The American Politics thread

[wellAlbidarned]

Originally Posted by Spark

I definitely think it's overused, but I don't think it's meaningless

I don't think I've heard it used in a meaningful context. Generally it's just a blanket buzz-word for something which sounds good to some people but not you, but you cba actually arguing why.

[Samuel_Vimes]

Originally Posted by silentstriker

Eric Bolling: Schools ‘pushing the liberal agenda’ by teaching algebra | The Raw Story



I....what.....no words.

So in Fox News land, no rings, only Abelian groups?

[Spark]

Originally Posted by Samuel_Vimes

So in Fox News land, no rings, only Abelian groups?

I feel so weird understanding this joke.

[grecian]

Originally Posted by Fusion

Republican Congressman backs Akin's "legitimate rape" comments. "He's partly right."

The Republican party's greatest hits tour on rape comments continues.

He's a ****ing doctor too, **** me.

[Anil]

Originally Posted by Fusion

Republican Congressman backs Akin's "legitimate rape" comments. "He's partly right."

The Republican party's greatest hits tour on rape comments continues.

, the saddest thing is there are plenty of morons who actually take such dumbos seriously...

[Uppercut]

America's fiscal challenges: It's not them, it's you | The Economist

Interesting how different the perception of social security is to the reality- exactly the same as British politics, only a little bit more extreme. People think the budget is going on unemployed families that cbf getting a job when it's almost all going on pensions, working households and disabled people.

[Top_Cat]

Confirmation bias.

[wellAlbidarned]

Get that so much here to, people have just been lapping up all the crap National spouts. "Oh those bloody lazy dole bludgers, taking all our hard earned taxes!". They don't seem to want to know that 99% of the ****s getting government handouts actually need and deserve them. It's like everyone is determined to make life even harder for those who already have it hardest.

[silentstriker]

Meet The House GOP’s Anti-Science Committee | TPMDC

[silentstriker]

Behind the Curtain: House GOP eyes default, shutdown - POLITICO.com

[Spark]

Quality, data-drive article from Nate Silver.

What Is Driving Growth in Government Spending? - NYTimes.com

And soon, we may cross an important symbolic threshold: when the overall majority of government expenditures are spent on, essentially, insurance programs. (Another way to conceive of the major categories of entitlement programs are as health insurance, retirement insurance, unemployment insurance and so forth). Already, this is true of federal government spending (and it has been true since the early-to-mid-1990s). It is very close to being true even if one also accounts for state and local spending, and may well become true as soon as this year.

Slowing the growth of entitlement spending will not be easy. Particularly in the case of health care, it has become substantially more expensive for individuals with both public and private insurance to purchase the same level of care.

And on a political level, cuts to entitlement programs are liable to be more noticeable to individual voters than cuts to things like infrastructure spending. A 10 percent cut to Social Security or Medicare benefits will surely draw the ire of voters. A 10 percent reduction in the amount allocated to bridge repair, or in the amount of government-sponsored energy research, will affect individual citizens less directly (even if they are perhaps ultimately more economically damaging: most of the academic literature is supportive of high long-run returns to infrastructure and research and development spending on private-sector productivity and economic growth).

Nevertheless, the declining level of trust in government since the 1970s is a fairly close mirror for the growth in spending on social insurance as a share of the gross domestic product and of overall government expenditures. We may have gone from conceiving of government as an entity that builds roads, dams and airports, provides shared services like schooling, policing and national parks, and wages wars, into the world’s largest insurance broker.

Most of us don’t much care for our insurance broker.

[Spikey]

Real veep meets The Onion's Joe Biden - latimes.com

biden416

[Top_Cat]

2012's war on abortion rights continues;

New Mexico lawmaker wants to criminalize abortions after rape as “tampering with evidence” - Salon.com

Unlikely to get up but it's getting pretty brazen to put up a bill which criminalises abortion as evidence tampering without the usual intent clause.

[wellAlbidarned]

people who get shot shouldn't be allowed to remove the bullet before the court case either

[Anil]

Originally Posted by Top_Cat

2012's war on abortion rights continues;

New Mexico lawmaker wants to criminalize abortions after rape as “tampering with evidence” - Salon.com

Unlikely to get up but it's getting pretty brazen to put up a bill which criminalises abortion as evidence tampering without the usual intent clause.

and the lawmaker was a woman as well...