america? FUCK YEAHH

[Slurm]

Food stamps have become one of the bigger cash commodities.

[Chach]

Not really, Hitler cashed in on bad sentiment following the end of ww1. For sure he had a good crack at the jews, but thats wasnt the basis of his rise to power.

He did leave a handy model for the Bush Administration.

[frogman]

I lolled

[AngryJungMan]

heh, such a fuxn dumbass


- dude needs to be shot in the face with a muslamic ray gun

[HERETIK]

his show is getting axed at least.

i guess he'll end up taking to the airwaves like alex jones, i dont see any other network snapping him up.

[AngryJungMan]

glenn beck's brain

[frogman]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...134,full.story

[petew]

Unfortunate story.

So, what the dealio with the US dollar? What does it mean for us? Whats Gold gunna do?

[heist]

i think this fits here

The free market

Companies that operate in a free market generally work as hard as they can to make that market not free.
By creating lock in, monopolies, patent protection, long term contracts, chasms in pricing and other barriers to entry, companies profit out of proportion to their risk or investment. That's their job.
Acting on their own behalf, self-interested companies will almost always work to make the playing field unlevel, to create loopholes and to generate barriers that keep the market unfree. It's what their owners profit from.
Their adversaries? Technological change, enforced transparency and regulation in favor of consumer protection and against monopolies. There's no question that an unfettered authoritarian corporate regime is more efficient and effective--in the short run. In the long run, though, the free market triumphs, as long as it isn't destroyed by those that get to play first.
The free market is a great idea, which is why we need to be careful when market incumbents lobby to make it un-free.

[frogman]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...ilout-20110411

Going gay for Taibbi. Also, why the fuck is the the best investigative journalism coming from the fucking rolling stone?

The Real Housewives of Wall Street

Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?

America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and Medicare, plus pensions and bennies for that great untamed socialist menace called a unionized public-sector workforce that Republicans are always complaining about. According to popular legend, we're broke and in so much debt that 40 years from now our granddaughters will still be hooking on weekends to pay the medical bills of this year's retirees from the IRS, the SEC and the Department of Energy.

Most Americans know about that budget. What they don't know is that there is another budget of roughly equal heft, traditionally maintained in complete secrecy. After the financial crash of 2008, it grew to monstrous dimensions, as the government attempted to unfreeze the credit markets by handing out trillions to banks and hedge funds. And thanks to a whole galaxy of obscure, acronym-laden bailout programs, it eventually rivaled the "official" budget in size — a huge roaring river of cash flowing out of the Federal Reserve to destinations neither chosen by the president nor reviewed by Congress, but instead handed out by fiat by unelected Fed officials using a seemingly nonsensical and apparently unknowable methodology.

Now, following an act of Congress that has forced the Fed to open its books from the bailout era, this unofficial budget is for the first time becoming at least partially a matter of public record. Staffers in the Senate and the House, whose queries about Fed spending have been rebuffed for nearly a century, are now poring over 21,000 transactions and discovering a host of outrages and lunacies in the "other" budget. It is as though someone sat down and made a list of every individual on earth who actually did not need emergency financial assistance from the United States government, and then handed them the keys to the public treasure. The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. "Our jaws are literally dropping as we're reading this," says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. "Every one of these transactions is outrageous."

But if you want to get a true sense of what the "shadow budget" is all about, all you have to do is look closely at the taxpayer money handed over to a single company that goes by a seemingly innocuous name: Waterfall TALF Opportunity. At first glance, Waterfall's haul doesn't seem all that huge — just nine loans totaling some $220 million, made through a Fed bailout program. That doesn't seem like a whole lot, considering that Goldman Sachs alone received roughly $800 billion in loans from the Fed. But upon closer inspection, Waterfall TALF Opportunity boasts a couple of interesting names among its chief investors: Christy Mack and Susan Karches.

Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley's investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.

The technical name of the program that Mack and Karches took advantage of is TALF, short for Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. But the federal aid they received actually falls under a broader category of bailout initiatives, designed and perfected by Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, called "giving already stinking rich people gobs of money for no fucking reason at all." If you want to learn how the shadow budget works, follow along. This is what welfare for the rich looks like.
In August 2009, John Mack, at the time still the CEO of Morgan Stanley, made an interesting life decision. Despite the fact that he was earning the comparatively low salary of just $800,000, and had refused to give himself a bonus in the midst of the financial crisis, Mack decided to buy himself a gorgeous piece of property — a 107-year-old limestone carriage house on the Upper BeerEast Side of New York, complete with an indoor 12-car garage, that had just been sold by the prestigious Mellon family for $13.5 million. Either Mack had plenty of cash on hand to close the deal, or he got some help from his wife, Christy, who apparently bought the house with him.

The Macks make for an interesting couple. John, a Lebanese-American nicknamed "Mack the Knife" for his legendary passion for firing people, has one of the most recognizable faces on Wall Street, physically resembling a crumpled, half-burned baked potato with a pair of overturned furry horseshoes for eyebrows. Christy is thin, blond and rich — a sort of still-awake Sunny von Bulow with hobbies. Her major philanthropic passion is endowments for alternative medicine, and she has attained the level of master at Reiki, the Japanese practice of "palm healing." The only other notable fact on her public résumé is that her sister was married to Charlie Rose.

It's hard to imagine a pair of people you would less want to hand a giant welfare check to — yet that's exactly what the Fed did. Just two months before the Macks bought their fancy carriage house in Manhattan, Christy and her pal Susan launched their investment initiative called Waterfall TALF. Neither seems to have any experience whatsoever in finance, beyond Susan's penchant for dabbling in thoroughbred racehorses. But with an upfront investment of $15 million, they quickly received $220 million in cash from the Fed, most of which they used to purchase student loans and commercial mortgages. The loans were set up so that Christy and Susan would keep 100 percent of any gains on the deals, while the Fed and the Treasury (read: the taxpayer) would eat 90 percent of the losses. Given out as part of a bailout program ostensibly designed to help ordinary people by kick-starting consumer lending, the deals were a classic heads-I-win, tails-you-lose investment.

So how did the government come to address a financial crisis caused by the collapse of a residential-mortgage bubble by giving the wives of a couple of Morgan Stanley bigwigs free money to make essentially risk-free investments in student loans and commercial real estate? The answer is: by degrees. The history of the bailout era reads like one of those awful stories about what happens when a long-dormant criminal compulsion goes unchecked. The Peeping Tom next door stares through a few bathroom windows, doesn't get caught, and decides to break in and steal a pair of panties. Next thing you know, he's upgraded to homemade dungeons, tri-state serial rampages and throwing cheerleaders into a panel truck.

It was the same with the bailouts. They started out small, with the government throwing a few hundred billion in public money to prop up genuinely insolvent firms like Bear Stearns and AIG. Then came TARP and a few other programs that were designed to stave off bank failures and dispose of the toxic mortgage-backed securities that were a root cause of the financial crisis. But before long, the Fed began buying up every distressed investment on Wall Street, even those that were in no danger of widespread defaults: commercial real estate loans, credit- card loans, auto loans, student loans, even loans backed by the Small Business Administration. What started off as a targeted effort to stop the bleeding in a few specific trouble spots became a gigantic feeding frenzy. It was "free money for shit," says Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation. "It turned into 'Give us your crap that you can't get rid of otherwise.' "

The impetus for this sudden manic expansion of the bailouts was a masterful bluff by Wall Street executives. Once the money started flowing from the Federal Reserve, the executives began moaning to their buddies at the Fed, claiming that they were suddenly afraid of investing in anything — student loans, car notes, you name it — unless their profits were guaranteed by the state. "You ever watch soccer, where the guy rolls six times to get a yellow card?" says William Black, a former federal bank regulator who teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri. "That's what this is. If you have power and connections, they will give you a freebie deal — if you're good at whining."

[frogman]

cont.

This is where TALF fits into the bailout picture. Created just after Barack Obama's election in November 2008, the program's ostensible justification was to spur more consumer lending, which had dried up in the midst of the financial crisis. But instead of lending directly to car buyers and credit-card holders and students — that would have been socialism! — the Fed handed out a trillion dollars to banks and hedge funds, almost interest-free. In other words, the government lent taxpayer money to the same assholes who caused the crisis, so that they could then lend that money back out on the market virtually risk-free, at an enormous profit.

Cue your Billy Mays voice, because wait, there's more! A key aspect of TALF is that the Fed doles out the money through what are known as non-recourse loans. Essentially, this means that if you don't pay the Fed back, it's no big deal. The mechanism works like this: Hedge Fund Goon borrows, say, $100 million from the Fed to buy crappy loans, which are then transferred to the Fed as collateral. If Hedge Fund Goon decides not to repay that $100 million, the Fed simply keeps its pile of crappy securities and calls everything even.

This is the deal of a lifetime. Think about it: You borrow millions, buy a bunch of crap securities and stash them on the Fed's books. If the securities lose money, you leave them on the Fed's lap and the public eats the loss. But if they make money, you take them back, cash them in and repay the funds you borrowed from the Fed. "Remember that crazy guy in the commercials who ran around covered in dollar bills shouting, 'The government is giving out free money!' " says Black. "As crazy as he was, this is making it real."
This whole setup — in which millionaires and billionaires gambled on mountains of dangerous securities, with taxpayers providing the stake and assuming almost all of the risk — is the reason that it's insanely premature for Wall Street to claim that the bailouts have actually made money for the government. We simply can't make that determination until the final bill comes in on all the dicey securities we financed during the bailout feeding frenzy.

In the case of Waterfall TALF Opportunity, here's what we know: The company was founded in June 2009 with $14.87 million of investment capital, money that likely came from Christy Mack and Susan Karches. The two Wall Street wives then used the $220 million they got from the Fed to buy up a bunch of securities, including a large pool of commercial mortgages managed by Credit Suisse, a company John Mack once headed. Those securities were valued at $253.6 million, though the Fed refuses to explain how it arrived at that estimate. And here's the kicker: Of the $220 million the two wives got from the Fed, roughly $150 million had not been paid back as of last fall — meaning that you and I are still on the hook for most of whatever the Wall Street spouses bought on their government-funded shopping spree.

The public has no way of knowing how much Christy Mack and Susan Karches earned on these transactions, because the Fed has repeatedly declined to provide any information about how it priced the individual securities bought as part of programs like TALF. In the Waterfall deal, for instance, we know the Fed pledged some $14 million against a block of securities called "Credit Suisse Commercial Mortgage Trust Series 2007-C2" — but that data is meaningless without knowing how many units were bought. It's like saying the Fed gave Waterfall $14 million to buy cars. Did Waterfall pay $5,000 per car, or $500,000? We have no idea. "There's no way of validating or invalidating the Fed's process in TALF without this pricing information," says Gary Aguirre, a former SEC official who was fired years ago after he tried to interview John Mack in an insider-trading case.

In early April, in an attempt to learn exactly how much Mack and Karches made on the TALF deals, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa wrote a letter to Waterfall asking 21 detailed questions about the transactions. In addition, Sen. Sanders has personally asked Fed chief Bernanke to provide more complete information on the TALF loans given not only to Christy Mack but to gazillionaires like former Miami Dolphins owner H. Wayne Huizenga and hedge-fund shark John Paulson. But Bernanke bluntly refused to provide the information — and the Fed has similarly stonewalled other oversight agencies, including the General Accounting Office and TARP's special inspector general.

Christy Mack and Susan Karches did not respond to requests for comments for this story. But even without more information about the loans they got from the Fed, we know that TALF wasn't the only risk-free money being handed over to Wall Street. During the financial crisis, the Fed routinely made billions of dollars in "emergency" loans to big banks at near-zero interest. Many of the banks then turned around and used the money to buy Treasury bonds at higher interest rates — essentially loaning the money back to the government at an inflated rate. "People talk about how these were loans that were paid back," says a congressional aide who has studied the transactions. "But when the state is lending money at zero percent and the banks are turning around and lending that money back to the state at three percent, how is that different from just handing rich people money?"
Those kinds of deals were the essence of the bailout — and the vast mountains of near-zero government cash turned companies facing bankruptcy into monstrous profit machines. In 2008 and 2009, while Christy Mack was busy getting her little TALF loans for $220 million, her husband's bank hauled in $2 trillion in emergency Fed loans. During the same period, Goldman borrowed nearly $800 billion. Shortly afterward, the two banks reported a combined annual profit of $14.5 billion.

As crazy as it is to lend to banks at near zero percent and borrow back from them at three percent, one could at least argue that the policy may have aided American companies by providing banks more cash to lend. But how do you explain the host of other bailout transactions now being examined by Congress? Like the Fed's massive purchases of securities in foreign automakers, including BMW, Volkswagen, Honda, Mitsubishi and Nissan? Or the nearly $5 billion in cheap credit the Fed extended to Toyota and Mitsubishi? Sure, those companies have factories and dealerships in the U.S. — but does it really make sense to give them free cash at the same time taxpayers were being asked to bail out Chrysler and GM? Seems a little crazy to fund the competition of the very automakers you're trying to rescue.

And then there are the bailout deals that make no sense at all. Republicans go mad over spending on health care and school for Mexican illegals. So why aren't they flipping out over the $9.6 billion in loans the Fed made to the Central Bank of Mexico? How do we explain the $2.2 billion in loans that went to the Korea Development Bank, the biggest state bank of South Korea, whose sole purpose is to promote development in South Korea? And at a time when America is borrowing from the Middle East at interest rates of three percent, why did the Fed extend $35 billion in loans to the Arab Banking Corporation of Bahrain at interest rates as low as one quarter of one point?

Even more disturbing, the major stakeholder in the Bahrain bank is none other than the Central Bank of Libya, which owns 59 percent of the operation. In fact, the Bahrain bank just received a special exemption from the U.S. Treasury to prevent its assets from being frozen in accord with economic sanctions. That's right: Muammar Qaddafi received more than 70 loans from the Federal Reserve, along with the Real Housewives of Wall Street.

Perhaps the most irritating facet of all of these transactions is the fact that hundreds of millions of Fed dollars were given out to hedge funds and other investors with addresses in the Cayman Islands. Many of those addresses belong to companies with American affiliations — including prominent Wall Street names like Pimco, Blackstone and . . . Christy Mack. Yes, even Waterfall TALF Opportunity is an offshore company. It's one thing for the federal government to look the other way when Wall Street hotshots evade U.S. taxes by registering their investment companies in the Cayman Islands. But subsidizing tax evasion? Giving it a federal bailout? What the fuck?

As America girds itself for another round of lunatic political infighting over which barely-respirating social program or urgently necessary federal agency must have their budgets permanently sacrificed to the cause of billionaires being able to keep their third boats in the water, it's important to point out just how scarce money isn't in certain corners of the public-spending universe. In the coming months, when you watch Republican congressional stooges play out the desperate comedy of solving America's deficit problems by making fewer photocopies of proposed bills, or by taking an ax to budgetary shrubberies like NPR or the SEC, remember Christy Mack and her fancy new carriage house. There is no belt-tightening on the other side of the tracks. Just a free lunch that never ends.

[AngryJungMan]

Going gay for Taibbi. Also, why the fuck is the the best investigative journalism coming from the fucking rolling stone?

probly because it's not owned by rupert et al


man that article is depressing - hopefully it will help fan the flames of dissent

[AngryJungMan]

ahh a nice \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\'feel good\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\' story for a change:


"It was a bad day for a few hapless Republican legislators in Montana Wednesday. These young guns from the GOP, who had excitedly volunteered, upon entering the legislature, to carry some of the flagship legislation for the Tea Party, got their hind ends burned with a red-hot poker."


lol

[kranky al]

someone was asking about gold? one of those bills from the right wing idiots was about allowing gold mining companies to use cyanide in extraction? umm they all do and have done since cil was invented. more to this story i think.

[AngryJungMan]

palin caught campaigning in royston vasey; denies she is either local or symbolic spokesgrizzly for absurd caricatures

[stevie_]

rofl @ the fat lady. "OW MAI GAWD! Tharnk yew Gawd fur giaving mi the opportewnaty to tuch sarah paylun! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

So we're still fucked either way. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...g-win-20100804

When is the next gfc going to occur? How long before the vile scum of wall street start ripping off the rest of the world? Will they look at the new legislation, lol their arses off (perhaps even rofl), and get raping before China takes over the world, or will they wait it out a little, let it settle down a bit and give it another crack somewhere down the track?

My bet is the swine won't be able to resist the urge of fucking $100 bills longer than a few years so it'll be a short wait for the next crash? Staking out an oil crash might be a bit long to wait for a new yacht- oh sorry I mean, American economic stability.

[stevie_]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...ilout-20110411

Going gay for Taibbi. Also, why the fuck is the the best investigative journalism coming from the fucking rolling stone?

You prob saw this, but if not http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...-imus-20110414

It's too much. A mix of lol and outrage

[Hoser]

"China to lead world economy"
http://www.watoday.com.au/national/c...424-1dt1j.html

Might want to think long and hard about hating on the US of A when China comes here to take over our mineralz innit?

[petew]

'merica, will be there friday, will provide feedback.

[Slurm]

They will fuck us over even more than the Yanks and their legal system and cultural imperialism have?

Sure will be interesting times.

More so.

[Hoser]

They will fuck us over even more than the Yanks and their legal system and cultural imperialism have?

Sure will be interesting times.

More so.

If by "fuck us over" you mean: Saved Australia from certain invasion in WWII, then yeah.

[stevie_]

Why do I have this feeling that all along China have just been waiting it out, waiting it out, waiting it out.... lol they exploit their own fucking people to have gotten to the position they are and continue to exploit them to encourage that growth. Who's to say or know how they'll exploit and toil with the world

[Slurm]

If by "fuck us over" you mean: Saved Australia from certain invasion in WWII, then yeah.

No, not really accurate that, is it.

Australia faced invasion, certainly, but Australia was "saved" by the USA?

Directly? Arguable, very arguable.

Indirectly? Perhaps. Theres an awful lot of what ifs there though.

I'd propose that Australia definitely "saved their asses" though.

But no, thats not what I meant.

[Slurm]

Why do I have this feeling that all along China have just been waiting it out, waiting it out, waiting it out.... lol they exploit their own fucking people to have gotten to the position they are and continue to exploit them to encourage that growth. Who's to say or know how they'll exploit and toil with the world

"China" in this case is just a bunch of vast commercial interests run by a small group of powerful people.

Geographical boundaries are mostly an illusion.

Almost anybody in their position and with their power would exploit their population the same way, or worse.

I'd say extreme long-term planning is unlikely, and its just been a series of moves as opportunity presented itself.

[Madpup]

Why do I have this feeling that all along China have just been waiting it out, waiting it out, waiting it out.... lol they exploit their own fucking people to have gotten to the position they are and continue to exploit them to encourage that growth. Who's to say or know how they'll exploit and toil with the world

The world isnt black and white, like you make it out to be. From an impoverished state run into the ground by Mao where 99% of people were living in poverty, China has experienced a massive increase in the standard of living for many, with about 25% of the population (over 300 million people ) now considered middle class (although defining what middle class is isnt an exact science). I would doubt all those people would consider themselves exploited, opportunities in China for highly educated people are huge. By any measures, China has been a massive success story in terms of increases in average standard of living.

[ZD]

If by "fuck us over" you mean: Saved Australia from certain invasion in WWII, then yeah.

US and Australian interest happened to be the same at that point. Japanese had a rough plan to invade Australia but they abandoned it pretty early. They didn't have much interest in us. They would've probably negotiated a peace with Australia with the aid of some bombing and shelling of our coastal cities but they weren't going to occupy us. If the US weren't bombed at Pearl Harbour they would've sat back and watched it happen. Have no fear about that one.

[Hoser]

Indirectly? Perhaps. Theres an awful lot of what ifs there though

That's what I was getting at. And yes a lot of what ifs but hey, people have short memories these days.

Now isn't much different either. Australia has a small population and a fairly weak army with regard to size/naval power/air power so we are potentially prime targets for larger nations. Good thing we have the ANZUS treaty huh?

[Slurm]

Except ANZUS didn't seem to count for much during all the undeclared shooting wars we have had with Indonesia in the last 60 years.

The US have benefitted from ANZUS far more than Australia have in terms of political collateral.

But my above comments were more firmly aimed at US foreign policy outside of war-fighting, like ridiculous free trade agreements, copyrights, corporate penetration and the afore-mentioned flood of cultural indoctrination.

[Hoser]

Except ANZUS didn't seem to count for much during all the undeclared shooting wars we have had with Indonesia in the last 60 years.

The US have benefitted from ANZUS far more than Australia have in terms of political collateral.

But my above comments were more firmly aimed at US foreign policy outside of war-fighting, like ridiculous free trade agreements, copyrights, corporate penetration and the afore-mentioned flood of cultural indoctrination.

Can't argue with that. The US is heading for a cataclysmic economic collapse that's as sure as shit.

But then what happens?

[Slurm]

I keep hearing from people far more knowledgeable than me that Australia's economy is fairly well insulated from theirs, and we have strength in ties in SE Asia that they don't.

I am skeptical. Too many fingers and too many pies. It will all end in tears.

[frogman]

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ne...#ixzz1LRBzlutg

Guy rapes chick.
Guy gets slap on wrist
Chick becomes a cheer leader
Chick refuses to cheer for the guy who raped her.
Chick is expelled from the cheer squad
Chick and parents sue
Courts say "fuck you, you have to do what the school says. And fuck you for sticking up for yourself. Pay us $45,000"

[frogman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NutFkykjmbM

"Make no bones about it. What is going on there is unadulterated evil" - Deborah Pauly (R)

She was speaking at a rally to oppose a group that was meeting to help raise funds for womens shelters.

(They are evil because they are brown)

[nosaj D:]

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ne...#ixzz1LRBzlutg

Guy rapes chick.
Guy gets slap on wrist
Chick becomes a cheer leader
Chick refuses to cheer for the guy who raped her.
Chick is expelled from the cheer squad
Chick and parents sue
Courts say "fuck you, you have to do what the school says. And fuck you for sticking up for yourself. Pay us $45,000"

:/

[frogman]

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/04/house-gop-hr3/

In a 251 to 175 vote this evening, 16 anti-choice Democrats joined every House Republican present in passing H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act. A chief weapon in the House GOP’s “comprehensive assault” on women this bill proposes some of the most radical and draconian restrictions on women’s rights. They include:

– Redefinition Of Rape: The bill sponsor Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) faced serious backlash after he tried to narrow the definition rape to “forcible rape.” By narrowing the rape and incest exception in the Hyde Amendment, Smith sought to prevent the following situations from consideration: Women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults.

Smith promised to remove the language and while it is not technically in the bill, Mother Jones reports that House Republicans used “a sly legislative maneuver” to insert a “backdoor reintroduction” of redefinition language. Essentially, if the bill is challenged in court, judges will look at the congressional committee report to determine intent. The committee report for H.R. 3 says the bill will “not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape” — thus excluding statutory rape-related abortions from Medicaid coverage.

The US government thinks its fine for women to be raped if they dont fight back, if they are drugged, or if they are minors impregnated by an adult.

EDIT : This get better the more I read about it. This is what another guy had to say.

For example, say you're a federal employee. You're offered health insurance through your job, and as part of that coverage, you want to be covered for abortion. Right now, the way that works is that you get 2 different bills each month. One bill is for non-abortion coverage, and the second bill is for abortion coverage only. Your employer (the government) contributes only to the general coverage, and not a single dime is spent on the abortion coverage. You send back 2 checks, one for each bill, the latter of which pays the full cost of the abortion coverage. Thus, a federal employee can have insurance that covers abortion without running afoul of the rule prohibiting federal funds from being used on abortion. This is a fairly commonsense approach to the issue.

HR 3, on the other hand, would prohibit this approach. If you are a federal employee, you will be required to forgo any abortion coverage if you are having any of your health insurance bill paid by the government (ie, your employer). Even if the company were to offer optional and separate abortion coverage, as they do now, if you were to elect to take this coverage, the government would then be prevented from contributing to your insurance.

But it doesn't stop there. Right now, there exists a tax credit for businesses which offer health insurance to their employees. Part of HR 3 is that the bill would prohibit the use of these tax credits by any company which has offered to their employees a health insurance plan that offers abortion. So, even if you don't work for the government, you could find yourself unable to purchase abortion coverage on your health insurance, because if you could, your company would lose a large tax credit.

It even extends to the individual credit that is part of PPACA. If this were to be implemented and then the Exchanges come online in 2014, anyone getting a subsidy to help defray the cost of their health insurance would be prohibited from purchasing abortion coverage, even if they do so as a separate policy billed separately from their main coverage.

And it doesn't stop there. There exists now a tax deduction that you can take if your health care expenses in a year exceed a certain percentage of your income. However, with the changes in HR 3, you would be prohibited from including any money spent towards an abortion in this figure unless the pregnancy was the result of forcible rape, and the burden of proof is on the taxpayer. In the case of an audit, the IRS auditor would be able to require the person being audited to produce police reports, detailed doctors bills, and other assorted documents that prove that the abortion was due to a pregnancy which was the result of a forcible rape.

[frogman]

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/g...3df229697.html

Indiana just overturned a law dating back to the 130os and the magna carter. If you live in that state it is now illegal to resist if police officers want to enter your residence, even if they are in the wrong.

[AngryJungMan]

YOU HAVE FIFTEEN SECONDS TO COMPLY

[Youve always been ugly faggot]

America and Australia are true bros. this thread is inappropriate

[frogman]

A true bro knows when to man up and say "you know what. There is a line. You have gone too far"

a SWAT team (you know, the guys who are specifically trained to do what they do) busted into a house, and shot 71 bullets at a guy, who they said shot back.

http://www.kgun9.com/story/14583352/swat-officers-ki

They held back paramedics for an hour after the bullets stopped flying. They initially said that the guy fired at them, but later retracted that statement.

He was an ex marine as well. They are always the most dodgy, and need to be taken down with all force available.

Also the cops, in the process of dragging the woman and 4 year old child out of the house, stopped off, just to let the little kid see his dead father. They wouldn't do this for the woman.

[frogman]

Oh, and then there was the case of a a home robbery gone wrong. The robber fucked up. The home owner caught him in his sons bedroom, then called 911.

The cops rock up, shot the home owner 6 times, first in the back, then while he was on the ground, realise the mistake, try to cover it up and drive the home owner around on the hood of their car. They didnt realise that the 911 call was still going, and so still recording their attempted cover up.

They then released the robber, because they didnt find the gun that he had hidden under the kids bed. The cops were found to have acted within the grounds of police policy, and so no action has been taken against them.

The home owner went to a police station later on to retrieve his belongings, and was then threatened with arrest, because his name was the same as one on an arrest warrant, despite the fact he was recuperating at the time of the warrants being issued.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/phoenix-fam...ory?id=8756441

[frogman]

Oh and then there was the time cops repeatedly tasered a bedridden 86 year old grannie. After stepping on her oxygen tube so she couldnt breathe, she brandished a knife and "took a ‘more aggressive posture in bed’." So they zapped her, handcuffed her, and threw her in a mental hospital for days.

Also, the cops weren't called to the residence. An ambulance was, but cops were never asked for.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/833035-p...en-86-year-old

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/833035-p...en-86-year-old

[frogman]

oh, and then there was the time that a woman was arrested on a warrant that had been issued "wrongly and groundlessly". She was breastfeeding her baby when her husband was pulled over for a minor traffic violation. She was dragged from the car, handcuffed and thrown in the cruiser without being given a chance to button her top up. She was taken to the cop shop where the cop in charge of booking realised the arrest was in error, so she gets strip searched and held for hours while wait for her husband to post bail.

http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_p...rongly-arreste

[Dynamik]

and this one time... on band camp...

[frogman]

oh, and then there was the time when a jerk just had to pipe up and add nothing of any substance to the thread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1YvwTHKuQQ

wait, that wasnt just one time.

[frogman]

Cops shoot peaceful protestor with rubber bullets. Cops laugh about it on video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G63FEamhpA0

[Dynamik]

nothing of any substance to the thread.

lol

In a country of over 300 million, call me underwhelmed that you can find reported incidents of the odd billy-bob country cop fuckup over a 5 year period (yes that's right, check the dates on those last 5 articles you posted).

policy issues like the indiana ruling i can dig.. but your isolated incidents of COPS R TEH EVILZ are nothing short of hyperbolic. substance indeed.

[frogman]

How are they hyperbolic? What I am saying is by and large what happened. Unless you think im posting incorrect details?

The point is that these are not isolated incidents. They happen again and again and again.

[Dynamik]

Google "police shooting", then on the left click "pages from Australia" ... got perspective? It's a systemic issue with law enforcement worldwide.

Now, back to sledging America...

[frogman]

Oh well, if its a systemic issue world wide then its alright.

http://inquest.gn.apc.org/website/st...lice-shootings

Except its not. Its a systemic issue in America and Australia, based largely in part on hiring and training practises, but cops in England seem to be able to get by without shooting people they are trying to protect.

And if you want to start up a thread based on bashing aussie cops, start it up and I will start posting in it. That is not the point of this thread.

[Dynamik]

Cuz UK cops are just peachy... hehe

Here you go... fun for the whole family. http://www.facebook.com/Filthbook

Not that they need to shoot people, they're all covert styles - spying on citizens, 'kettling' and detaining people for no good reason under section 60 (stop and search) and section 42 (anti terrorism)... perfectly legal pre-crime arrests.

In this one you clearly hear the officer charge him with being suspected of being about to commit a crime.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZitGjrF95k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj4yn1RBxHs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/ap...ses?CMP=twt_gu

The MET ... FUCK YEAHH

[frogman]

Ok, all of that is fucked. Throw up a thread about it and I will contribute. They still didnt shoot anyone.