As no one ever tells anyone, the reward for a job well done is more responsibility.

Yeah, behind the scenes of the Trump circus we've already lost decades of social progress and it's only been a few months.

Incidentally, it should surprise nobody but the other day the administration finally publicly stated that TPP would be "the starting point" for their own international trad policies and negotiations, so anyone who actually thought Trump's opposition to the TPP was at all in line with the leftist rhetoric he was throwing around in the election, unfortunately the joke's on all of us.

Are you just now catching on?

The American political system's primary purpose for at least 40 years now has been for those who are in power to stay in power and to "win" against the opposition party. It's less common for democrats but an absolute for republicans.

Unfortunately the American voters are mostly too dumb to notice or apathetic care about this, thus making it a very effective method of gaining votes and staying in power.

Some republicans are even finally admitting that their opposition to obamacare for the last 10 years was a complete and utter sham meant only to rile up their base and help them win elections. That's right, hundreds of separate votes, thousands of hours of work, millions of tax dollars used pay them, hundred of millions spent on SuperPAC ads...all intended to help no one except their own party win elections.

and for reference;

the secondary purpose is to enrich themselves and their donors.

the tertiary purpose is to suck up and do the bidding of powerful industry groups to gain donors and future highly paid lobbyist gigs.

As vile as rapists are, they are still american citizens, and deserve representation. Renee Unterman is their champion! Bonus stars if you translate her last name from german to english.

I too am going to shit on this parade. I'm not going to diminish it as an example of bipartisan efforts to address a genuine issue and bypass congressional roadblocks, which is on its face a good thing.

But as others have alluded to, this bill got passed through loopholes, stapling it to another bill, (potentially) favoritism by the speaker of the house, a bit of intimidation by same, etc. That's not a good thing. And the questions asked of this bill, which should be an ethical slam dunk were not things like "will this work" or "what are the potential impacts of this requirement" (as there may be downstream consequences of just saying "you have to process these kits" instead of providing resources to process them or otherwise addressing whatever barriers are currently preventing their processing), the questions were "is it true this bill has already proven to be politically palatable to the house?" and that's troubling.

that's kind of a really good point, Aernaroth2. The bill says nothing as to how this program is to funded. in addition, The bill doesn't even guarantee that the back-log of kits are to be tested only that new kits are to be tested and that report be made on the back-log of kits that is to be sent to the Governors office.

"Oscar Wildcat
As vile as rapists are, they are still american citizens, and deserve representation. "


This is a point that isn't made enough. As understandable as it is on an emotional level, the bipartisan unpersoning (legally an socially) of sex offenders does far more harm than good and is right down there with felons not having the right to vote.

And that's not even taking in to account the fact that the people who are actually charged and convicted of these sorts of crimes (and crimes in general) are disproportionately ethnic minorities and the poor.

While I was being sarcastic, I suppose you have a legitimate point. Justice is hardly administered in an even and consistent way, and some of what we call felonies are absurd.

What bothers me in practice is that after the last election, I have real fears that a Pro rape/murder/fraud party would sweep the polls. For it's only a tiny step from "get rid of all regulations" to "get rid of all laws". All those fraud statutes are terrible for the business community, for example.

Eh, it just won the last election.

stand your ground laws = pro murder

tort 'reform' and support of arbitration = pro fraud

and while there isn't a specific pro-rape single platform in the republican party, they sure are eager to defend and excuse rich white rapists.

Right, my point exactly.

There's a type of person who crops up in all bureaucracies. Their primary goal is to advance themselves. Their desire to achieve this goal is often outweighed by their actual ability to do so.

These are the people who try to kill good ideas and sabotage people with more skill & talent than they will ever possess, imagining that if they can drag everything else down, their own measly achievements will look grand. We've all crossed paths with someone like this.

Usually, they can only affect a limited number of people for a short amount of time. When they find their way into government, however, their power to wreck & ruin is magnified exponentially.

The sad fact is our government has become made up almost entirely of people like this. Even sadder, we really only have ourselves to blame for letting it get so bad. If anything good comes out of the election of Orange Forty-Five, I hope it is a reawakening of activism among our citizens.