13 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. Dr. Chaps reveals Himself as PROPHET, asks forgiveness for suspending his ‘national’ YouTube ‘broadcasts.’ 

   In the Old Testament, they didn’t elect prophets. They stoned them. I didn’t come here to be a career politician. I came to speak truth.

   

   While not getting stoned, like his predecessors, the butthurt is no less real:

   I was not driving drunk, I was not arrested by the police, I am literally being punished for quoting unpopular Bible verses in my Sunday church, or interpreting the Old Testament differently than Leader DelGrosso interprets it, during my private ministry outside the Capitol. Is that suddenly a crime?

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   1. Not a crime but a good argument against electing someone who aspires to a religious ministry to serve in a legislature in a system which forbids government to endorse religion or meddle in religious affairs. Such people are not capable of recognizing the boundaries between the secular function of government and what they perceive as their religious ministry. It isn’t against any law for them to seek office but it is stupid to vote for them.

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      1. Amen, Sister BC!  Amen.

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   2. Dude, we can all be prophets in the Church of Chaps.

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      1. . . . or The Universal Life Church . . . 

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2.  NO TPP, Trans Pacific Partnership -Trade deals done in secret(an army of six hundred trade lobbyists for corporations) for years on end.

   Who can say NAFTA brought jobs to the USA?

   Democrats are questioning the secrecy, and the rush to fast track w/ republican help

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   1. ISDS provision is the worst part. Though routine, this provision allows companies to sue governments over policies the company feels may adversely affect its bottom line. A French company has sued Egypt, for example, for raising its minimum wage. Companies could sue our government over environmental protections or anything else they feel is harming their profits. It’s because of provisions like this that the administration is so keen on fast track but Dems, with Elizabeth Warren leading the charge, are starting to make a lot of noise about it and urging constituents to contact their Senators. For more on how these agreements work:

      http://www.citizen.org/tppinvestment

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3. Jamie Dimon of Citibank is a regular a**hole and obviously couldn’t care less about banking laws and regulations as shown by this argument with Elizabeth Warren:

   When the conversation turned to financial regulation and Dimon began complaining about all the burdensome rules his bank had to follow, I finally interrupted. I was polite, but definite. No, I didn’t think the biggest banks were overregulated. In fact, I couldn’t believe he was complaining about regulatory constraints less than a year after his bank had lost billions in the infamous London Whale high-risk trading episode. I said I thought the banks were still taking on too much risk and that they seemed to believe the taxpayers would bail them out — again — if something went wrong.

   Our exchange heated up quickly. By the time we got to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we weren’t quite shouting, but we were definitely raising our voices. At this point — early in 2013 — Rich Cordray was still serving as director of the consumer agency under a recess appointment; he hadn’t yet been confirmed by the Senate, which meant that the agency was vulnerable to legal challenges over its work. Dimon told me what he thought it would take to get Congress to confirm a director, terms that included gutting the agency’s power to regulate banks like his. By this point I was furious. Dodd-Frank had created default provisions that would automatically go into effect if there was no confirmed director, and his bank was almost certainly not in compliance with the those rules. I told him that if that happened, “I think you guys are breaking the law.”

   Suddenly Dimon got quiet. He leaned back and slowly smiled. “So hit me with a fine. We can afford it.”

   As Warren noted in a 2014 Senate Banking Committee hearing, Dimon was proved correct: Though his bank was forced to pay $20 billion in fines, he still received a significant raise at the end of 2013.

   Democrats should all stay away from these thieves and tell them to stick their campaign cash where the sun don’t shine. 

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   1. Dimon is BofA.

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      1. Chase.

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4. Well this is working out well for Indiana. The cancellations keep on coming:

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/31/indiana-religious-freedom_n_6976712.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

   Maybe because of this:

   Indiana Gov. Mike Pence spent his weekend ungraciously leaping from the path of questions on the effects and intentions of the new Indiana law allowing public discrimination against gay Americans under the general banner of religious freedom, but one of the few things he has been quite sure of is that this new law is no different from any of the 1990s-era laws, dubbedReligious Freedom Restoration Acts, that other states passed back then. This has been the preferred defense of the new law, as the good folks of Fox News and the Republican Party (but I repeat myself) try to patiently explain this to everyone through a rigorous program of repeating it as many times as a conversation will allow. And here’s Fox News personality Bret Baier, who accidentally destroys that argument in very specific, very concrete terms when he forgets to self-edit his remarks for the Fox News audience.

   ERIC SHAWN: You know, the law was intended to protect personal religious liberties against government overreach and intrusion. So what happened? BAIER: Well, Indiana’s law is written a little differently. It is more broad. It is different than the federal law that it’s close to, but different than, and also different than 19 other states and how the law is written. In specific terms, Indiana’s law deals with a person who can claim religious persecution but that includes corporations, for profit entities and it could also be used as a defense in a civil suit that does not involve the government. That is broader than the other laws. This is where it’s a little different in Indiana’s case. You saw governor Mike Pence try to defend the law and say it’s just like the 1993 federal law where it’s just like 19 other states, but as you look in the fine print, it’s not really, and it may be something that Indiana deals with in specifics to line up with the others. […]

   http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/30/1374418/-Gov-Mike-Pence-s-religious-freedom-argument-destroyed-by-Fox-News?detail=email

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   1. hmm. Put that in a quote box. Didn’t come out that way and couldn’t fix it in edit.

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      1. So this is in a quote box? Really don’t know WTF.

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