@b05df304 @bb052609 The phrase does have meaning and it's based on a physical act. To table a motion in UK Parliamentary terms, which is where the phrase originates in Britain, is to physically put the papers for the motion on the table in the Commons, so that it takes precedence in the order and can then be debated by MPs. I'm guessing that the US usage must derive from papers for a motion being removed to a table for filing purposes once the debate on it has ended. 

 @2a70c54d Good. Try to keep that way. 

 @2a70c54d Brave of you to think that there are going to be any historians in a few hundred years. I'm am not even particularly confident there will be any human beings. 

 @2b63efd8 @2a70c54d @e0c85d7a @ac7cd295 Thing that I repeat often, and will be repeating often until I die - just once in my lifetime I want to vote *for* someone and not *against* someone at a General Election. 

In other words, we have the same problem in the UK. The Labour Party is dogshit bad and has somehow done the impossible and got even worse in the past year under Starmer. But they aren’t the Tories who are just vomit inducing. 

 @3967703f "but I think you all did it first"

No denying that. A much worse evil, to boot. 

 @3967703f Healthcare in the US skipped past "do no harm" and went straight to "do whatever it takes to make shitloads of money, consequences be damned."  

Just paint the former as communism, and enough Americans will lap up the latter no matter that it'll most likely end up killing or bankrupting them. 

Again, so bloody weird. 

 @3967703f One of the most pernicious and truly evil aspects of US society is how detrimental it has become to other cultures. And this is one example of it.

Drug companies know how stupidly easy it is to scam excessive amounts of money out of the US populace so what works there *must* be exported globally. Hence, in my country, the best invention in British society to ever have occurred in hundreds and hundreds of years - the NHS - must be obliterated to permit it. 

 @3967703f It appears that it's mostly done to persuade the practitioners prescribing drugs to pick 'this one' over their competitors alternative. But, again, fundamentally broken. Just produce and prescribe the best drug for the job on the basis of cost effectiveness, availability and outcome. Not on who has the best bloody adverts. 

 @3967703f They're one of the many indicators to foreigners visiting the US for the first time that American society is fundamentally broken. Just so unbelievably weird.