald's new book came out today, and though I haven't read it I'm sure he has some interesting things to say on the subject:

"Too Big to Jail (Book Excerpt) posted:

MK: There has been much speculation on this, but why do you think the Obama administration did not prosecute Bush officials who violated US and international standards of law?

GG: Both parties - and successive Presidents - benefit from elite immunity. They know that if they protect each other, then they, too, can commit crimes with impunity. A November, 2008 New York Times article was incredibly telling in this regard. It reported on Obama's opposition to investigations into Bush crimes of torture and warrantless eavesdropping - opposition revealed only after he was safely elected - and it explained that "because every President eventually leaves office, incoming chief executives have an incentive to quash investigations into their predecessor's tenure." As I wrote in the book about this article: "In other words, by letting criminal bygones be bygones within the executive branch, presidents uphold a gentleman's agreement to shield either other from accountability for any crimes they might want to commit in office."

It's the same reason that media elites and others are so opposed to these investigations as well: elites obviously benefit from elite immunity, and so have an interest in not subverting it when other elites commit crimes. I have no doubt that part of Obama's reluctance was political - a belief that applying the rule of law to Bush, Cheney and others would create political turbulence for him - but a significant motivating factor was undoubtedly the desire not to have his own actions investigated once he leaves office if the GOP controls the Executive Branch (and, thus, the Justice Department).

MK: The Iran-contra scandal is an excellent example of how officials at the highest levels of the US government broke the law (although Reagan had the excuse of "not remembering" what he authorized). Special Prosecutor Walsh had a pretty tight case. But ultimately, John Poindexter and Oliver North had their convictions reversed on a questionable legal technicality by partisan GOP judges. The "smoking gun" was found in the Iran-contra case, but still the perpetrators got off. How come?

GG: The Iran-contra travesty was the first time the template of elite immunity - solidified by Ford's pardon of Nixon - was applied to a new case. Basically, just a month before he was to leave office after being defeated by Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush pardoned his Defense Secretary, Casper Weinberger, and four other defendants, just as they were about to go on trial. What made that so remarkable was not only, as you say, that the case against them was so airtight: Weinberger got caught red-handed telling multiple lies to investigators in order to protect himself and Reagan when a diary he never turned over was found. Far worse was that Bush himself was implicated in many of these crimes, so these pardons were really a way of ending the investigation and thus protecting himself.

But no matter. Most media stars and outlets banded together to praise the pardons. After all, Cap Weinberger was one of them: a member in good standing of Washington's elite class. He did not belong in prison, even if he committed serious crimes.
Of course, the fact that they live in a city - Washington, D.C. - where huge numbers of mostly poor and minorities are consigned to prison every day for far less serious infractions (such as minor drug offenses), and they never object to any of that, isn't something that concerned them. That's the two-tiered justice system personified.

The special prosecutor in charge of Iran-contra, life-long Republican Lawrence Walsh, warned that the Weinberger pardon "undermines the principle that no man is above the law" and "demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office." That's exactly the principle this episode entrenched, and our "watchdog press" led the chorus cheering it, just as they did the Nixon pardon.

John Charity Spring
Nov 4, 2009

SCREEEEE

Glitterbomber posted:

Maybe it's because I'm a big political baby but I am seriously shocked and appalled how many people who are, on paper 'respectable sources' for their side overtly came out with 'no but really, gently caress this revolution stuff, we can't be sure they won't be America Part 2 in every way we deem fitting, so better stick with the dude who's turning artillery and tanks on you, buddy! It's for the best'.

I get the whole 'we gotta spread freedom and democracy, we spread that by shooting the crap out of random people' thing happened, but how on earth did we get to telling people that they should just suck up and deal with their murdering psychopath leader because it makes us uncomfortable to think about rebellion?

A huge chunk of US foreign policy post-WW2 is just a catalogue of propping up dictators and encouraging military coups on democratically elected governments in the name of 'stability', anti-Communism, and protecting US business interests. So this is hardly anything new.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth

John Charity Spring posted:

A huge chunk of US foreign policy post-WW2 is just a catalogue of propping up dictators and encouraging military coups on democratically elected governments in the name of 'stability', anti-Communism, and protecting US business interests. So this is hardly anything new.

Oh I know, just saying I hoped we were in an age when we were ashamed of that rather than one where we tell people being shot to just buck up.

Zuhzuhzombie!!
Apr 17, 2008
FACTS ARE A CONSPIRACY BY THE CAPITALIST OPRESSOR

A Fancy 400 lbs posted:

NPR just put out the shittiest fluff piece on Ron Paul called, I poo poo you not, Before He Delivered For Voters, Paul Delivered Babies. They even cite his campaign manager dying of pneumonia as a positive for him because it shows he sticks to his principles. :psyduck:

Nice Polite Republicans.

Saint Sputnik
Apr 1, 2007

Tyrannosaurs in P-51 Volkswagens!
Here's a lovely bunch of opinions courtesy of the good people of Indiana

FactsAreUseless
Feb 16, 2011

Saint Sputnik posted:

Here's a lovely bunch of opinions courtesy of the good people of Indiana

"The wrong people."

Fiend
Dec 2, 2001

Saint Sputnik posted:

Here's a lovely bunch of opinions courtesy of the good people of Indiana


False dichotomy. Voter fraud in this case is presented as a red herring to shift the debate from election fraud perpetrated by corrupt officials and corporate interests to the poor and disenfranchised. So in this poll I can choose to deny it exists or agree with redundant layers of legislation harming the poor and working class. Keep an eye on this in case noted douche-nozzle Carlin Yoder gets his mitts on it :)

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


Fiend posted:

False dichotomy. Voter fraud in this case is presented as a red herring to shift the debate from election fraud perpetrated by corrupt officials and corporate interests to the poor and disenfranchised. So in this poll I can choose to deny it exists or agree with redundant layers of legislation harming the poor and working class. Keep an eye on this in case noted douche-nozzle Carlin Yoder gets his mitts on it :)

Yeah but the problem is that most people don't think of that, because most people don't give a poo poo about politics besides rooting for their favorite team.

A Fancy 400 lbs
Jul 24, 2008

Fiend posted:

False dichotomy. Voter fraud in this case is presented as a red herring to shift the debate from election fraud perpetrated by corrupt officials and corporate interests to the poor and disenfranchised. So in this poll I can choose to deny it exists or agree with redundant layers of legislation harming the poor and working class. Keep an eye on this in case noted douche-nozzle Carlin Yoder gets his mitts on it :)

It's obvious from the connotation what kind of voter fraud they're talking about though, ie small scale single person fraud, which is a myth. Why would they be asking about fraud by corrupt officials and corporate interests in a poll question about voting restrictions on individuals?

Bruce Leroy
Jun 10, 2010

Glitterbomber posted:

Maybe it's because I'm a big political baby but I am seriously shocked and appalled how many people who are, on paper 'respectable sources' for their side overtly came out with 'no but really, gently caress this revolution stuff, we can't be sure they won't be America Part 2 in every way we deem fitting, so better stick with the dude who's turning artillery and tanks on you, buddy! It's for the best'.

I get the whole 'we gotta spread freedom and democracy, we spread that by shooting the crap out of random people' thing happened, but how on earth did we get to telling people that they should just suck up and deal with their murdering psychopath leader because it makes us uncomfortable to think about rebellion?

It really shouldn't be that shocking if you know American foreign policy history from the post-WWII era. Just look at how we helped overthrow democratically elected governments (e.g. Iran with Operation Ajax), supported those who did (e.g. Pinochet's coup against the democratically elected Allende), and/or provided training to those people who would prevent popular uprisings and democracy in Latin America (e.g. teaching right-wing agents how to torture people and violate their human rights at the School of the Americas).

The US has a pretty extensive track record in opposing democracy when that democracy doesn't fully support and help expand American hegemony, but the US government was more than eager to support dictators, fascists, and other assorted monsters who helped us get what we wanted, regardless of the consequences.

Dr. Tough
Oct 22, 2007

If there was an Oscars for bad editorials, this would be in the running for multiple awards.

quote:

Republicans should tell Biden to cut welfare to cut crime

By now you’ve no doubt heard Vice President Biden’s ridiculous claim that murders and rapes will increase if Republicans don’t pass his boss’ jobs bill. At the same time, you haven’t heard Republicans say that crime will increase if Democrats don’t cut welfare.

You haven’t heard the Republicans say this because they don’t have the courage or sense to fight fire with fire, or, more accurately, to fight nonsense with facts.

A half-century ago, Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan established a causal link between welfare and out-of-wedlock births and single-parent families. Since then, social scientists and criminologists have established a causal link between unmarried mothers and crime and other social pathologies. To wit:

Mothers who have never married, including those who are living with a boyfriend or with the father of their children, are twice as likely to be victims of violent crime than women who have married. Violent crimes include rape, sexual assault, aggravated assault, robbery, and simple assault.

Children of divorced or never-married women are six to 30 times more likely to suffer serious child abuse. The lower figure is for children living with their biological mother and a step-father; the higher figure is for children living with their biological mother and a boyfriend of their mother who is not their father. (Since the United States doesn’t track child abuse statistics this way, the statistics are from Great Britain.)

The awful statistics above get even more awful when a child dies from abuse. Such tragic deaths are 73 times more likely when a mother cohabitates with a boyfriend who is not the father of her children.

Children from fatherless families are far more likely than children from two-parent families to live in poverty, have behavioral problems in school, drop out of school, commit crimes, and end up incarcerated. As police officers know, neighborhoods with a high proportion of such families are not safe neighborhoods.

As Moynihan warned, the incidence of fatherless families would skyrocket, especially among blacks, if welfare provided an incentive for women to marry the state instead of the father of their children. Sure enough, the rate of fatherless black families has more than doubled since then, an increase that has been nearly matched by whites and non-white Latin Americans.

The number of single mothers is now so high that schools, media, and advertisers cater to them and treat them as a special class deserving of attention and even praise. The mothers have responded by wearing their marital status on their chest, like a red badge of courage. “I’m a single mom,” they proudly say when interviewed by the media.

A recent story on the economy in my hometown newspaper, the Arizona Republic, is typical. It identified a woman as “a single mother of two children,” but if the woman had been married, the newspaper wouldn’t have identified her as “a married mother of two children.”

Of course, ever since Vice President Dan Quayle made his infamous but insightful “Murphy Brown” remark and was ridiculed as a buffoon by the leftist intelligentsia and media, politicians have been afraid to say the truth about the social pathologies caused by fatherless families – although this problem has to be one of the top-five problems facing the nation as it tries to pull out of its socioeconomic tailspin.

It’s a bizarre situation in which the leftist intelligentsia and media ridicule one vice president for saying the truth but don’t ridicule another vice president for saying an untruth.

Mencken’s Ghost is the nom de plume of an Arizona writer who can be reached at ghost@menckensghost.com

ts12
Jul 24, 2007
Cut social programs = kill all poors = kill all crime
problem solved. :smug:

duck monster
Dec 15, 2004

TetsuoTW posted:

I find it kind of amusing how hard they're going on the "If you hate the excesses of capitalism, you clearly hate all capitalism." Literal children.

Its a pretty accurate description of my views to be perfectly honest.

v:shobon:v Maybe I just want to see the world burn, I dunno.

Pope Guilty
Nov 6, 2006

The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.
e: Where on earth did you get that pony av? Who did you piss off?
^^^^^

I want to believe that HL Mencken's ghost is going to strangle that guy in his sleep.

Pope Guilty fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Oct 28, 2011

Huitzil
May 25, 2010

by elpintogrande

duck monster posted:

Its a pretty accurate description of my views to be perfectly honest.

v:shobon:v Maybe I just want to see the world burn, I dunno.

As far as I can tell, yeah.

I, on the other hand, just want to start a flame in your heart.

duck monster
Dec 15, 2004

Pope Guilty posted:

e: Where on earth did you get that pony av? Who did you piss off?
^^^^^

I want to believe that HL Mencken's ghost is going to strangle that guy in his sleep.

Raptorfag went a bit nuts and brought everyone in the Au embassy pony AVs. If anyone feels generous, I'd love my duck AV back (I'm poor :( )

Orange Devil
Oct 1, 2010

Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!
^^^
Lucky ducky.

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin

Menken's Ghost posted:

A recent story on the economy in my hometown newspaper, the Arizona Republic, is typical. It identified a woman as “a single mother of two children,” but if the woman had been married, the newspaper wouldn’t have identified her as “a married mother of two children.”

This part is baffling to me.

The fact that the AZ Republic mentioned her unmarried status (and that they wouldn't have mentioned it if she had been married) shows that being married is what we the AZ Republic considers to be normal.

Here are a few sentences, some sound normal, some sound odd:

She's a mother, but she's married.
She's a mother, but she's unmarried.
She's a mother, but she's married to another woman.
She's a mother, but she's married to a man.
She's a mother, but her husband is around the same age as her.
She's a mother, but her husband is half her age.

There are assumptions that we all make when we hear someone is a mother. To prevent confusion it's normal to clarify when the situation isn't normal. If the article hadn't mentioned that she was unmarried we might have assumed that she was in a stable marriage and wondered why the husband wasn't helping out.

Bruce Leroy
Jun 10, 2010

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

This part is baffling to me.

The fact that the AZ Republic mentioned her unmarried status (and that they wouldn't have mentioned it if she had been married) shows that being married is what we the AZ Republic considers to be normal.

Here are a few sentences, some sound normal, some sound odd:

She's a mother, but she's married.
She's a mother, but she's unmarried.
She's a mother, but she's married to another woman.
She's a mother, but she's married to a man.
She's a mother, but her husband is around the same age as her.
She's a mother, but her husband is half her age.

There are assumptions that we all make when we hear someone is a mother. To prevent confusion it's normal to clarify when the situation isn't normal. If the article hadn't mentioned that she was unmarried we might have assumed that she was in a stable marriage and wondered why the husband wasn't helping out.

I think part of it is not the abnormality of being a single mother, but rather a sort of compliment that a women is strong enough to be a single mother, having to both work and take care of her kids without the help of a partner. It's kind of like noting an achievement by a paralympian or other disabled person.

Waffles Inc.
Jan 20, 2005

Here's a letter from today's Omaha World Herald (my local paper)

Les Royer posted:

Regarding Kylie Kennedy's Oct. 28th letter about poverty's relationship to crime, we will never get rid of poverty, so there will always be crime related to it.

Many jobs only pay as much as somebody's Social Security check. Some people are poor because they choose to be poor.

Those who stand on a street corner and hold a sign that says, "Help me," also could stand behind a counter and ask me if I want fries with that.

You can choose to be poor, or you can choose to do something about it. If you do nothing, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

I read the letters every day out of the same sort of sick masochism I get from reading the Free thread--and yeah, worse stuff has been said in Freep, and even other letters have been more reprehensible in content...but something about this one just set me off.

Limbo
Oct 4, 2006


This is from my former local paper, the Cumberland Times in Maryland. This guy had a chance to get the problem but just doesn't quite make it.

Some idiot posted:

Could someone please help me understand something?

This past Friday a young lady I know had the need to go to the emergency room at the hospital. While at the hospital she was denied adequate medical services because she didn’t have insurance. Now she was given an extent of attention, but only after a $50 co-pay was paid.

This lady is not a bum, but a working 22-year-old college graduate. She is a U.S. citizen, not an illegal in this country. She works as a waitress, but not at a place or with enough time to get insurance, and going back to college to further her ability to gain substantial employment.

If the lady were an illegal this country, or an irresponsible girl that would run around and have illegitimate children, I could understand this. But no, those individuals in this country would be handed a state-issued medical card and given the best of services free.

This brings me to the point of my not understanding. How can we as a people, state, or nation treat our own like this? It is like we punish those that try to do the right thing by working hard and trying to make themselves a better person. Then we reward those that are here by breaking the law, and those that find the way of life is to be taken care of by the system.

Now as far as I am concerned this is a broken way of doing things. So unless someone can explain this reasoning to me, It is coming to an election year so maybe time to look into putting people in office that will try to fix this.

Eggnogium
Jun 1, 2010

Never give an inch! Hnnnghhhhhh!

Limbo posted:

This is from my former local paper, the Cumberland Times in Maryland. This guy had a chance to get the problem but just doesn't quite make it.

Haha wow, only three sentences between a good point and totally despicable.

SariBari
Oct 21, 2004
dulce bellum inexpertis.

Directorman posted:

Here's a letter from today's Omaha World Herald (my local paper)


I read the letters every day out of the same sort of sick masochism I get from reading the Free thread--and yeah, worse stuff has been said in Freep, and even other letters have been more reprehensible in content...but something about this one just set me off.

It's the extreme straightness with which it is said. You can tell this is what this guy actually believes in his heart and his cold shutting down of every other possibility.

sexpig by night
Sep 8, 2011

by Azathoth
I love the mental image of some dude just sitting in the ER hearing this and thinking 'but, but...she's WHITE and not a FILTHY SLUT...I don't understand how the system could be failing her', and just being totally loving gobsmacked.

Bruce Leroy
Jun 10, 2010

Glitterbomber posted:

I love the mental image of some dude just sitting in the ER hearing this and thinking 'but, but...she's WHITE and not a FILTHY SLUT...I don't understand how the system could be failing her', and just being totally loving gobsmacked.

I'm more interested into the "hows" of where he got the idea that illegals get "state-issued medical card and given the best of services free." It's also puzzling how they came to believe that simply having illegitimate children would get you free medical services, though I understand they may simply be conflating harlotry with poverty, as the latter would get you covered by Medicaid.

I understand which groups, i.e. racists and xenophobes, create these myths and those who perpetuate them to scapegoat immigrants for our problems rather address their true causes, but how do these people believe this poo poo without an ounce of critical thought or skepticism? Is it simply that it fulfills their confirmation bias by affirming their already hardcore conservative beliefs?

The letter by Les Royer posted by Directorman is another example of this. How does someone come to believe that people actually choose to be poor? Why the gently caress would anyone choose that? Why wouldn't they choose not to be poor?

U.T. Raptor
May 11, 2010

Are you a pack of imbeciles!?

VR Cowboy posted:

Don't ask them about red light cameras ("shoot them in the head, then you won't have any repeat offenders.")
:psyduck: What? I expect this sort of crazy over actual crimes, but running red lights?

TetsuoTW posted:

I find it kind of amusing how hard they're going on the "If you hate the excesses of capitalism, you clearly hate all capitalism." Literal children.
To be fair, I've seen more than a few people on the left blame "capitalism" for pretty much everything that's ever gone wrong in our society...

Pope Guilty
Nov 6, 2006

The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.
It must be that they have chosen poverty, for to admit that my prosperity (and you wouldn't believe how little wealth the vanishing middle class has had to redefine prosperity to in order to keep thinking of themselves as prosperous) was anything but the result of my choices and my choices alone would be to admit that I might as easily be in their shoes. That is an unthinkable proposition; I am a good person and therefore deserve to be successful, and thus those who are not successful obviously do not deserve it.

Salvor_Hardin
Sep 13, 2005

I want to go protest.
Nap Ghost

Bruce Leroy posted:

The letter by Les Royer posted by Directorman is another example of this. How does someone come to believe that people actually choose to be poor? Why the gently caress would anyone choose that? Why wouldn't they choose not to be poor?

Because we have so many government benefits for the poor they have no incentive to try and find work. You see, often getting a job would amount to a cut in pay and furthermore, :suicide:

CellBlock
Oct 6, 2005

It just don't stop.



Salvor_Hardin posted:

Because we have so many government benefits for the poor they have no incentive to try and find work. You see, often getting a job would amount to a cut in pay and furthermore, :suicide:

Sadly, this is actually true in some places, as there are state level benefits that will cut off at stupidly low levels of income, like states that cut off Medicaid if you have $2000 in assets.

There are 33 states that set the Medicaid income cap at under 100% of FPL, 15 at under 50%, and 2 at under 25%. FPL for a family of 3 was 18,310 in 2010. To be eligible for Medicaid in Arkansas, that family's income would have to be under $3112. (That's 429 hours at minimum wage - if you work 9 hours a week, you're over.)

(It looks like most states at least set the CHIP level at 100% of FPL, so kids can still be covered, but gently caress adults, I guess.)

zeroprime
Mar 25, 2006

Words go here.

Fun Shoe

Directorman posted:

Here's a letter from today's Omaha World Herald (my local paper)


I read the letters every day out of the same sort of sick masochism I get from reading the Free thread--and yeah, worse stuff has been said in Freep, and even other letters have been more reprehensible in content...but something about this one just set me off.
Probably the 'why don't they just get a job' part.

http://www.qsrweb.com/article/180973/McDonald-s-hiring-day-yields-62K-new-employees

"McDonald's nationwide "hiring day" on April 19 landed about 1 million applications and yielded 62,000 new employees for both part- and full-time positions."

Helsing
Aug 23, 2003

DON'T POST IN THE ELECTION THREAD UNLESS YOU :love::love::love: JOE BIDEN
This chestnut starts out with a classic wingnut invocation of "apartheid" in a totally inappropriate and offensive context and then just plods forward from there. Bonus points for the author having just enough of an intellectual conscience to acknowledge halfway through the article that he is a massive hypocrite.

quote:

Reality behind 'pension envy' not likely to vanish

Jonathan Chevreau, Financial Post · Oct. 29, 2011 | Last Updated: Oct. 31, 2011 8:33 AM ET

There were several signs this week that pension envy - or pension apartheid - is alive and well in Canada and likely to intensify as Baby Boomers start retiring, or try to.

The great divide is between the lucky 20% in cushy public-sector defined-benefit pensions and the rest hoping to retire on fluctuating RRSPs or defined-contribution pensions.

On Wednesday, pension consultants Tower Watson said those with DC pensions can expect a pension freedom age approaching age 67 - two years beyond the traditional retirement age. And Statistics Canada reported 50-year-old Canadian workers can expect to work 16 more years, three years longer than in the 1990s.

The conspicuous exception to this trend is the minority who live in the protected "Bell Jar," to use a term from a new book from Wiley Canada, Pension Ponzi. It reports the average public-sector retirement age is a spry 59.

To match public-sector DB pensions, the rest of us would need $2-million RRSPs, which is why the C.D. Howe Institute this week urged a lifetime contribution limit of just that figure.

The book's co-authors, Lee Fairbanks and Bill Tufts of the Fair Pensions for All blog, recap how Canada's public-sector unions won their members huge salaries "that far outstrip anything comparable in the private sector and incredibly generous pensions."

What's hard to swallow is it's the 80% outside this charmed circle who will be underwriting this sweetheart deal via future tax increases. The beneficiaries all rate chapters in the book: government workers and politicians, teachers, firefighters, police officers and the armed forces.

Rather than bring the 80% up to their level, Fairbanks and Tufts would make the Bell Jar less cushy. They liken the status quo to a "pension Ponzi scheme" that will eventually collapse, "as all Ponzi schemes eventually do." Despite the complacency of the 20%, Canada is a small country with a large ($1-trillion) public debt. The authors expect the chickens to come home to roost, as they have in Ireland and Greece.

It's true some non-unionized private-sector workers still have DB pensions but these are rarely the Cadillac inflation-indexed plans unions negotiated for the public sector. And the trend for large corporate employers is to close DB plans to new hires, as Royal Bank of Canada has done. They will switch to DC pensions, which - like RRSPs - lack the "defined" promise of a guaranteed monthly income in retirement. That's the defining characteristic of public-sector DB pensions.

While DC plans and RRSPs may do well in protracted bull markets, the reality the past decade has been the opposite: Investors have endured at least two bear markets in stocks while interest paid on bonds has remained stubbornly low. The result is what Towers Watson terms a "double whammy" for those not in DB plans.

You could argue all workers qualify for a public DB pension in the form of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP). But average annual CPP benefits are $5,919, compared to $42,900 enjoyed by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP), a difference of seven times.

Here, I confess to only muted pension envy, since my father received that teacher's pension and my mother the survivor's portion. Furthermore, my 20-year-old daughter has taken a good look at teacher pensions and all those summers off and announced she will follow in her grandfather's footsteps.

When I cast my envious eye at contemporaries retired in their fifties, invariably they joined DB pensions early in their careers and stuck it out. Some even have TWO teacher pensions.

But it's by no means certain these pensions can meet their obligations. The OTPP is $35-billion short while the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System is $9-billion short.

Look no further than Greece to see how countries can default on public-sector paycheques and break pension promises.

Pension Ponzi closes with 10 suggestions for reform, like raising the retirement age to 65 for those in the Bell Jar, eliminating double-dipping and pension spiking, and turning DB plans into hybrids with DC components.

But the authors hedge their bets by suggesting readers land government jobs themselves.

Seems my daughter has the right idea.

jchevreau@nationalpost.com

So the market is failing to provide people with sufficient funds to live comfortably in old age, and the solution is therefore... to reduce pension benefits amongst the 20% of workers who still receive decent plans. Oh, and if your plan is adjusted to inflation then its a "cushy" "cadillac" plan.

You see we can't have a better pension system because GREECE. You don't want to end up like the Greeks do you?

Lee Harvey Oswald
Mar 17, 2007

by exmarx
This shithead always pollutes my local paper's Sunday edition.

quote:

Barrett: Herman Cain faced with the Clarence Thomas treatment

by Steve Barrett

Clarence Thomas can’t leap, two-by-four in hand, to the defense of fellow Georgian Herman Cain. As a sitting Supreme Court justice, Thomas tries to maintain detachment from presidential politics. Plus he’s a class act. :stare:

But nobody knows better than he what Cain — a man of humble origins not unlike Thomas’ — is being put through.

Thomas was abundantly qualified when President George H.W. Bush nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1991.

He had been chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for the better part of a decade. He was a Yale graduate. And he had been a judge on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. He was confirmed to multiple previous positions by the Senate, which now held his nomination in its hands.

One would think his high court confirmation, if not a trip to Burger King, would have been fairly smooth.

But working against Thomas was a combination of traits that makes liberals spontaneously combust even more reliably than a rumor that somewhere a schoolchild is saying a prayer: He was conservative and he was black. Putting such an individual in a position of national prominence makes it all too clear that conservatism isn’t some eerie white phenomenon.

Liberals couldn’t have that, so they had to destroy Thomas — or try to. And they were at times candid about it.

“We’re going to Bork him,” said attorney Florynce Kennedy. “We’re going to kill him politically.”

She was referring to the Democrat-run Senate’s remarkably vicious campaign four years earlier against Robert Bork, a Reagan Supreme Court nominee. Bork, the nation was told, would bring back segregation.

The smear was baloney-stuffed from the get-go, but it worked. Bork was toast.

The Borking of Thomas, however, would backfire in regal fashion.

It centered on Anita Hill’s allegations that he had said things nearly nine years prior that made her uncomfortable.

Hill didn’t claim Thomas’ words rose to the level of actual harassment, but even what she did allege wasn’t credible. Among other things that are improbable for a harassed person to have done, she followed Thomas to a second job after he supposedly caused her discomfort at the first, and she later asked him to speak to her students. She also called him repeatedly and met with him on numerous occasions — alone or with others — after he was no longer her supervisor.

It didn’t add up, and Thomas himself succinctly jaw-popped his detractors at a confirmation hearing, declaring: “This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.”

Despite a political and media barbecuing, Thomas won a close confirmation vote and joined the Supreme Court. He has served well since.

Which should comfort Cain as liberals seek to make an example of him to other black non-Democrats.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell suggested to all 18 of his viewers that Cain was a racial loafer who hadn’t done much for the cause of civil rights. No word on when silver spoon white Bostonian socialists such as Lawrence O’Donnell became the arbiters of which people did enough for whatever cause in the face of violent opposition.

And now surfaces what Cain’s foes hope is red meat on a silver platter in their effort to puncture his candidacy: thus-far-unsubstantiated allegations from over a decade ago that he sexually harassed two women.

What critics seem to consider proof of the harassment is the fact that the National Restaurant Association, which Cain headed at the time, paid small settlements to the women. That indicates the critics are either ignorant or dishonest. It can be insanely expensive and time-consuming for organizations to defend against even the shakiest allegation. It is scarcely unusual for them to pay a settlement rather than drag things out. The notion that such a cost-benefit analysis proves guilt is mystifying.

I hope Cain is ready for more of the same treatment, though.

Liberals have a special reservoir of hatred for black conservatives. They want not only to defeat Cain but to pulverize him. Based on what we know at this point, it would be a shame if the rest of us abandoned him to that fate.

Reach Steve Barrett at 423-757-6329 or sbarrett@timesfreepress.com.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
"The Borking of Thomas" is a wonderful phrase.

  • Locked thread