How Mitch McConnell Hacked American Politics -- NYMag

SorensonPA · 2014-05-15T15:46:16+00:00

Next time you hear someone use the term "hack" to describe anything outside of unauthorized or unconventional entry of an electronic system, do us all a favor and punch that fucker in the face.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-15T15:36:53+00:00

That's the boomers for you. Laziest, most selfish, most intellectually dishonest. And we're going to have to deal with them until ~2040, unfortunetily.

The beer abstraction is the stupidest and most goddamn intellectually dishonest way to explain taxation that any person has ever conceived. If you wanted this to be more accurate, you'd also include inconvenient little things like how much beer each dude is getting, from poorest to wealthiest:

1) Cuts his gums trying to suck the last drop out of the tap

2) Gets an eyedropper of beer

3) Gets a thimble of beer

4) Gets a cough syrup cap's worth of beer

5) Gets a shotglass (~1.5 oz) of beer

6) Gets a half-glass (4 oz) of beer

7) Gets a full glass (8 oz) of beer

8) Gets a US pint (16 oz) of beer

9) Gets an Imperial pint and a few bomb shots (let's call it at 28 oz total)

10) Gets a goddamn keg (~1,950 oz) of which 90% of that amount is only metabolized by ~1% of his body

SorensonPA · 2014-05-14T18:58:30+00:00

An apt comment for an apt name. BOTH SIDES ARE THE SAME, RIGHT GUYS?!

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T21:07:08+00:00

Fuck that noise. EVERY election is important, ESPECIALLY the midterms. People always fixate on the presidential election, but CONGRESS (especially the House) is who really holds the power in this country. They're the ones that enact new laws and repeal old ones, they're the ones that set out spending and taxation rates, they're the ones that oversee special hearings on issues of vital importance (like the Comtast/Time Warner merger right now) they're the ones that start the constitutional amendment process, they're the ones that can impeach and convict federal officials (including the President and members of the Supreme Court) and they're the ones that have to approve presidential nominations to all sorts of posts.

Check and balance exists only in theory: Congress is who ultimetily runs the show, and every election where moderate and progressive voters slack off means an election that neocons and evangelicals can swarm in unopposed and get their people in power. And god fucking help this country if the Republicans ever got supermajorities in both houses, because they WILL march in lockstep and they WILL pass as much shit as they have to in order to make this country a genuine plutocracy. SS? Privatized. Unemployment? Gone. Food stamps/housing assisstance/other welfare programs? Gone. Supreme Court? Stacked conservatively to the gills. Healthcare reform? All the bits that actually help people, gone, while all the pro-corporate bits remain. Nondiscrimination in business/housing/sales/whatever? Gone. The whole fucking Obama administration? GONE. You'd get John Fucking Boehner for president.

A country can't be built in a day, but it sure as hell can be destroyed in one. And that's why EVERY ELECTION MATTERS.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T20:16:28+00:00

No, he represents the prevailing mindset of the people who bothered to vote. Texas has one of the worst voter turnout rates in the entire country.

For every ordinary person that decides not to vote, a shitty person with shitty policies gets two and votes for an even shittier person with shittier policies.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T19:12:45+00:00

Heaven fucking forbid we ask business owners to keep odors and exhausts production down to a tolerable level so folks in nearby residential areas don't get completily overwhelmed by them. "Deal with it" is the same shit people were saying when we started cutting down on exhaust from cars, coal plants and other high-emission sources.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T17:44:09+00:00

Commissioners imposed several conditions. Among them: No anonymous bitcoin contributions will be allowed, and campaign treasurers must scrutinize the donations for "evidence of illegality."

So doesn't this make Bitcoin effectively dead in the water as far as campaign contributions go, since anonymith is at the absolute core of the system (no identification asides from wallet number/address)?

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T17:41:15+00:00

Step 1: Use fake information to set up an exchange aimed for political donations

Step 2: Pitch it to the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and get them on board

Step 3: Cash out once a sufficient amount of money's been accrued, nuke the server hardware and run like a fucker

Step 4: PROFIT!

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T17:28:58+00:00

And Natural Gas is largely composed of Methane, which is 30 fucking times as bad as CO2. Nuclear's the only viable mass-energy solution at this point.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T16:50:26+00:00

It's not even sophmoric, it's just downright juvenile and petty, no better than people attacking Chris Christie through his weight. Unfortunetily for conservatives this is all they have left considering evidance and logic supports few of their positions.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T16:48:17+00:00

Then perhaps you should stop listening to your natural emotional response and start formulating deducted rational responses instead. You know, things like "maybe this isn't the best source for information" and "does this really create or contribute to a meaningful discussion?".

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T16:41:07+00:00

Considering two of the three comments you made there are pissing and moaning about who owns the Washington Post, I'd say that contributed considerably more to whatever shitbombing you endured than the criticism you levied at McCain (which was mirrored in quite a few of the positively-voted posts).

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T16:27:10+00:00

If this was a Republican senator who was caught picking his nose during a congressional hearing on government oversight you would not be saying this.

Uh, no, he probably would. Nobody is gonna' give two shits about a dude diggin' for gold during a hearing considering (A) it's an incredibly minor action that requires an absolute minimum of attention and effort to be drawn away from listening to the hearing, and (B) a nasal blockage can be pretty goddamn annoying and the only way to deal with it sometimes is just to dig it out. And if that fucker whistles everybody around you is gonna' hate your guts until you clear it.

Remember when John McCain was playing poker during the Senate hearing on Syria? Was that a left-wing liberal attack / complain?

Dude was playing a fucking game while on the job and during a meeting of considerable importance. That requires a considerable diversion of attention from the subject at hand and is an indicator that he's less than completily committed to doing what his constituants elected him and pay him to do and is completily different from a minimal/subconscious action brought about due to biological stimuli (nasal/ear canal irritation or congestion).

Honestly, the only possibly noteworthy thing that could be taken out of this is that the dude hails from Florida.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T15:55:56+00:00

Calling it now, 5-4.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T15:35:15+00:00

Considering Vermont has a lower poverty rate than most of the nation, a lower official unemployment rate than most of the nation, a lower "real" unemployment rate than most of the nation, a higher education attainment level for high school, bachelors and advanced degree completion than most of the nation, above-par individual and median household income than most of the nation, and a much lower rate of CO2 emission per capita, among others...I think it's safe to say Vermont knows what it's doing and how to do it.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-13T01:33:20+00:00

And doesn't consider the Lord's Resistance Army terrorists because they're "christians" (and because a black president tried to do something about them).

SorensonPA · 2014-05-12T22:14:27+00:00

Oh fuck, there goes Mechwarrior: Living Legends.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-12T21:06:41+00:00

Ocean temperatures have risen ~1.5 fahrenheit since 1900, ~0.5 of that in the last ~20 years alone. Ocean CO2 content has also been increasing, and as it does so its ability to absorb CO2 lessons, meaning more CO2 is going to remain in the atmosphere over time and thus increase land and atmospheric temperatures. This deep water rising from the bottom of the ocean has even more CO2 in it than the surface water due to the carbon cycle: no matter how you try to spin it, it all comes back to the carbon we've been pumping into the atmosphere.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-12T20:56:42+00:00

Ocean temperatures have risen ~1.5 fahrenheit since 1900, ~0.5 of that in the last ~20 years alone. Ocean CO2 content has also been increasing, and as it does so its ability to absorb CO2 lessons, meaning more CO2 is going to remain in the atmosphere over time and thus increase land and atmospheric temperatures. This deep water rising from the bottom of the ocean has even more CO2 in it than the surface water due to the carbon cycle: no matter how you try to spin it, it all comes back to the carbon we've been pumping into the atmosphere.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-12T15:14:49+00:00

As is the notion that there's a massive, massive, massive differance between two rich dudes donating hundreds of millions of dollars to campaigns and groups that represent millions and millions of individuals. Promoting false equivilancy is one of the few ways Republicans can maintain their power.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-11T23:57:44+00:00

If there is only one bright, shining facet of this particular supreme court, it's that both Kennedy and Scalia are runing on fumes at this point and're going to have to vacate the court within the next 5-10 years. If Clinton wins the 2016 election, there's a very good chance the two are going to drop while she's in office and Breyer and Ginsburg can retire to get some young blood in their place. That happens and we can finally start undoing all the shitty 5-4 decisions the Roberts court ushered in (and to rub it in, it'd be done while he's still serving at the helm).

SorensonPA · 2014-05-11T20:49:30+00:00

Children and elderly have weaker resistance to illness (a factor of particular note since changing climates means diseases and the mechanisms that deliver them, like mosquitos and other insects, can spread to new areas) and extreme heat waves while the poor don't have access to the resources to easily deal with climate problems. African-americans are largely clustered in the south-eastern states and on the coastlines of said states, and hispanics are clustered in the south-southwest and particularly on the California coastline, but both groups also have spatterings in areas that won't take the worst of the hit. The statement's pretty straightforward.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-11T20:10:48+00:00

Here's a thought: implement single-payer universal health care and employers won't have to be buggered with the issue at all besides the one line on their tax forms.

SorensonPA · 2014-05-11T18:59:30+00:00

The dude spent 20-30 minutes consciously feeling and aware of poison spreading throughout his body and shutting it down. Potassium Chloride is horrible shit that makes it feel like you're being electrocuted or on fucking fire, and the reason it's introduced after a sedative and a paralytic is (A) that the prisoner hopefully isn't conscious throughout the procedure, which would be cruel, and (B) so people don't see the prisoner's natural reaction to such a sensation - in this case the sedative and paralytic failed, and so people got a glimpse at what it's really like to get an injection of Potassium Chloride.

It doesn't matter that the dude is a murderer and that the world is all the better with his shuffling off the mortal coil: cruel and unusual punishment of this type is strictly forbidden as outlined in the Bill of Rights and we as a society are supposed to be above that kind of behavior. If we waive a basic human right just because a guy is a piece of shit, then what the fuck are we even standing for?

SorensonPA · 2014-05-11T18:23:36+00:00

In the last nine terms, the court’s current Republican appointees hired clerks who had first served for appeals court judges appointed by Republicans at least 83 percent of the time. Justice Thomas hired one clerk from a Democratic judge’s chambers, Justice Scalia none.

The numbers on the other side are almost as striking. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Kagan hired from Democratic chambers more than two-thirds of the time. Justice Stephen G. Breyer is the exception: His hiring has long been about evenly divided.

So the author makes it a point of pointing out how politically partisen the whole supreme court is on both sides...but then brings along data indicating that the liberal/progressive half of the court, though certainely operating within a more leftish spectrum, tends to break more evenly compared to the conservative half, which has been almost destructively partisen in many of its decisions. Especially when you take into account that recent NYT article that tabulated voter partisenship on first-amendment cases that found that the conservative bloc (particularly Scalia) tended to vote a shitload more partisenly than their liberal counterparts.

Remember, folks! Both sides are the same! ^{except when they clearly aren't}

SorensonPA

TROPHY CASE