US Politics

Pexbo

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This is the worst country in this history of the world. President xi please nuke us
Thought this reply was good:


Also, had a look at Bethany’s (I want to say Bethanies) Twitter and she’s an absolute fruit loop.
 
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berbatrick

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Every single thing this party does makes me increasingly appreciative of Stalin.
 

Fergies Gum

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What a farce the Lewandowski hearing is turning into. Blatant time wasting and shenanigans by Doug Collins.
 

berbatrick

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This can go in the cops thread and the healthcare thread
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/07/11/us/florida-deputy-arrested-planting-drugs-charges/index.html

In the most recently filed case, Lora Penn, one of nine plaintiffs, says she was a passenger in a vehicle pulled over June 7, 2018. During the stop, she alleged, Wester placed methamphetamine and a hypodermic needle in her purse.
Penn was charged with drug and paraphernalia possession and spent 12 days in jail before "her mother posted bond exhausting her meager financial resources. Penn's mother was thereafter unable to afford medical care and died due to lack of such care," the federal lawsuit says.
 

berbatrick

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On Monday, the National Labor Relations Board will issue a ruling that will make it impossible for graduate student workers to unionize. This, as with almost everything the Trump NLRB has done, is bad.

The labor board is issuing a regulation “establishing that students who perform any services for compensation, including, but not limited to, teaching or research, at a private college or university in connection with their studies are not ‘employees’” under the National Labor Relations Act. This will overturn an Obama-era ruling that affirmed that grad student workers could, in fact, unionize. We’ve known that this rule has been on the Republican target list for some time. (This board didn’t even bother waiting for a case to come before it to torpedo these workers’ rights, instead taking advantage of bureaucratic rulemaking procedures to do so.)
Brief recap: because of Obama's delay in appointing 3 friendly NLRB people, the cases of grad school unions were only taken up in 2015. They were recognised, graduate student were classed as both students and workers (because we do research and teach). After that, organising started on many campuses. One of them was U Chicago. The university spent a few million dollars in legal and other fees to fight the union a various stages (card signing, organising, election), spent some more on propaganda to students, and also changed election rules and voting places 24 hours before the election to reduce turnout. They lost the vote about 1500-800. They then spent some more money to block a few hundred votes for irregularities (going to the wrong polling booth, see above for change of poling booths also by the college) but they lost this too.

Finally it was time for the university to sit down and bargain with the union, which they simply refused to do. Why? Because they knew that it was illegal, but to sue them the union would have to go to the NLRB (which Trump had changed by end-2017) and there, instead of ruling on the complaint, the board would simply de-recognise that union and all grad student unions.

So the union tried protests, a small grading strike by TAs, but the university administration kept refusing to meet.

Now, despite the care the union took to avoid going to the board, to protect other more successful student unions, it seems (from the article above) that all unions are going to disappear anyway.

And what was the university fighting so hard against? The demand was for some grad students to be paid full-year (currently they work through the summer but don't get paid for 3 months), for dental insurance, for better meternity leave policies, and for sexual harrasment training for professors. All together it is probably less than the expenditure on law firms and PR firms. Which shows that the real goal is power - beause our entire future depends on the whims of our professors and administrators, and a union would change that situation.
 

Pexbo

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feck Jake Tapper in particular.

He knows exactly what he’s doing with this tweet. cnut.
 

DOTA

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What am I missing in these?
That AOC is supposedly a democratic socialist and hiring a former Harris aide who is described as 'a sober-minded replacement' doesn't fill her fellow democratic socialists with confidence.

And that Sean Spicer was minister of propaganda and treating him now as a fun playful character is bad.
 

Florida Man

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That AOC is supposedly a democratic socialist and hiring a former Harris aide who is described as 'a sober-minded replacement' doesn't fill her fellow democratic socialists with confidence.

And that Sean Spicer was minister of propaganda and treating him now as a fun playful character is bad.
Thanks man
 

Pexbo

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I figured it had something to do with Dancing with the Stars but what is bad about it? Not being skeptical, it's just flying over my head.
Sean Spicer was an absolute disgrace in his position as press secretary for Trump. Braff hit the nail on the head when he predicted he would be accepted into popular culture with arms wide open. His actual joke scenario being 100% accurate because obviously satire is dead.

Tapper is no fool, he is well aware that sharing this childish, slapstick, playful gif of cartoon Spicer being silly like a completely harmful daft family friend is absolutely fulfilling that prophecy.