The Good Post Gallery

[opebo]

This is a map of where white voters were more liberal or more conservative than their national average in 2012:

Remarkably, this correctly predicts 47 states and DC.  And in VA Romney and McCain got the same % of white voters despite the national swing, so the white vote there could easily be left of the nation next time around.

[Lief 🗽]

Even if the debt ceiling is not raised, if by "default" one means defaulting on treasury debt service, that will not happen. Government spending will need to be slashed by 20%, or whatever the cash short fall amount is, but out of the 80% of cash available, debt service will certainly be paid. So there is zero chance given that definition of default. (Grumps this is the proper quote from me for you to save. The other is just the Reader's Digest version of what I meant.)

Why doesn't Fox News simply watch MSNBC if they want to get a good source of accurate news?  I keep seeing these statements posted on the web and I wonder why people don't just watch MSNBC news where it was explained quite clearly that the Treasury computer system simply is not set up to pick and choose what to pay.  I know it is fun for Republicans to trot out simplistic and inaccurate analogies comparing the federal government to a household but it isn't a household.  It is a complex multitrillion dollar global institution that is responsible for taking care of 330 million people both at home and abroad.

Do people simply not have any concept of the number, nature, and variety of checks that go out?  For a party that claims to love efficiency and certainty for big business they really do propose some really complex inefficient ideas that dramatically increase uncertainty.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Extreme and utter FF. He wasn't racist, and he was one of the best men in the movie industry.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Extreme and utter FF. He wasn't racist, and he was one of the best men in the movie industry.

The Good Post Gallery does not work that way. Good night.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

I'm seeing a lot of partisanship on this thread. Us bickering over who will benefit from others being out of work seems pretty out of touch to me. Don't you agree it's better for us to find common ground? What's even worse is that neither side is asking for much.

Jesus, what are you, CNN? This false equivalency nonsense is the worst thing about the shutdown slimdown©.

Here's Oakvale's Brief History of The Attempts To Repeal Obamacare, presented free of charge as a public service.

1. The administration begins to work on a centrist healthcare reform law large built on idea endorsed by the Heritage Foundation and Newt Gingrich. Republicans immediately decide this is Marxism and rednecks across the nation petition their representatives to keep the government out of their socialised healthcare.

2. After a contentious debate and much pandering from coward right-wing Democrats, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare passes the House and the Senate and is signed into law by the President.

3. Republican crybabies immediately begin futile efforts to repeal the law by holding a bunch of meaningless votes to do so.

4. The Republican Party takes the House, but fails to take the Senate let alone come anywhere close to a veto-proof majority. Aware that there remains no chance that the President will sign a bill repealing the most significant social policy accomplishment in a generation the Republican House nonetheless decides that the Bill is unconstitutional and attempts to repeal it anyway.

5. As Republicans wait for vindication of their argument that Obamacare is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court of the United States, the arbiter of how the term "constitutional" is legitimately applied, rules, led by George W. Bush appointee John Roberts, that the central foundation of the bill, the individual mandate, is, in fact constitutional. Legal scholar Rand Paul response "just because some people on the Supreme Court decide something is constitutional doesn't make it so". The Republican Party wets itself en masse and continues trying to repeal the law.

6. President Obama handily defeats Republican candidate Mitt "Mittens" Romney to be comfortably re-elected to a second term as President. Romney spent much of the campaign vowing to repeal Obamacare and the law was a major issue in the election. Republicans lose seats in both Houses of Congress to the pro-Obamacare Democratic Party.

7. Emboldened by the widespread rejection of their agenda, Republicans courageously fight to save America once again by voting to repeal Obamacare another eighty thousand times. The odds of this happening are even lower than before given the increased Democratic Senate majority and the fact that the namesake of the bill will be in office until 2017.

8. As the bizarre technicality known as the "debt ceiling" approaches, the Republicans, riding on a wave of popular support in their own rural and suburban hellhole districts, decide the most justifiable course of action is to hold the global economy to ransom by throwing a massive tantrum, shutting down the government, and threatening to cause a second Great Depression unless the Democratic Party (winners, national popular vote, Congressional elections, 2012) and President Barack Obama (winner, national popular and electoral vote, Presidential election, 2012) join in their unhinged reactionary circlejerk and repeal a decidedly centrist healthcare law. Economic terrorism is the order of the day as Republicans adopt a posture of moral outrage at the idea that Obama should refuse to negotiate with these psychopaths.

WHY CAN'T WE FIND SOME COMMON GROUND? BOTH SIDES ARE EQUALLY TO BLAME.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I was going to post exactly what Scott has just posted.

[DC Al Fine]

More accurately Premillennial/Rapturist/too much Left Behind delusiions.

[DC Al Fine]

They should be required to work, or look for work (and I mean really look, and maybe have to go somewhere for 8 hours a day to do it), or be training for work. Given that might mean childcare costs might have to be covered, the process might be more expensive than just handing out the welfare checks (particularly for those with no real skill set), but this is not about, and should not be about, money. (Opebo may think work is soul killing; I think it's soul enhancing.) It's hard having self respect when on the dole, it's demoralizing, and leads to, or exacerbates, dysfunctional personal habits.

[Napoleon]

Clearly this thread has outlives its usefulness. Opebo wins.