Political Discussion



The City of Surfside hired a renowned forensic engineer to investigate the collapse of the Champlain tower. A guy who investigated the World Trade Center and Pentagon after 9/11 and many other high profile incidents.

However, for the first time in his career, he is not being allowed access to the site or any debris. Why? The police say it's an "active crime scene" and that they are trying to preserve the evidence. They will not work alongside.

wtf
 
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DeSantis PAC selling 'don't Fauci my Florida' merch.​

A political action committee tied to Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been selling anti-mask and anti-Fauci merchandise, including shirts that read "don't Fauci my Florida."

Insert eye roll
 
The audit of the 2020 election in Arizona has Trump and his base rallied up that there was fraud.

The audit chief reported to the State senate that they have found a little over 74,000 main in ballots in Maricopa County that were never mailed. There is no record of them being requested.

"In Arizona, 74,000 ballots were counted with no record of being sent in. That's not normal. That's not right. That's not safe nor is it secure,"

Trump tweeted about ballots "magically appearing".


But election officials said not so fast.

Here's why it's entirely normal for Maricopa County's submitted-ballots list to include a significant number of votes that do not match up with entries on the requested-ballots list. After the deadline to request a mail-in ballot, which was October 23 in 2020, the requested-ballot list doesn't get updated by the county. But the submitted-ballots list does get updated after that October 23 deadline -- with the votes of in-person early voters.

Basically the finding sums up that the ninja auditors from Florida, who have no experience in auditing elections, have no clue what they are doing or how the election system works.

But the damage may have already been done. For those who believe that Biden did not win this is proof. There was fraud, case closed. They reasoning behind the finding is being dismissed.
 
Or, you know, they do, but the average trump supporter does not and doesn't care.
second half is true, but Cyber Ninjas really do *not* have any idea what they are doing, openly say they can't be transparent about the process, and have no experience in the world of auditing. sham company for a sham job, I guess.
 
The infrastructure bill appears to be on the brink of collapse again.

While it appeared it gained bipartisan support and enough votes to pass when it was just an infrastructure bill with nothing added to it and no tax increases, now all the sudden the GOP is concert about the national deficit and how we are going to pay for it.

The feel it is just to expensive, going to increase our nation's debt and further increase inflation.

They agree that the work needs to be done for our country. But that it's just simply to expensive with no clear path to pay for it so it's just going to increase the national deficit further. What is ironic is the GOP under Trump had the third largest deficit increase of any president and we started no new wars during Trump's presidency.

I wonder if that is just a cop out so the GOP can say Biden didn't accomplish anything during his presidency.
 
The infrastructure bill appears to be on the brink of collapse again.

While it appeared it gained bipartisan support and enough votes to pass when it was just an infrastructure bill with nothing added to it and no tax increases, now all the sudden the GOP is concert about the national deficit and how we are going to pay for it.

The feel it is just to expensive, going to increase our nation's debt and further increase inflation.

They agree that the work needs to be done for our country. But that it's just simply to expensive with no clear path to pay for it so it's just going to increase the national deficit further. What is ironic is the GOP under Trump had the third largest deficit increase of any president and we started no new wars during Trump's presidency.

I wonder if that is just a cop out so the GOP can say Biden didn't accomplish anything during his presidency.
The problem is that this needs to be funded by the rich, and I'm talking about all those people who aren't paying their fair share of taxes. But the GOP took that off the table, so now, the right is correct, there's absolutely no way we can pay for this. An investment like this needs to have billionaire tax dollars involved, a lot of billionaire tax dollars. For reference:

This month, ProPublica revealed that American billionaires essentially do not pay taxes, and within hours the White House had awkwardly promised no fewer than four federal investigations into the identity of the individual who had alerted the news organization to this fact.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jun/22/jeff-bezos-space-petition-blue-origin-flight
By Thursday, a North Carolina congressman was demanding the FBI director explain why he hadn’t made any arrests or at the very least, “executed any search warrants or raided any offices” in the international manhunt for the leaker.

By the weekend, demands for justice on behalf of America’s parasite oligarchs had unified the Republican party like nothing since perhaps the phrase “public option” was a thing you heard on cable television. Politicians from Susan Collins to the author of the infamous North Carolina “bathroom bill” both grilled law enforcement officials testifying in their committees about the website’s “illegal” violations of mega-billionaire privacy.

Fox News screamed about Twitter’s double standard in enabling sharing of the ProPublica revelations despite blocking an earlier New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. At least 19 senators signed angry letters demanding the investigations they had been repeatedly assured were well under way. (Senator Mike Crapo alone released three separate statements to this effect.) The ranking member of the powerful ways and means committee told the Hill on Friday that the revelations had dealt Democratic proposals to add an additional $8bn to the annual IRS budget – which was meant to help with tax law enforcement and compliance – “close to a death blow”.

Meanwhile, the Democrats hardly had a better response. The billionaire tax avoidance story warranted nary a mention on the Twitter feeds of the four founders of “the Squad” aside from a retweet from AOC. And so the only elected officials who seem to have read the story ProPublica president Richard Tofel had framed as “the most important story we have ever published” were the ones calling for the feds to ransack the ProPublica offices.

But the worst part of the whole saga was the realization that ProPublica’s bombshell revelations would probably have received more attention during the presidency of Donald Trump. ProPublica carefully chose the six billionaires whose tax returns it chose to single out for specific scrutiny, and several of them – Jeff Bezos, George Soros and Mike Bloomberg – are so loathed by conservatives it would have been impossible for a Trump-era Republican party to respect their constitutional right to dodge taxes. The scarce press coverage of the fact that billionaires have not only paid virtually no taxes, but that they have also added to their net worths in recent years, makes the four-year media obsession with former president Donald Trump’s tax returns feel like a partisan crusade that was never about a genuine commitment to ending billionaire tax avoidance, but just scoring points against Trump alone.

 
The problem is that this needs to be funded by the rich, and I'm talking about all those people who aren't paying their fair share of taxes. But the GOP took that off the table, so now, the right is correct, there's absolutely no way we can pay for this. An investment like this needs to have billionaire tax dollars involved, a lot of billionaire tax dollars. For reference:

This month, ProPublica revealed that American billionaires essentially do not pay taxes, and within hours the White House had awkwardly promised no fewer than four federal investigations into the identity of the individual who had alerted the news organization to this fact.
Petition urges Jeff Bezos to blast into space – and stay there
By Thursday, a North Carolina congressman was demanding the FBI director explain why he hadn’t made any arrests or at the very least, “executed any search warrants or raided any offices” in the international manhunt for the leaker.

By the weekend, demands for justice on behalf of America’s parasite oligarchs had unified the Republican party like nothing since perhaps the phrase “public option” was a thing you heard on cable television. Politicians from Susan Collins to the author of the infamous North Carolina “bathroom bill” both grilled law enforcement officials testifying in their committees about the website’s “illegal” violations of mega-billionaire privacy.

Fox News screamed about Twitter’s double standard in enabling sharing of the ProPublica revelations despite blocking an earlier New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. At least 19 senators signed angry letters demanding the investigations they had been repeatedly assured were well under way. (Senator Mike Crapo alone released three separate statements to this effect.) The ranking member of the powerful ways and means committee told the Hill on Friday that the revelations had dealt Democratic proposals to add an additional $8bn to the annual IRS budget – which was meant to help with tax law enforcement and compliance – “close to a death blow”.

Meanwhile, the Democrats hardly had a better response. The billionaire tax avoidance story warranted nary a mention on the Twitter feeds of the four founders of “the Squad” aside from a retweet from AOC. And so the only elected officials who seem to have read the story ProPublica president Richard Tofel had framed as “the most important story we have ever published” were the ones calling for the feds to ransack the ProPublica offices.

But the worst part of the whole saga was the realization that ProPublica’s bombshell revelations would probably have received more attention during the presidency of Donald Trump. ProPublica carefully chose the six billionaires whose tax returns it chose to single out for specific scrutiny, and several of them – Jeff Bezos, George Soros and Mike Bloomberg – are so loathed by conservatives it would have been impossible for a Trump-era Republican party to respect their constitutional right to dodge taxes. The scarce press coverage of the fact that billionaires have not only paid virtually no taxes, but that they have also added to their net worths in recent years, makes the four-year media obsession with former president Donald Trump’s tax returns feel like a partisan crusade that was never about a genuine commitment to ending billionaire tax avoidance, but just scoring points against Trump alone.

Hard truths are hard to swallow.

Unrelated:
C159F40F-C40A-478F-97FB-11C3C88DEB6F.jpeg
 
The vote on the infrastructure bill will take place later today.

Republicans are signaling that they will block it. The filibuster will be used.

Yet again did we put a lot of work in trying to get the bill to be bipartisan only to have the GOP block it at the end.
 
I thought they had all this shit figured out already. How is the bill not written yet?
The GOP won’t sign off until it’s paid for.

The Dems were hoping to pump more money into the IRS for enforcement purposes. Supposedly that would have covered something like 80% of the package but GOP begged off as there is still a portion of their base that is anti-tax (thus anti-IRS enforcement).

So right now the biggest hurdle is that they need to find the money in the existing budget to pay for the bill without raising taxes on anyone or cutting military (GOP) or social services (Dems) before they can finalize the package.
 
The GOP won’t sign off until it’s paid for.

The Dems were hoping to pump more money into the IRS for enforcement purposes. Supposedly that would have covered something like 80% of the package but GOP begged off as there is still a portion of their base that is anti-tax (thus anti-IRS enforcement).

So right now the biggest hurdle is that they need to find the money in the existing budget to pay for the bill without raising taxes on anyone or cutting military (GOP) or social services (Dems) before they can finalize the package.

you also forgot to add "while not increasing the national deficit".

So, it's just how they will pay for the bill that is not finished.

That can be figured out later. There is nobody saying the infrastructure work does not need to be done. So get it done.
 
you also forgot to add "while not increasing the national deficit".

So, it's just how they will pay for the bill that is not finished.

That can be figured out later. There is nobody saying the infrastructure work does not need to be done. So get it done.
Of course, that is essentially what the vote today is about. Schumer is putting a spur to the bipartisan committees ass to get things moving.

TBH, I think many on the Left don’t care if the bipartisan bill is successful or not. They are playing nice to get the Centerist Dems on board but if the GOP takes their ball and goes home the Dems will roll this “traditional” infrastructure bill into the other much larger bill and Ram the whole thing through via a party line vote via budget reconciliation but to get that they need to show to Siennima and Manchin that they tried in good faith to pass the bi-partisan bill but the GOP was being unreasonable.
 
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