Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 256: We're saying "Merry Christmas" again!

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm sure Donald Trump is especially enjoying his Christmas present this year!

Also jeeze 2^8 of these now

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Thank you Republican Party for fighting for America!

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Until Biden is up on main stage having his taking away blue collar jobs comments blasted at him over and over.

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Bernie raised 34.5m in quarter 4.

...

the fuck.

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DoomTheGyarados posted...

Bernie raised 34.5m in quarter 4.

...

the fuck.

Trump 46 million

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Corrik7 posted...

Trump 46 million

Yeah. I actually expected more from him!

But Bernie blowing out every other democratic nominee by a cool 10 million... at least we have the money for sure.

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DoomTheGyarados posted...

Yeah. I actually expected more from him!

But Bernie blowing out every other democratic nominee by a cool 10 million... at least we have the money for sure.

46 million is a record haul for him. The RNC will probably raise like 100 million or something this quarter.

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https://theresurgent.com/2019/11/21/why-cant-the-dnc-raise-any-money/

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Whoops I guess I gotta delete mine

No one post in it
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It's because the DNC is awful.

Also because people are donating to democratic candidates. If you totaled those numbers up I bet they would make a lot of sense.

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DoomTheGyarados posted...

It's because the DNC is awful.

Also because people are donating to democratic candidates. If you totaled those numbers up I bet they would make a lot of sense.

Well, for sure people are spreading out over candidates right now. The point is, Trump is banking most of his cash right now while the Dems are gonna spend theirs. There is going to be a massive discrepancy in campaign dollars for Trump going into the election. Money didn't matter last election tho, so maybe it won't here either.

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Yeah I think we will have to wait and see who wins the primary

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Corrik7 posted...

46 million is a record haul for him. The RNC will probably raise like 100 million or something this quarter.

It's also the first time in the modern era where the incumbent raised less than the combined opposing field, I believe? Don't pat your boy on the back too hard.

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Peace___Frog posted...

It's also the first time in the modern era where the incumbent raised less than the combined opposing field, I believe? Don't pat your boy on the back too hard.

So you are saying that he should have raised like double the record and had like double the cash on hand of Obama when he was an incumbent at this time? It's not good enough to just be 1.5x ahead of Obama's numbers and setting record hauls on it's own?

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I'm saying that all comparisons need to be put into relative context, and if you look only at absolute numbers then you're doing a shameful analysis. Why do you care so much about comparing to obama? Obama's numbers are irrelevant, he's not competing against Obama.

Also - the Pentagon repeatedly told the white house that withholding the aid from Ukraine was illegal, per obtained emails.

https://twitter.com/just_security/status/1212734147803975681

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DoomTheGyarados posted...

Bernie raised 34.5m in quarter 4.

...

the fuck.

Nice!

Yang raised 16.5 which was a pretty nice increase from the 10M he raised in Q3, but I'm pretty sure Bernie will dominate the headlines with that haul.

.

Meanwhile they seem intent on releasing no new qualifying polls between debates and I'm feeling increasingly disaffected about the whole process.

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Castro has dropped out.

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Forceful_Dragon posted...

Nice!

Yang raised 16.5 which was a pretty nice increase from the 10M he raised in Q3, but I'm pretty sure Bernie will dominate the headlines with that haul.

.

Meanwhile they seem intent on releasing no new qualifying polls between debates and I'm feeling increasingly disaffected about the whole process.

clearly yang should use some of his 16 million to commission new polls

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DoomTheGyarados posted...

Castro has dropped out.

On one hand, about time.
On the other, aren't there like 6 people polling/fundraising worse than him that are still in?
And on the other other hand, didn't I say the same thing about Beto and Kamala?

Peace___Frog posted...

I'm saying that all comparisons need to be put into relative context, and if you look only at absolute numbers then you're doing a shameful analysis. Why do you care so much about comparing to obama? Obama's numbers are irrelevant, he's not competing against Obama.

Also - the Pentagon repeatedly told the white house that withholding the aid from Ukraine was illegal, per obtained emails.

https://twitter.com/just_security/status/1212734147803975681

Thread on this:
https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1212740925853712387?s=21

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My view on this business about withholding the aid being illegal - maybe so, but the precedent was already set with DACA that the President may simply ignore the law and, in fact, set up a program directly opposing the law. DACA is a promise from the executive of the United States to millions of people that grants them permission to continue to break the law.

I would support the Supreme Court coming down with a ruling that Presidents may not ignore laws they don't like, but cannot really blame Trump for following the precedent set by President Obama in the interim.

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Peace___Frog posted...

I'm saying that all comparisons need to be put into relative context, and if you look only at absolute numbers then you're doing a shameful analysis. Why do you care so much about comparing to obama? Obama's numbers are irrelevant, he's not competing against Obama.

You literally were comparing to prior numbers while complaining about comparing to the prior president. What in the world.

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You really are dense lol.

I compared ratios of incumbent presidents to their direct competitors across the aisle for the cycle in which they competed. It's not a difficult concept.

When i referred to competing against Obama, i meant competing in the actual election. A comparison is not by itself a competition.

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I could countenance a version of DACA where the DOJ and ICE internally placed DACA people on lowest priority - but giving them ID cards that authorize them to work in the United States is directly breaking the law. That's not prosecutorial discretion - that would be if the prosecutor stood on the courthouse steps and handed out documents giving the bearer immunity from prosecution for future crimes.

And I don't want the DACA people deported. But doing it the way President Obama did really opens the door to presidents completely ignoring the law and ruling by fiat - which is exactly what has happened.

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Peace___Frog posted...

You really are dense lol.

I compared ratios of incumbent presidents to their direct competitors across the aisle for the cycle in which they competed. It's not a difficult concept.

*Compares to past situations.* Wahhh why you comparing to the preceding president!

Sometimes you astound me.

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Aha i should really take the saying with the pigeon more seriously

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Trump won against Hillary with way less money in his campaign. Money doesn't vote, (some) people do.

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People don't vote. Land does. Which is a really dumb concept. ANd it won't change until it favors Democrats.

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The people on the land vote!

If land really voted, Montana should have about 80% of the representation California does, while right now Montana has only 1 seat in the House compared to 53 for California.

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And I would caution the Republican Party - even if someday it appears to be in the interests of the party to start using the national popular vote, or ditch first past the post, or stuff like that, don't do it. Those benefits are temporary, the damage to our constitutional system would be permanent. Just look at the disaster the Tories wrought for Britain when they decided national referenda were a good idea and held 3 of them in 5 years. The first 2 came out the way they wanted, the 3rd may ultimately lead to the dissolution of the United Kingdom if Scotland leaves.

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/01/google-says-it-will-no-longer-use-double-irish-dutch-sandwich-tax-loophole

Looks like Trump has closed a major tax loophole that major companies were using to shelter over a trillion dollars from taxation.

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And yeah, it's sort of scandalous how the media isn't giving Trump credit for this. Instead they make statements like saying that US authorities announced in 2017 that the loophole would be closed by the end of 2020. Well who became President in 2017? Why did this happen then and not before?

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https://twitter.com/charlesjkenny/status/1212542200954982402?s=21

Depressing

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LordoftheMorons posted...

https://twitter.com/charlesjkenny/status/1212542200954982402?s=21

Depressing

You do realize that substantively all of the problems with nuclear power are concentrated in the outcomes where something terrible happens? Fukushima, Three Mile Island, etc. could have been much, much, worse. Germany very reasonably wanted to avoid this risk, even though it is relatively unlikely to occur, because the damage could be so great.

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we're losing lots of nuclear in the us too!

but thats mostly because gas/coal are so cheap right now

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LordoftheMorons posted...

https://twitter.com/charlesjkenny/status/1212542200954982402?s=21

Depressing

That's awful. Can't believe out of all things they went with fucking coal.

I've been thinking recently that the biggest problem with nuclear energy as a climate solution is not only the timeframe, but also having to convince the entire international community that nuclear is the way to go within that timeframe. The US has been the leader of nuclear power and frankly has done a shit job.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/business/trump-tax-cuts-beat-gilti.html

Maybe Google is willing to drop one loophole (that Irish officials and Europe were going to crack down on) because the Trump Administration is giving them a bunch more that they arguably do not have the authority to give (that being Congress) and that turns the math they used to be able to pass it under reconciliation into a lie.

tl;dr: To use reconciliation the net cost of a bill has to be less than $1.5 trillion over 10 years. The tax cuts in the bill were $5.5 trillion so Republicans scrambled to come up with ways to make up the difference. Two of the biggest measures they introduced - taxes meant to prevent the kind of offshore tax evasion schemes - BEAT and GILTI have been the subject of intense corporate lobbying. They had loopholes written in from the start by Republicans in Congress but the corporations went further and went to Treasury to seek further exemptions. Surprise surprise the Treasury official in charge of writing the rules for BEAT and GILTI was being lobbied by firms he worked for decades with on pursuing these kinds of tax evasion schemes. Guess who got what they wanted in the final version of BEAT regulations that Treasury issued last month?

On foreign banks, they too lobbied Treasury for exmpeiotns, got them from the same guy and Mnuchin, then one of the lobbyist who got that joined Treasury who was still working on the rules. Inside Treasury itself officials were saying they did not have the authority to give these exemptions but were overruled by the ex-lobbyist in charge.

BEAT and GILTI are now expected to bring in a "small fraction" of what Congress projected them to (and used to justify reconciliation), the IRS is collecting tens of billions less in corporate taxes than Congress projected which further inflates the trillions in cost of the tax law and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that in 2018 the US experienced the largest drop in tax revenue and the largest budget deficit of any of its 36 member countries.

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And yeah, that Germany news is depressing. Nuclear power obviously has its problems but given the dire state we've placed ourselves in it's probably our best bet as an interim transition power source as we try to get fully to green energy sources like solar/wind simply because it should be a less bad option than fossil fuels right now.

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I think everyone knew tax revenues would go down after the tax cuts came into effect. Congress did some extremely fuzzy math to shoehorn it in under reconciliation which was transparently not a realistic projection. As for the rest of the stuff about the lobbying - well if you had nominated Bernie, that wouldn't have happened. You nominated Hillary, who would have put the same lobbyists there and wouldn't have gotten rid of this Irish/Dutch sandwich loophole, which is actually a very big deal (bigger than carried interest by volume I think).

The fact remains that hundreds of billions of offshore dollars are coming back - the Guardian article I linked to says that it's $250 billion from Apple alone.

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Nuclear power is like driverless cars

People are so damn scared of it that they seize on any accidents despite them overall being safer
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Jakyl25 posted...

Nuclear power is like driverless cars

People are so damn scared of it that they seize on any accidents despite them overall being safer

You'll be singing a different tune when Skynet takes over those cars.

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Jakyl25 posted...

Nuclear power is like driverless cars

People are so damn scared of it that they seize on any accidents despite them overall being safer

It's even dumber than that. I understand the objection to driverless cars because people want to feel like they have a sense of control over their own actions when driving, even if it's statistically more dangerous to do so.

A nuclear meltdown is no less in peoples' control than a dam bursting. BAN WATER ENERGY TOO.

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Ban dihydrogen monoxide

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Nelson_Mandela posted...

It's even dumber than that. I understand the objection to driverless cars because people want to feel like they have a sense of control over their own actions when driving, even if it's statistically more dangerous to do so.

A nuclear meltdown is no less in peoples' control than a dam bursting. BAN WATER ENERGY TOO.

Yes! Did you know the Colorado River no longer flows to the sea? It's because of all the dams we've placed on it. Many beautiful gorges have been flooded and turned into lakes because of our rapacious greed for hydroelectric energy. The environment demands that we desist.

And, dams bursting is a very real danger. It almost happened in California like a year or two ago.

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Forceful_Dragon posted...

Yang raised 16.5 which was a pretty nice increase from the 10M he raised in Q3, but I'm pretty sure Bernie will dominate the headlines with that haul.

you misspelled "Pete" with "Bernie" there, his 24 mil is really impressive!
maybe Warren even since it seems Obama's pushing her as what looks like his compromise candidate - not Biden, not Bernie.

unrelated to the above, i had no idea that nuclear was an issue that had united support by the left, center, and right in this topic.

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Who is center in this topic?
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Jakyl25 posted...

Who is center in this topic?

Easy answer, LotM

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i tend to hit center left on compass tests so i can just use myself there. though there's a few people who seem like they do too, though i'm probably lower on authoritarian/libertarian scale as i live in that left-lib quadrant.

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But yes I think we all support nuclear

Possibly not Corrik since he actually works in the coal industry and is primarily self-interested in his stances
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The Green New Deals lack of nuclear support is definitely a huge disappointment. The reasoning is because nuclear waste = pollution, and I dont know how much waste is created, but its my understanding that its a relatively low amount compared to fossil fuel emissions.

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