The Shrine

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-ca ... 8C11338371

I'm still really trying to come to grips with how incredibly stupid people are. I really would like to understand what it's like to put these pieces of information in your brain at the same time and have it stay there.

“I don’t think that the government should be involved in health care or health insurance,” says Greg Collett, a 41-year-old software developer in Caldwell, Idaho, who would rather pay the fine for now -- $95 the first year -- than signup.

Collett counts himself among the 29 percent of people who said in an NBCNews/Kaiser poll they are angry about the health reform law. “The issue for me is that it is not the proper role of government,” he said.

Collett, who is married and has 10 children, says the kids are covered by Medicaid, the joint state-federal health insurance plan for people with low income and children who are not covered.

Mark, a 51-year-old contractor in Colorado, recently worked through the pain of a broken rib because he lacks health insurance. He’ll be signing up, even though his truck carries a bumper sticker that spells out Obama’s name as “One big-ass mistake, America”.

“Obamacare, here we come,” said Mark, who also declined to give his full name.

I saw an article citing the recent poll showing the Congress has a 10% approval rate so he decided to ask around and see who are these 10% and nobody admits it they're part of them. But that does pose a good question. Who are the people that actually thinks the Congress is doing a good job?

I've always imagined the die hard supporters of stuff like this to be the crazily greedy super rich and the deepest, most uneducated trailer trash.

I mean, Flip is a Republican and he's pretty normal. He just doesn't chime in on this stuff very often.

Conservatism in general is perfectly fine. But there are some serious nutbags in Congress right now

One thing that seems to be relatively good is that it seems like almost no one is buying the Republican bullshit anymore. There's no just stumbling across these guys on the Internet anymore; you have to read news reports on these sorts of people that are supporting the Republicans, or purposely go seeking out these wack jobs in forums on wack job websites.

They're a dying breed just trying to hold onto what is left of their falling regime.

No one fell for the "Obama is trying to keep veterans out of parks" thing.


In Canada, we've been focusing too much on American politics; so much so that we let another Trudeau sculk back into the government as a party leader. This time the NDP should have the support to hold up. I just hope the Conservatives come crashing down and we get an NDP government with a Liberal opposition. At least they'll agree on legalizing pot this time.

Julius Seeker wrote:They're a dying breed just trying to hold onto what is left of their falling regime.

The problem with this is that they're billionaires... A billionaire couple here in Georgia recently DONATED ten million dollars to pre-schools so they could stay open another three weeks. It's difficult to perceive this as anything other than a generous moment of philanthropy (which it certainly is) but it's stuff like this that they can do in order to reduce Republican attrition due to the shut down.

There are several very rich groups that have been moving towards a shut down for a very long time and I predict the fight isn't anywhere close to being over. Read a very depressing article in the New York Times about how these groups have been planning on how to defund or repeal Obamacare since it passed and they've had this shut down in their sights for a long time now.

The only way I see the shut downending quickly is if Boehner risks his neck and puts the budget vote on the floor without all the cuts to Obamacare, which would probably pass. From what I heard this would mean the end of his career in politics, or at least the end of his leadership role in politics.

Just a random note, since I find politics so fucking boring - Craig T Nelson rocks as an actor.

I was disappointed to click this thread and not see a CTN discussion. That is all.

Julius Seeker wrote:One thing that seems to be relatively good is that it seems like almost no one is buying the Republican bullshit anymore. There's no just stumbling across these guys on the Internet anymore; you have to read news reports on these sorts of people that are supporting the Republicans, or purposely go seeking out these wack jobs in forums on wack job websites.

Heh... maybe in your Canadian bubble. You should check out Facebook some time.

If you go on Twitter there's almost always an active Republican twitter buzz word where people are just circle jerking the Fox News idea of whats going on. Basically the Republican version of what we're doing here :D

But to be serious, the truly monstrous shit that Americans get stereotyped for is clearly the truth on Twitter if you look through those Republican buzz words. The crazy shit people were posting during the Ted Cruz filibuster was frustrating.

Republican approval rating down to 24% according to the Washington Post. Senator McCain has even been critical of the Republicans supporting this.

I really do think the volume of right winged craziness has dropped significantly over the past decade; but yeah, I might just be living in the backwater Canadian bubble =P

The polls won't last until the election, so it doesn't really matter.

It's times like these that I wish we had that forced elections power that some of the newer democracies have. The one where the president says "Fuck it... you are all in an election." and then people get to vote for everybody in Congress.

The fallout of this shutdown and the debt ceiling crises from a couple years ago and the upcoming one will destroy the Republicans in the midterm elections. That was already proven when they lost seats in 2012

The fallout directly impact people so I'm sure people will remember it when the next election come around. I mean you can say war sucks because it costs too much money but unless you're actually someone fighting a war it really doesn't impact you that much. For the most part even a war costs $10 trillion all that money is pretty much already paid for (you built those tanks and whatnot in case you need to fight a war), and given USA is obviously the predominent weapon maker of the world this is mostly a redistribution of wealth within the society, so generally weapon makers are pretty good about giving some of that money back (because you need a lot of high tech stuff to make weapons and can't easily outsource them to another country).

But lose your job and can't pay your bills because the government shut down is definitely very real.

So the Republicans finally folded and a bill written by the Senate that will probably get passed moves to the House for a vote. Probably the best decision. Stringing this along and hoping Obama or the Democrats made a mistake and swung support to the other side is probably a pipe dream. At least this way they can save face before truly terrible shit started to happen to this country because of the shutdown.

Leave it to the congressional body that actually tends to know what the fuck they're doing to actually get something done.

So have the Republicans now firmly established themselves as the crazy party that only crazy people will vote for in the future? What I have been gathering is that they're idiotic extremists of greed.

Then again, in the outer world we tend to be a bit biased against the sort of politics the republicans support... So to Americans, you guys might actually see a more sane portrayal.

Next congressional elections are a year away and voter memories don't seem to last more than two months. I think they potentially turned a bunch of 'undecideds' but I doubt their core voters are going to change. Things like this hurt their future because under 18s just saw the Republicans fuck us over. I would imagine anyone viewing this through the eyes of a child just watched the GOP nearly screw things up in order to prevent Americans from getting affordable healthcare.

On the other hand I woke up to a woman on the radio yesterday who was angry her daughter in college saw a homeless person with a cell phone (assuming he'd gotten it through the welfare program) and was calling Obama and his policies socialist, also believing that literally "no one wants" his socialist healthcare policies. Her daughter thought it was pertinent enough to call her mother when she saw this homeless person, so Republican craziness is still going fairly strong. She questioned why the media hadn't exposed President Obama as a dangerous individual. Because they've been pulling SO many punches with the guy and DEFINITELY wouldn't jump all over a chance, if it existed, to 'expose' the dude.

These people live in indestructible bubbles. I feel like only an American would get angry about a homeless person having something. How about getting angry about lack of mental illness treatment or the destructive greed of banks? At least one of those things could be helped by affordable healthcare.

"There are people who respect transgender rights, and there are people who think they should be put into camps; that's me." - Republican politician from South Carolina.

I am not sure Godwin's law factors in when a Republican compares his own ideology to Naziism. Oh those crazy crackers.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4100777? ... gton+Post)

Julius Seeker wrote:"There are people who respect transgender rights, and there are people who think they should be put into camps; that's me." - Republican politician from South Carolina.

I am not sure Godwin's law factors in when a Republican compares his own ideology to Naziism. Oh those crazy crackers.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4100777? ... gton+Post)

Christ.

Julius Seeker wrote:"There are people who respect transgender rights, and there are people who think they should be put into camps; that's me." - Republican politician from South Carolina.

I am not sure Godwin's law factors in when a Republican compares his own ideology to Naziism. Oh those crazy crackers.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4100777? ... gton+Post)

I can't believe I'm doing this, but I'm going to play devil's advocate for the Republicans here.

This guy is a professional troll, judging from other things he's written on Twitter (Trayvon Matrin, black, poor, Katrina jokes, emailing dick pics). He is not "a Republican politician", though you can be sure that that is what he will be called as this blows up Facebook and Twitter feeds. This is very low-hanging fruit for liberals to make generalizations about Republicans as a whole.

From earlier this year...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... annon.html

***
Now South Carolina’s Republican establishment wants nothing to do with Kincannon.

A prominent GOP operative in South Carolina who asked not to be identified told The Daily Beast that Kincannon was “generously editing” his résumé to emphasize his time in the state party’s leadership. The operative said Kincannon served as executive director of the organization for just three months before resigning.

According to Kincannon’s LinkedIn profile, he was also general counsel and parliamentarian of the state party. But the operative said that “anyone in the party with a law degree” could be called general counsel, and that parliamentarian was an unpaid, volunteer position with few responsibilities.

Karen Floyd, a former chairwoman of the South Carolina GOP who worked alongside Kincannon during his time with the state party, declined to comment on his remarks, saying, “This is so far away from my remote interest level.”
***




Anyway, he sucks.

Yeah when I refer to some Republicans as racist xenophobes I'm not calling them comparable to Nazis. There's a huge gap between being ignorant of cultural/institutional issues with race and sexual orientation, and concentration camps.

But if there was a party you would compare to the Nazis it would definitely be the one that is trying to rule by fear while undermining minorities. Not the one trying to forcibly make people who are too stupid to take care of themselves and not get put into permanent debt do so.

BL - I would say you're right on this one. Realistically, even the insane republicans probably wouldn't want to touch this guy with a twenty foot pole. I figured if this guy wasn't already politically dead, that he just committed career suicide. Reading his twitter reminds me of the YouTube comments section.

Shrin - I think there's still something to be said about the ideologies of people who think any sort of minorities need to be put in camps =P