US Politics Thread |OT| THE DARKEST TIMELINE

[Steve Contra]

No one in the Republican party that has a tough primary in 14 is going to support any kind of reform.  Sad stuff.

[Eric P]

current favorite left rag The New Inquiry (sorry Jacobin) did a look at Glenn Beck's Agenda 21 book

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/to-the-squirrels/



“Praise the squirrels. Praise those who feed the squirrels.” So chants the ecofascist dictatorship that controls America in Glenn Beck’s fascinating new novel Agenda 21. With its black-garbed “Enforcers”, its “nourishment cubes” and power-generating “energy mats,” Agenda 21 reads like boilerplate pulp. Yet we’d be mistaken to class it as science fiction. Rather, the book represents a generic mutation akin to the evolution Thomas Frank documents in What’s the Matter with Kansas?: the strange transformation of rural populism from a mass movement of the radical left to a tendency of the extreme right.

In an afterword, Beck explains how Agenda 21 should be used. The book, he says, will awaken its readers to the existential threat posed by the real life “Agenda 21,” a tepid United Nations program for—gasp!sustainable development. They should then pass the book on to friends but without mentioning its politics. “Don’t tell them about the Afterword,” he urges. “Don’t even tell them that Agenda 21 is a real initiative. Let them go through the discovery process themselves.” In other words, Beck sees Agenda 21 less as literary text than political intervention. He’s adopting a novelistic mode quite foreign to today’s left (which has, by and large, abandoned any direct relationship between activism and authorship) but instantly recognizable to progressive novelists of original populist era.

[Steve Contra]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/roxanne-rubin_n_2566297.html
 

[Phoenix Dark]

If that bill came to the house it would pass, the issue is whether Boehner will bring it to the floor and what poison amendments will he allow. Eventually the far right will realize it's basically Obama's plan, and lawmakers will be looking for any excuse to walk from the table and blame Obama's partisanship. Just watch, he'll say something that hurts McCain's feelings tomorrow or during the SOTU and folks will get butthurt.

[brawndolicious]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/roxanne-rubin_n_2566297.html
 

How did the election officers at the second site know she already voted? The fact that she wasn't registered at that location would make them send her away or at worse give her a provisional ballot that would be checked against the voter rolls at other locations.

[Steve Contra]

They have a database of which ballots had been cast. So when she showed up and asked for a provisional ballot they checked against the records and told her to fuck off. 

[Mupepe]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/roxanne-rubin_n_2566297.html
 

How did the election officers at the second site know she already voted? The fact that she wasn't registered at that location would make them send her away or at worse give her a provisional ballot that would be checked against the voter rolls at other locations.

In Texas I can vote at any poll in the county that I registered at.  They just pull up my name in a database that says whether I've already voted or not.

[Mandark]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/roxanne-rubin_n_2566297.html
 

She tried to demonstrate the need for voter ID laws by voting twice under her own name?  Buh?

[Phoenix Dark]

[Great Rumbler]

Pretty much says it all, doesn't i?

[Mandark]

Sounds like both the Senate and House GOP have gotten behind substantial immigration reform bills.  That was rather quick.

[Human Snorenado]

Scarborough tries to take down K-Thug, shows that he doesn't have the slightest grasp of Krugman's actual argument.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/paul-krugman-vs-the-world-86822.html?hp=l4

For the love of fuck, Social Security is NOT AN UNFUNDED LIABILITY.  There's like 2.2 trillion chilling in a box.  If we stopped collecting ALL ss money, it would last until like 2021.  Ugh, just ugh.

[Phoenix Dark]

well, I guess we know what will kill progress now
http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/obama-will-include-same-sex-couples-in-immigration

[Mandark]

Favorite bit is how it compares obligations over some future period, probably 75 years, to the GDP for one year.

Assuming the US averages 2% economic growth over that period, then cumulative GDP for that period would be (checking Wolfram Alpha...) $2,578 trillion, of which those obligations represent less than one percent.  Problem solved!  You're welcome, America.

[Phoenix Dark]

Scarborough tries to take down K-Thug, shows that he doesn't have the slightest grasp of Krugman's actual argument.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/paul-krugman-vs-the-world-86822.html?hp=l4

Mika 

"you're right until the one day you're wrong." Well, ok then. No wonder republicans don't want to talk about job growth. As long as the economy is barely getting by, they can talk nonstop about the imminent debt crisis cataclysm that will kill us all.

[Mupepe]

Favorite bit is how it compares obligations over some future period, probably 75 years, to the GDP for one year.

Assuming the US averages 2% economic growth over that period, then cumulative GDP for that period would be (checking Wolfram Alpha...) $2,578 trillion, of which those obligations represent less than one percent.  Problem solved!  You're welcome, America.

Big numbers are scary.  I get this all the time from libertarian friends.  60 TRILLION IN LIABILITIES (over the next 1000 years).  And forward emails like this as well.

[Human Snorenado]

Skeletor and Erick Erickson are out at CNN.  Too bad, Mr. Redstate.  Now you can go back to not pretending to care about being batshit insane.

[Phoenix Dark]

you mean the guy who called David Souter a goat fucking child molester?

[Human Snorenado]

you mean the guy who called David Souter a goat fucking child molester?

Yeah, now he no longer needs to apologize for shit like that to keep his CNN gig.

[Phoenix Dark]

while casually reading through a farewell lament of a Freeper complaining about far right hatred, I stumbled across this gem

FYI, the concept of “racism”, which you should well know did not exist 150 years ago, and had to be invented, and it’s not something like a lightbulb that had to be invented, that concept is said to have been invented by none other than Leon Trotsky. It’s caught on, achieved its propagandistic purposes to the point where you and the Communists can sing Kumbaya together about it, even though it is something doesn’t exist, just like, say, global warming. Look up ethnocentrism, and tell us in what human culture, at what point in history, it did not appear.

Good luck in the church of anti-Racism!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2982931/posts

This must be what Paul felt like on the road to Damascus. I have been knocked off my proverbial horse of understanding and now enter a new era of enlightenment.

[Great Rumbler]

"All countries were racist at the some point in the past, therefore racism does not exist!"

[Joe Molotov]

Reminds me of the hilarious racist ethnocentric joke one guy told at work today:

In South Los Angeles, a fire destroyed a fourplex.

A Nigerian family of six con artists lived on the first floor, and all six died in the fire.

An Islamic group of seven Kenyan welfare cheats, all illegally in the country, lived on the second floor, and they, too, all perished in the fire.

Six LA, Hispanic, heavy-duty, ex-cons lived on the 3rd floor and they too, died.

One white couple lived on the top floor. The couple survived the fire.

Jesse Jackson, John Burris and Al Sharpton were furious. They flew into LA and quickly demanded a meeting with the fire chief. On camera, they loudly demanded to know why the Blacks, Black Muslims and Hispanics all died in the fire and only the white couple lived.

The fire chief quietly replied, "Simple — they were away at work."

Get it, they were all on welfare.

[Brehvolution]

Not buying what happened to the Kenyans. They can run.

[Joe Molotov]

So I heard some white, suburban kids might be listening to rap instead of Bing Crosby. *clutches peals*

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/how-conservatives-sabotage-their-own-cultural-criticism/272718/

[Dickie Dee]

A week after being bombarded with questions from congressional Republicans over the September attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview published Friday that many of those critics have a loose grasp on reality.

"There are some people in politics and in the press who can't be confused by the facts," Clinton told the Associated Press in her final one-on-one interview before she steps down from her post at the State Department on Friday. "They just will not live in an evidence-based world. And that's regrettable. It's regrettable for our political system and for the people who serve our government in very dangerous, difficult circumstances."

[Great Rumbler]

157,000 new jobs in January and upward revisions for November and December:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/02/economy-adds-157000-jobs-in-january.php?ref=fpblg

[Mupepe]

157,000 new jobs in January and upward revisions for November and December:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/02/economy-adds-157000-jobs-in-january.php?ref=fpblg

Damn!  I clicked on the Guilty Pleasure: Naughty Former Disney Girls Photos "related article".  Hot damn!

[Phoenix Dark]

http://www.the-coli.com/higher-learning/85105-colon-power-raciss-selout.html#.UQxqePIkS4o

[Oblivion]

I'm not the biggest fan of David Jaffe, but I'm even less of a fan of Erin Burnett:

Dear @ErinBurnett : you, ma'am, are at best an idiot that @cnn should be ashamed to have as an anchor. At worst, you are the worst kind of American: one who has allowed the healthy desire for success to morph into a capitalistic cancer that makes it ok to ignore the facts in order to make your product more appealing, regardless of the consequences. To make matters worse, your own views about video games- which you seem to have no problem sharing with your hundreds of thousands of viewers- clearly have not been formed by any actual research or real life experience with the medium.

I am sure you will think yourself quick and insightful when you tell me- a video game director/designer accusing someone from another industry of making products for profit regardless of consequence- that I am the pot and you are the black kettle. However, if you actually listened to your guests and read the studies (aka if you actually did some....some....hmmm, what's that word you journalists have for it? Oh right: RESEARCH!) you would see you are wrong; you would see there remains- after years of studies- zero evidence of video games with violent subject matter causing real life violence.

On the flip side- you know: YOUR side- there is very real evidence that our society suffers greatly when our news media fails to properly inform the public.

The fact that you think a guy who 'trains'* on a shooting video game would be granted the skill to horrifically, tragically kill those CHILDREN in Norway only serves to show how little research you do before you open your mouth in front of your world wide audience under the guise of delivering news. I'm not sure what makes your argument look more ignorant: the fact that you don't back up your idiotic statement by showing a correlation to the current health of America's agriculture sector with the popularity of Farmville OR the fact that the sick, deranged evil loser who killed those poor kids in Norway had picked such a poor 'training' tool that after 700 hours of play, he was only capable of hitting little kids with his bullets versus the well armed pretend terrorists and highly skilled virtual soldiers that he was battling in the game.

Shame on you. But more importantly: shame on your profession. It deserves so much better.**

David

*'Train' is such a stupid, irresponsible verb that you- without a shred of guilt- chew into with relish and repeat over and over because you know it helps sell your false story.


** I know journalism deserves better than you because I really love Sorkin's The Newsroom plus I saw Broadcast News back in high school at least 5 times (I had a crush on Holly Hunter- so sue me!) which means- in your world- I must have the equivalent of a journalism degree from Columbia plus a few years experience working for The Washington Post (back in the 70's, I mean, when it was really something special). So because of that, I know you will trust me when I tell you that you are not right for your current job and that you should quit and go try to be on something like The View or try to act in a movie or some such.

[Boogie]

** I know journalism deserves better than you because I really love Sorkin's The Newsroom plus I saw Broadcast News back in high school at least 5 times (I had a crush on Holly Hunter- so sue me!) which means- in your world- I must have the equivalent of a journalism degree from Columbia plus a few years experience working for The Washington Post (back in the 70's, I mean, when it was really something special). So because of that, I know you will trust me when I tell you that you are not right for your current job and that you should quit and go try to be on something like The View or try to act in a movie or some such.

I'm a fan of Sorkin, but:  Oh God, that is painful and embarrassing. 

He was drunk when he typed this up, right?

[Great Rumbler]

So yeah, I just saw some guy on Fox News saying that Obama's stance in the skeet shoot photo was terrible and that meant the photo actually hurt his standing as a gun owner/user. Never change, Fox News.

[Madrun Badrun]

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/02/04/former-head-of-south-carolina-gop-does-a-little-freelance-outreach-to-the-african-american-community

[Joe Molotov]

Interesting!

[Boogie]

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/02/04/former-head-of-south-carolina-gop-does-a-little-freelance-outreach-to-the-african-american-community

Are we sure that's not actually drew's twitter account?

[Mandark]

Gah, it's that rhetorical gambit again.  Where you say something deliberately provocative and then defend it on the grounds that it was somewhat based in fact or didn't cross some arbitrary line that would have made it racist/sexist/homophobic/shitty.

That guy did the same thing last year calling Pelosi a cunt and saying it wasn't sexist cause he loves women and hates cunts.  At that point you're obviously not trying to convince the people you're speaking directly towards.  Sometimes you can be appealing to listeners who are sympathetic to your own asshole views but also want to think of themselves as Good People or whatever ("it's not racist to bring up statistics and figures about race and crime!"), but I think the dude is past even that point.

[Great Rumbler]

So...why is the GOP loosing the minority vote? I can't remember!

[Phoenix Dark]

folks who know me will tell you I rarely get mad about anything, especially "offensive" comments. But that...what the fuck is wrong with people. I get he wants to "prove" liberals are "worse" with this rhetorical game, fine whatever. But he can't even admit what he said was disgusting - and instead wants to explain it as some simple trolling. I doubt Martin's parents are over his death, but they probably have slowly begun healing over the last few months, and to have a comment like that fly out of nowhere must be a punch in the gut for them.

Good luck with that minority outreach. Please Hillary run so we can get at least 12 years of the GOP in the wilderness.

[pickle]

folks who know me will tell you I rarely get mad about anything, especially "offensive" comments. But that...what the fuck is wrong with people. I get he wants to "prove" liberals are "worse" with this rhetorical game, fine whatever. But he can't even admit what he said was disgusting - and instead wants to explain it as some simple trolling. I doubt Martin's parents are over his death, but they probably have slowly begun healing over the last few months, and to have a comment like that fly out of nowhere must be a punch in the gut for them.

Good luck with that minority outreach. Please Hillary run so we can get at least 12 years of the GOP in the wilderness.

Fuck yes.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I'm pretty sure Hillary is running.

[drew]

If Hillary runs and wins I'm moving in with Boogie.

[Boogie]

If Hillary runs and wins I'm moving in with Boogie.

Yeaaaah, no.

[ToxicAdam]

Kasich (OH Gov) announced he is expanding Medicaid in accordance with Obamacare. Which isn't huge news, but he was one of the three that people speculated was on the fence. Wisconsin and Florida are obviously the others.

http://www.advisory.com/Daily-Briefing/2012/11/09/MedicaidMap

[Phoenix Dark]

It is huge news given his previous statements, and the impact it will have on the state. As he said, rejecting the expansion would lead to more poor people flooding emergency rooms and raising everyone's rates. This will save the state money and is the right thing to do. Kasich seems fucked in the next election regardless so I'm not sure there are political consequences. Same with Rick Scott, although I don't know which way he'll rule on this.

Meanwhile you have idiots like Bonby Jindal who would rather pile up debt than smear their 2016 record.

[TakingBackSunday]

If Hillary runs and wins I'm moving in with Boogie.

wow you really are just about the worst aren't you

[Phoenix Dark]

[Positive Touch]

this guy was in a top position in SC's GOP. he managed to climb all the way to the top.

[Brehvolution]

Trollin' to stay relevant. 

[Joe Molotov]

Trollin' to stay relevant. 

The new GOP motto.

[Great Rumbler]

(Image removed from quote.)

Now he's just trolling.

[Human Snorenado]

It is huge news given his previous statements, and the impact it will have on the state. As he said, rejecting the expansion would lead to more poor people flooding emergency rooms and raising everyone's rates. This will save the state money and is the right thing to do. Kasich seems fucked in the next election regardless so I'm not sure there are political consequences. Same with Rick Scott, although I don't know which way he'll rule on this.

Meanwhile you have idiots like Bonby Jindal who would rather pile up debt than smear their 2016 record.

Meanwhile, PA Gov Tom Corbett has declined it.  Guess he doesn't want to get re-elected.

[Phoenix Dark]

Well I know who I'm voting for in 2016

[Human Snorenado]

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/02/dick-morris-out-at-fox-news-156210.html?hp=l2

Hope he lands on his feet somewhere.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

HAHA GET IT BECAUSE HE HAS A FOOT FETISH  aw fuck it

[close]

[Barry Egan]

Dick Morris has had a foot in his mouth almost every day for the last 10 years.  Can't say I'm surprised.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

thats how it's done 

[close]

[Human Snorenado]

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/levin-postpones-hagel-confirmation-vote?ref=fpb

Between his filibuster waffling and now this, Carl Levin is rapidly becoming Obama's 2nd term Max Baucus.  wtf, dipshit?

[Joe Molotov]

Fox News: "Solar energy can't work in America because the sun don't shine on us no more since we elected Obama."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/07/fox_news_expert_on_solar_energy_germany_gets_a_lot_more_sun_than_we_do_video.html

[Great Rumbler]

Fox's war on solar energy is both hilarious and sad.

[Brehvolution]

What do you expect from the lap dogs of big oil?

[Brehvolution]

Ron Paul asks UN for help
...to strip the rights of RonPaul.com domain from his "supporters."

[Mandark]

Ron Paul has always been very proactive in making sure other people can't publish questionable material under his name.

[Barry Egan]