Freedom Caucus folks decide the deficit is no big deal now if Trump wants to spend a trillion on infrastructure:

I'm a poor negotiator. I just come out and say $10 and say I won't move an inch.

Remind me not to take you to Morocco ;).

Figure one of Trump Island looks a lot like what would happen after the polar ice caps melt after nuclear war.

I used to live on Johnson Island and now near St Louis Island. On the Clinton map.

Would raising the minimum wage to $15 make prices go up so much that it kills the middle class?

18 months into $15 minimum wages in Seattle shows no impact on prices.

Australia has a min wage of $12.81 in US dollars (it was over $15, $15.96 to be exact in January of this year, until recent changes in exchange rate). They still seem to have a middle class.

Even in Seattle it wasn't like suddenly everyone is making $15 an hour. Employers with less than 500 employees have until 2021 to reach that mark iirc.

Those damned Trump supporters

Member of black Mississippi church arrested for arson

Labor costs are only one part of a businesses expenses. Raising the minimum wage will raise costs, but no where close to the point where we'd have to worry about inflationary effects.

I can confirm that our society hasn't devolved into a Hunger Games-esque world of tyranny and oppression of a rich elite over the poor.

So Mad Max hasnt shown yet? That is good news.

Not yet, but the day is still young!

Im curious, Australia seems like a great place. Is illegal immigration a concern at all there? Large numbers of refugees? Population boom? What is happening down under??? Does Australia welcome new people like the USA does? Why is our population at 300 million and Australias is at 23 million? Lots of questions for ya!

Yeah I'm not sure if this is what Groundhog was attempting to get into with a fairly innocent post but Australia's immigration policy is frequently mentioned as one of the worst among first world countries. Not apples to apples obviously but neither is the minimum wage argument.

Giant death spiders and other killer animals.

Dont forget the dingos. They eat the babies.

Australia is home to world's most poisonous [insert animal here]

Universal Healthcare covers spider bites, right? :)

Venomous. It's venomous. You will be fine if you skin and cook a brown snake. You will not be fine if it bites you.

So good.

https://twitter.com/samsteinhp/statu...30515313950720

Secretary of Offense. Nice. Love that stuff.

I know people think he's playing some kind of chess game on Twitter but stuff like this just makes him sound really stupid.

So the only way for the US to lower and shrink it's nuclear capability is for the world to come to it's senses regarding nukes, and that means.....?

Seriously, what does that even mean?

Clearly he's a Twitter mastermind currently distracting people from something. Apologists, enlighten please.

My issue is reconciling these dramatic, devastating character and strategy attacks with the results. Receiving 3 million more votes and losing the election by a mere 80 thousands well placed votes, to me, doesn't not suggest a massive, systemic character/stagey flaw.

I feel it has mostly to do with economic needs. For a lot of the country, the approach of "don't vote for my opponent, he's unfit" was wildly successful. Where it was slightly less successful was in a few areas where Clinton represented tripling down on a hopeless economic path.

Thats a nice way to spin the landslide the MSM promised that never happened and the actual political upset of the century that did.

After all these years, a many times asking, I still have no idea what you mean by MSM. You anthropomorphize it so much that I think you think it is a deity.

Actually, it does.

Hint: HRC's character flaws aren't the only ones involved here.

I'm amazed at how much damage some of the liberal supporters continue to do to their cause. Just for example:

-The whole deal with no one wanting to perform for the inauguration. While everyone is perfectly within their right to be a part of the event, the continued threats towards anyone who considers it along with the 'counter concert' being considered are not helping their cause in any way. It makes them look like bullies. They're looking and acting like the candidate they detest. That's not a good way to change perception towards the liberal side of things. If anything, it's creating a further divide that will not serve them well.

-The verbal attack on Ivanka on the plane. Same thing. The incident only helps to portray liberals as bullies and paints Ivanka as a sympathetic figure when she's attacked on public transportation with her kids literally sitting right next to her. She comes out looking mature and poised while the other guy comes out looking juvenile and petty.

Liberals need to realize that they're going to create a bigger political monster on the other side with these actions. It's not going to end like they think it will.

Extremist dipshits have been doing that for years. It's not a liberal thing.

Trump posse browbeats Hill Republicans - POLITICO

Concern troll is concerned.

There's a huge difference between brow-beating career politicians who are all part of the problem and threatening a woman with kids or an entertainer who have no participation in the corruption that our government currently represents.

If you could put a -R suffix to news feeds that have a Republican bent and a -D to those who have a Democratic bent (even marginally and that's an important point) it might be easier to understand.

Fox News -R
AM Radio -R
CNN -D
NBC -D
CBS -D
ABC -D
PBS -D
Comedy Central -D
MTV -D
New York Times -D
Los Angeles Times -D
Huffington Post -D
Hollywood Movies -D


I'm think the general feeling is if a news feed reaches a large audience, it's MSM. And when you weigh them together, the MSM tilts left. One of the main reasons Fox News has so many viewers is because the choices for the Center-Right and Right are limited. In the early 90's it was so bad that Fox News catered to the Center-Right and a ground swell of support arose.

Maybe it's because of faulty polling that so many assume people want a left-wing bent. I don't know, but it's there.

I'm sure the guy with all the business interests/conflicts of interest will turn all that around.

Well if a heavy hitter such as Hollywood Movies tilts left then the MSM must be left.

A woman with kids is is interesting label for a member of the transition team with a permanent White House office.

And for the record, I don't think the confrontation was appropriate, but she isn't a child and works for the admin.

A big part of the problem is the way any lean on any social subject is considered definitive. Many of the D outlets are pretty fiscally conservative, especially on entitlements. The networks have for years run Sunday morning shows with a much higher percentage of conservatives. Hollywood almost never touches foreign policy except in a pro-military view.

On social issues, I'd agree traditional conservatives don't see their issues on tv, but on fiscal and foreign policy issues it isn't nearly as one dimensional as you'd like to portray.

I'm still flabbergasted that she was on JetBlue. In coach.

I don't think even hardcore Trump haters(hello!) think that guy was anything but a silly twat that deserved to get kicked off and made a fool of. I wasn't aware of it until your post, formed that snap judgement, reading the story and his husbands tweets just strengthens that opinion. He got off easy.

While I appreciate you trying to turn "harrassing family members on a plane" into a divisive partisan issue.... just no. Stop it.

You are still making the same fallacy that has been going on all year: popular votes and national polls are irrelevant to the election of a president, always have been. The election is played by a different rule and winning by that rule is all that matters.

I am struck as to the vote difference in California alone: Clinton won by nearly 3.5 million votes but there is no such thing as strength of victory in any states. I didn't add it up but I wonder how much did California and New York alone contribute to popular margin?

My point, and has been all year, is that it never mattered how many votes for a candidate that nationally polled or turned out. Turning out 7.3 million votes in CA and 3.4 million more than an opponent is not an indicator of any macro. It's the segmentation that matters.

Hmm, still not making my point, bear with me. Presidential elections have never been a national election, so any talk of polls and results nationally is irrelevant. The way I look at it is that a majority of the country (about 57%) did not favor Clinton but that only a handful of states skewed the aggregate numbers. It's like one of those unique golf games (skins? ryder?) where it doesn't matter what your strokes score was but only the number of holes won.

I also do not believe in landslides or mandates as there have been only 4 in my lifetime (64, 72, 80 and 84). Despite what Bill Clinton thought of himself, he didn't have one and neither does Trump.

Plenty of entertainers took the brunt of Trump supporters before and after the election. Regardless, it's detestable behavior regardless of who it is directed at.

Ivanka is also not just a "woman with kids". She's a top adviser to Donald and he has stated she will have an active role in his administration. She was also not threatened.

Com'on Donald, anything but a nuke war (or arms race)

(I'm good with a economic/trade war with China and the Wall)

Ironically enough, the "Clinton Archipelago" per the last page in this thread will take the brunt of any attack should it ever escalate that far.

?

I explained it wasn't one-dimensional...if after what I wrote all you get is I'm suggesting this is binary, then it's not really worth discussing it. I couldn't begin to tell you if the left-wing bent is 51%-49% or 99%-1% but it's significant. I wouldn't expect you to understand because you agree with the left-wing bent. So it's much more difficult for you to see it. The only example I can provide, and why I provided it, is Fox News and AM Radio. That gives you an idea of how you can see it there and then you'll have to flip the script a bit to see it for the others.

Unsurprisingly, you completely missed his point.

So you want your media to be fair and balanced?

Welcome to the maddening world of false equivalence journalism (from a climate reporter who knows) | Fusion

How False Equivalence Is Distorting the 2016 Election Coverage | The Nation

The danger of fair and balanced - Columbia Journalism Review

False equivalence: how 'balance' makes the media dangerously dumb | Bob Garfield | Opinion | The Guardian

Beware of false balance: Are the views of the scientific community accurately portrayed?

https://thinkprogress.org/to-improve...s-c4b50fa1dddf

I said only that there is a left-wing bias and was respectfully asked to explain what MSM meant in that regard.

With most politicians you assume they're lying when they say shit. With Trump you hope he's lying.