The Democrat Thread

[southsider2k5]

US Congresswoman from North Carolina has AR-15 rifle stolen from her garage. It was leaning against a gun locker.

 

I mean, I guess that's kind of responsible gun ownership. At least she owned a gun locker.

 

So what you are saying is that she was asking for it?

[Balta1701]

So what you are saying is that she was asking for it?

Look at the bright side. No 5 year olds were shot in this irresponsible-gun-owner story.

[StrangeSox]

"Mens Rights Activists" are a bunch of horrible s***ty people

 

http://prospect.org/article/good-men%E2%80...ement-hard-find

[StrangeSox]

The 400 wealthiest Americans are worth a record $2.02 trillion, roughly equivalent to the GDP of Russia. That is a gain of $300 billion from a year ago, and more than double a decade ago. The average net worth of list members is a staggering $5 billion, $800 million more than a year ago. The minimum net worth needed to make the 400 list was $1.3 billion. The last time it was that high was in 2007 and 2008, just before the financial crisis. Because the bar is so high, 61 American billionaires didn’t make the cut.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/the-forbes-400--the-...-181158012.html

[StrangeSox]

Why Republicans wanted to gut the Voting Rights Act

 

http://www.nationaljournal.com/washington-...o-vote-20131030

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, is leading to a new era of voter suppression that parallels the pre-1960s era—this time affecting not just African-Americans but also Hispanic-Americans, women, and students, among others.

 

The reasoning employed by Chief Justice John Roberts in Shelby County—that Section 5 of the act was such a spectacular success that it is no longer necessary—was the equivalent of taking down speed cameras and traffic lights and removing speed limits from a dangerous intersection because they had combined to reduce accidents and traffic deaths.

 

In North Carolina, a post-Shelby County law not only includes one of the most restrictive and punitive vote-ID laws anywhere but also restricts early voting, eliminates same-day voting registration, ends pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-olds, and bans many provisional ballots. Whatever flimsy voter-fraud excuse exists for requiring voter ID disappears when it comes to these other obstacles to voting.

 

In Texas, the law could require voters to travel as much as 250 miles to obtain an acceptable voter ID—and it allows a concealed-weapon permit, but not a student ID, as proof of identity for voting. Moreover, the law and the regulations to implement it, we are now learning, will create huge impediments for women who have married or divorced and have voter IDs and driver’s licenses that reflect maiden or married names that do not exactly match. It raises similar problems for Mexican-Americans who use combinations of mothers’ and fathers’ names.

[StrangeSox]

from bond billionaire Bill Gross:

Having gotten rich at the expense of labor, the guilt sets in and I begin to feel sorry for the less well-off, writing very public Investment Outlooks that “dis” the success that provided me the soapbox in the first place. If your immediate reaction is to nod up and down, then give yourself some points in this intellectual tête-à-tête. Still, I would ask the Scrooge McDucks of the world who so vehemently criticize what they consider to be counterproductive, even crippling taxation of the wealthy in the midst of historically high corporate profits and personal income, to consider this: Instead of approaching the tax reform argument from the standpoint of what an enormous percentage of the overall income taxes the top 1% pay, consider how much of the national income you’ve been privileged to make.

 

In the United States, the share of total pre-tax income accruing to the top 1% has more than doubled from 10% in the 1970s to 20% today....Congratulations. Smoke that cigar, enjoy that Chateau Lafite 1989. But (mostly you guys) acknowledge your good fortune at having been born in the ‘40s, ‘50s or ‘60s, entering the male-dominated workforce 25 years later, and having had the privilege of riding a credit wave and a credit boom for the past three decades. You did not, as President Obama averred, “build that,” you did not create that wave. You rode it.

 

And now it’s time to kick out and share some of your good fortune by paying higher taxes or reforming them to favor economic growth and labor, as opposed to corporate profits and individual gazillions....If you’re in the privileged 1%, you should be paddling right alongside and willing to support higher taxes on carried interest, and certainly capital gains readjusted to existing marginal income tax rates. Stanley Druckenmiller and Warren Buffett have recently advocated similar proposals. The era of taxing “capital” at lower rates than “labor” should now end.

[southsider2k5]

from bond billionaire Bill Gross:

 

I have to laugh anytime Warren Buffet get mentioned in favor of higher taxes, as his company has been up creek with the IRS for tax evasion in multiple years.

[StrangeSox]

Hypocrisy is a personal failure, not an argument against an idea.

[southsider2k5]

Hypocrisy is a personal failure, not an argument against an idea.

 

It means he isn't really in favor of the idea.

[Balta1701]

It means he isn't really in favor of the idea.

Isn't Ron Paul notorious for taking every deduction he could possibly find a way for himself to take while simultaneously arguing for getting rid of the same deductions?

[StrangeSox]

It means he isn't really in favor of the idea.

Ok? It says nothing about the merit of the idea, like I said.

[Jake]

Isn't Ron Paul notorious for taking every deduction he could possibly find a way for himself to take while simultaneously arguing for getting rid of the same deductions?

 

Ron Paul also tried to get the UN to intervene in confiscating RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org from his fans. He lost the case, while his own sites smeared him, but they continue to support him. I thought that was an especially fun/weird case.

[Balta1701]

A chart making the rounds this week:

[farmteam]

A chart making the rounds this week:

If only defense spending went down while infrastructure spending went up.

[Balta1701]

An excerpt from one of those Mark Halperin "insider" books. This one kinda fun...the inside reaction to them actually finding the President's long-form birth certificate in boxes belonging to his late mother.

[StrangeSox]

Texas Voter ID laws stopping former Speaker of the House Jim Wright from committing voting fraud registering to vote.

 

Jim Wright will be okay because of his profile, but what about all of the other people negatively impacted by these needless laws that only really serve to suppress votes?

[DukeNukeEm]

A chart making the rounds this week:

You know, I dont really see all this "crumbling" infrastructure everyone talks about. The roads are fine, the bridges are fine, the rail network does well, all the intermodal ports Ive been to are really modern and everyone has water and electricity. Where's the problem? I mean yea occasionally a bridge will collapse, but there are millions of bridges in this country and that s*** just kinda happens sometimes.

 

I also dont care what any government institution tries to say about the condition of our roads and bridges. They just want more money to give to their contractor pals to do nothing and pretend its work. I see this s*** every day, its f***ing fine.

[StrangeSox]

So where did you get your structural/civil engineering degree from again?

[StrangeSox]

Also, the ASCE isn't a government institution, and they're the ones frequently giving our infrastructure such poor grades.

 

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/

[DukeNukeEm]

So where did you get your structural/civil engineering degree from again?

The college of common sense. If our infrastructure is crumbling then Canada never had any to begin with, its really just an excuse for liberals to satiate their compulsive need to spend other people's money.

[StrangeSox]

The college of common sense. If our infrastructure is crumbling then Canada never had any to begin with, its really just an excuse for liberals to satiate their compulsive need to spend other people's money.

 

Oh, so you have no qualifications to judge structural integrity then. That explains your "bridges just collapse sometimes!" comment.

 

I'm also not sure if you're aware of this from your education at the College of Common Sense, but things like infrastructure need maintenance and expansion to keep up with growing populations and usage.

Edited November 4, 2013 by StrangeSox

[DukeNukeEm]

Oh, so you have no qualifications to judge structural integrity then. That explains your "bridges just collapse sometimes!" comment.

 

I'm also not sure if you're aware of this from your education at the College of Common Sense, but things like infrastructure need maintenance and expansion to keep up with growing populations and usage.

I can make a pretty easy judgment when the old bridge is like 300 yards downstream of the clearly new bridge, or how theres like permanent road work on every single bridge that crosses the Mississippi River. Im in a constant working relationship with our infrastructure and outside of a couple bumpy patches on stretches where chains are mandatory a lot I have very few complaints.

 

In a shocking turn from the ordinary the people in charge of building this s*** did the job pretty well the first time. Maintain? Sure, but that should be pretty limited to just repaving instead of needlessly making all of Snoqualmie Pass 4 f***ing lanes.

[StrangeSox]

No, you can't actually make a judgement of the structural integrity of the bridge just because you're driving over it. Infrastructure is a lot more than just roadways as well, and "repaving" isn't the extent of the necessary maintenance.

 

Is the expansion of Snoqualmie Pass "needless"? I dunno anything about it, could you cite the traffic studies that went into the project? Because driving through something occasionally doesn't actually make you qualified to assess it technically.

[Balta1701]

I can make a pretty easy judgment when the old bridge is like 300 yards downstream of the clearly new bridge, or how theres like permanent road work on every single bridge that crosses the Mississippi River. Im in a constant working relationship with our infrastructure and outside of a couple bumpy patches on stretches where chains are mandatory a lot I have very few complaints.

 

In a shocking turn from the ordinary the people in charge of building this s*** did the job pretty well the first time. Maintain? Sure, but that should be pretty limited to just repaving instead of needlessly making all of Snoqualmie Pass 4 f***ing lanes.

Permanent road work is the end result of trying to keep bridges and roads alive that hit their design lifetimes decades ago. Over 1 year it's clearly less expensive than the replacement, but over the long term it's also much more expensive. You just outlined the problem.

[DukeNukeEm]

No, you can't actually make a judgement of the structural integrity of the bridge just because you're driving over it. Infrastructure is a lot more than just roadways as well, and "repaving" isn't the extent of the necessary maintenance.

 

Is the expansion of Snoqualmie Pass "needless"? I dunno anything about it, could you cite the traffic studies that went into the project? Because driving through something occasionally doesn't actually make you qualified to assess it technically.

I go from Salt Lake City into Seattle a lot. Ive never, not in rush hour or weekends or whenever seen enough traffic to jam up even 2 lanes. A third is nice for trucks because there are some grades. Its a works project, a nice check to some contractors to blow up the Cascades and stuff a superhighway in there.