Cipheron on 19/8/2022 at 09:41
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
They did get something done though. They enacted a massive tax cut on the upper class during a period where the economy was already booming. Which is incredibly terrible economic policy, but hey, they did it!
They attack Keynesian economics too, but literally do the opposite of what Keynes said. They do austerity in the bad years, and spending free-for-alls and tax cuts in the good years. Then claim "traditional economics doesn't work".
RippedPhreak on 19/8/2022 at 15:28
Don't know why you're so eager for higher taxes, since they either stuff it in their own pockets or else shovel it over to the weapons contractors.
Starker on 19/8/2022 at 18:15
Don't know why you're so eager for the richest of the rich to get even richer. Like, how does it make your life better when people like Jeff Bezos are able to pocket even more money so they can funnel it to their offshore accounts and buy even bigger luxury yachts? Corporations are making money hand over fist, boasting of record profits while roads and bridges crumble, teachers are forced to buy school supplies, and medical expenses drive people into bankruptcy.
Republican tax cuts and trickle down policies have so far not paid for themselves, overwhelmingly benefiting the rich and leaving the ordinary people to hold the bag. Meanwhile, the Democrats are the only one's trying to deal with infrastructure and lowering drug prices, as little and as late as it is.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm no big fan of the US Democrats. In a working political system they'd be the runt of the litter, because they are so ineffectual and incompetent at politics. It's only thanks to having Republicans as a comparison that they look... if not good exactly, then at least not half as bad.
Jason Moyer on 19/8/2022 at 18:20
Quote Posted by RippedPhreak
Don't know why you're so eager for higher taxes, since they either stuff it in their own pockets or else shovel it over to the weapons contractors.
It's because I wanna MAGA. You know, the period when we were great and corporations paid taxes, everyone was in a union, the highest marginal tax rate was 90%, we raised taxes on the affluent to pay for our wars, we used the surplus to build affordable housing/the interstate highway system/nasa/the Internet, etc. You'd think people wanting to MAGA would want the economic conditions that made the country great in the 50's and 60's, but in reality all they want is racial and sexual segregation again.
Cipheron on 20/8/2022 at 08:55
When you don't think there's another level, but there's another level:
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https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/19/23313161/luis-miguel-florida-republican-twitter-ban-threats-fbi-irs-incitement)
Quote:
A Republican candidate for the House from St. Augustine is banned from Twitter after advocating violence against the federal government.
Republican Luis Miguel, running against incumbent Rep. Bobby Payne of Palatka in the redrawn House District 20, was suspended from Twitter after a tweet advocating that Floridians should be able to shoot federal agents on sight.
“Under my plan, all Floridians will be able to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF, and all other federal troops on sight,” Miguel tweeted. “Let freedom ring.”
Miguel told Florida Politics Friday the suspension, which is “permanent” per a message he got on his Twitter app, “doesn't affect (him) at all.” He stands by the proposal, which he says is justified because the IRS has been “weaponized by dissident forces.”
As for the odd point of calling the IRS "troops", this is connected with other claims, such as Ted Cruz claiming that the IRS funding is for a secret "shadow army" of 87000 paramilitary soldiers, using the IRS as cover:
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/us/politics/irs-biden-cruz.html)
Quote:
“Stop Biden's shadow army of 87,000 I.R.S. agents,” Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, blared on Twitter last week with an ominous ad recalling the agency's targeting of Tea Party groups set against the sound of soldiers marching.
Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, warned Fox News viewers last week that the new I.R.S. agents, a small percentage of whom are allowed to carry firearms, might be coming with loaded “AK-15s” and “ready to shoot some small business person in Iowa.”
They're literally claiming it's cover for creating an SS style paramilitary unit.
Starker on 20/8/2022 at 13:22
Beware the night of the long auditors!
Cipheron on 23/8/2022 at 07:20
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https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/08/gop-candidate-said-totally-just-stone-gay-people-death/)
Quote:
A GOP candidate in Oklahoma is getting attention for comments he made several years ago when he justified the death penalty by stoning for gay people. When asked recently about it, he didn't disavow his previous comments.
Scott Esk, 56, is running in the Republican primary runoff election tomorrow for a seat in the state house, and local media is bringing up some extreme comments he made in the past. He's not handling them well.
In 2013, Esk was commenting in a Facebook conversation about the Pope saying that he couldn't judge gay people. Esk posted some Bible quotations, including the part of Romans 1 where the Bible says that a long list of people who sinned is “worthy of death.”
Another person asked him: “So, just to be clear, you think we should execute homosexuals (presumably by stoning)?”
Esk responded: “I think we would be totally in the right to do it... Ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.”
A year later, a journalist asked him about those comments. He said it was “totally just” to kill gay people.
“What I will tell you right now is that that was done in the Old Testament under a law that came directly from God,” he said at the time. “And in that time, there was, it was, totally just came directly from God.”
A dangeous lunatic who wants to kill people because the magical sky daddy in a book written by dudes high on mushrooms told him to.
Quote:
In the another video, which was from earlier this year, Esk called a local TV news report on his comments a “hit piece on the fact that I had an opinion against homosexuality.”
"Yah, the media totally took my quote 'Hitler was right! Gas the Jews' out of context. It's hit piece!"
Isn't it sort of become standard that to be a GOP candidate you need to have made death threats against at least one group or person now? Basically if you put all GOP candidates on a spreadsheet you need to add a "who should be killed" column now, so you can check that your chosen candidate wants to kill the people you want killed.
I posted that one because it leads into this, which is packing together a lot of similar stuff said by pro-MAGA people and groups:
[video=youtube;NXmXKFMMRPQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXmXKFMMRPQ[/video]
Examples are the Mom's for Liberty lady, behind the book bannings, saying that because LGBT kids could feel embarassed, then rather than being open about it we need to segragate gay kids into a special-needs classroom, away from other kids. Also Ethan Schmidt, says we should "hunt then down" about and put them into concentration camps, using "Monkey Pox" as the justification.
Those are small fry and just the entree. It gets into major candidates endorsing other candidates who say literal Nazi stuff about getting rid of the Jews etc.
Cipheron on 24/8/2022 at 13:58
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https://truthout.org/articles/gop-candidate-says-the-climate-bill-is-bad-because-weve-got-enough-trees/)
Quote:
Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker has attacked the Democrats for including spending on urban forestry in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — despite the fact that the initiative could be crucial for pavement-heavy, poor urban neighborhoods that suffer disproportionately from extreme heat.
“They [Democrats] continue to try to fool you like they're helping you out, but they're not,” Walker said during an event on Sunday near Atlanta, Georgia, as first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They're not helping you out, because a lot of the money is going into trees. You know that, don't you? It's going into trees. We've got enough trees. Don't we have enough trees around here?”
Quote:
Walker has made comments that have raised questions about his comprehension of crucial issues like the climate crisis. Last month, for instance, Walker said that he opposes proposals to address the climate crisis because the U.S. already has “good air” that doesn't need cleaning. In a baffling remark, Walker stated that, though the U.S. has “good air,” China has “bad air” that the U.S. has to clean.
“Since we don't control the air, our good air decided to float over to China's bad air,” Walker said at a GOP event. “So when China gets our good air, their bad air's got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. And now we've got to clean that back up.”
He's pretty much the ideal GOP candidate right now: an incoherent rambling moron who will just vote however his backers tell him to vote, while spewing word-salad guaranteed to flood the media with nonsense news.
Cipheron on 7/9/2022 at 01:04
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https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/06/politics/couy-griffin-new-mexico-january-6/index.html)
Quote:
A New Mexico judge on Tuesday removed January 6 rioter and Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin from his elected position as a county commissioner for his role in the US Capitol attack.
The ruling was the result of a lawsuit seeking Griffin's removal, which alleged that he violated a clause in 14th Amendment of the Constitution by participating in an "insurrection" against the US government. He had been convicted of trespassing earlier this year.
The historic ruling represents the first time an elected official has been removed from office for their participation or support of the US Capitol riot. It also marks the first time a judge has formally ruled that the events of January 6, 2021, were an "insurrection."
...
Griffin, one of three commissioners in Otero County, is also barred from holding any state or federal elected position in the future, state Judge Francis Mathew ruled Tuesday.
This is apparently the first time in over a century this civil-war era law has been invoked.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/06/us/politics/jan-6-griffin-insurrection.html)
This is big news, really, since it sets precedent and an entire generation of MAGA people are implicated in this. Literally so many of them were there and in the building, and being there is now an identifying badge of honor, so those guys would be the next-gen MAGA leadership.
It's easy to see this being appealed and going all the way to the Supreme Court though, and then the Supreme Court ruling that Jan 6 wasn't an insurrection.
Even more than Roe v Wade I think if the Supreme Court starts ruling that a mob storming the capitol isn't insurrection then you've got a constitutional crisis on your hands. Just say bye bye to any sane rule of law then.
