posted
I am disappointed, too, but we had still better get our butts out there to vote for him because the alternatives are considerably worse. We can at least keep the pressure on a president who owes us - a Republican president would have pressure in a whole different direction.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:But, seriously, do you think anyone else who has a shot at getting elected is going to close it?
quote:I am disappointed, too, but we had still better get our butts out there to vote for him because the alternatives are considerably worse.
I'd suggest that the latter attitude is the primary driving force for the former reality.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is always going to result in a continuation of bad candidates winning and good candidates not having a chance.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Voting for the lesser of two evils is always going to result in a continuation of bad candidates winning and good candidates not having a chance.
It's too bad the American system leaves us no choice except to vote for the lesser evil, or else let the greater evil win.
If America were the only country we harmed with our actions, I'd consider taking your stance. But I'm not going to risk killing off another 100,000 Middle Easterners by handing the presidency to a Republican.
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posted
MrSquicky, who are you going to vote for that will change that reality?
Be idealistic in local elections where one can hope for more perfect candidates. Keep supporting them as they reach for higher office. Don't throw away a vote.
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quote:How has the JBS, for example, advanced a dominionist attitude?
Aside from how they still do? They started with books and 'ministry outreaches' or whatnot back in the late 60's-early 70's. They have preached it. They have since ran fast and far away from any associations to Reconstructuralism as a movement. Well, most, anyway. I guess they still distribute some reconstructuralist literature and still have some associations with the reconstructuralist presbyterians — I can't be sure, but I suspect they flat-out started kicking some of them out after a while, and one way or another the Reconstructuralist part of JBS died — but, like most things stanked by reconstructuralists, it remains dominionist, and says the constitution is valid only because of its relation to fundamentalist christian principles (and can only be considered a valid reading if it upholds those principles). The bircher originalist theory on the constitution, at its core, is religous. That it merely affirms rights given to us by God, that you have to maintain those God-given rights VIA the constitution, etc. You can check out their site themselves if you don't trust my word on it.
At the worst of it, their chairman was most likely a full-blown reconstructionist (Larry McDonald) committed to advancing Biblical law. Fellow JBS member Rev. Joseph Morecraft talked in detail about McDonald's aims with the organization: "Larry [McDonald] understood that when the authors of the US Constitution spoke of law, they meant the law of God as revealed in the Bible. I have heard him say many times that we must refute humanistic, relativistic law with Biblical Law." (see earlier) . . especially given the minutes of JBS speeches and 'outreaches' to various movements, as well as there being no reason to suspect rev. morecraft is lying or mistaken, you can call the JBS an example of the many right-wing groups with a long history of reconstructionist influences.
Ah, but so what. A history of dominionist aims and theory in the JBS registers barely at all underneath the other ridiculous insanities of that organization's amazingly lunatic past.
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quote:The sharpest edges of President Obama’s counterterrorism policy, including the use of drone aircraft to kill suspected terrorists abroad and keeping open the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have broad public support, including from the left wing of the Democratic Party.
You see, guantanamo was bad, but now our guy is keeping it open, so, see, it's not so bad anymore. it's different now.
I'm highly skeptical of this claim since it appears in the Post article but not in the poll results.. The report claims the he was told the partisan break down by the people who took the poll but it never appears in the published report.
I'm always skeptical when a statistic turns out to be something a reporter "heard from an insider" but can't be independently verified. When that statistic is contrary to everything I've heard from legitimate far left sources -- my skepticism seems even more justified.
[ February 10, 2012, 01:22 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
also, something out of character, because as everyone knows I never say anything good about obama and it's getting tiresome:
quote:After two solid weeks of Republicans rapidly escalating attacks on contraception access under the banner of "religous freedom," Obama finally announced what the White House is proposing an accomodation of religiously affiliated employers who don't want to offer birth control coverage as part of their insurance plans. In those situations, the insurance companies will have to reach out directly to employees and offer contraception coverage for free, without going through the employer. Insurance companies are down with the plan, because as Matt Yglesias explained at Moneybox, contraception actually saves insurance companies money, since it's cheaper than abortion and far cheaper than childbirth. Because the insurance companies have to reach out to employees directly, there's very little danger of women not getting coverage because they are unaware they're eligible.
That's the nitty-gritty. The fun part of this is that Obama just pulled a fast one on Republicans. He drew this out for two weeks, letting Republicans work themselves into a frenzy of anti-contraception rhetoric, all thinly disguised as concern for religious liberty, and then created a compromise that addressed their purported concerns but without actually reducing women's access to contraception, which is what this has always been about. (As Dana Goldstein reported in 2010, before the religious liberty gambit was brought up, the Catholic bishops were just demanding that women be denied access and told to abstain from sex instead.) With the fig leaf of religious liberty removed, Republicans are in a bad situation. They can either drop this and slink away knowing they've been punked, or they can double down. But in order to do so, they'll have to be more blatantly anti-contraception, a politically toxic move in a country where 99% of women have used contraception.
My guess is that they'll take their knocks and go home, but a lot of the damage has already been done. Romney was provoked repeatedly to go on the record saying negative things about contraception. Sure, it was in the frame of concern about religious liberty, but as this incident fades into memory, what most people will remember is that Republicans picked a fight with Obama over contraception coverage and lost. This also gave Obama a chance to highlight this benefit and take full credit for it. Obama needs young female voters to turn out at the polls in November, and hijacking two weeks of the news cycle to send the message that he's going to get you your birth control for free is a big win for him in that department. I expect to see some ads in the fall showing Romney saying hostile things about contraception and health care reform, with the message that free birth control is going away if he's elected. It's all so perfect that I'm inclined to think this was Obama's plan all along.
.. oh. ... yes, it .. fits
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posted
I've got to admit, that would explain an otherwise very puzzling and potentially damaging political move. Goodness knows Republicans wouldnt be able to resist the matador's cape that is religion and sex together.
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posted
The quote is from Amanda Marcotte's blog post at Slate. Personally I find her suggestion a pretty big stretch. I think the more likely explanation is the straight-forward scenario that the decision on contraception was made, popular umbrage was ginned up, and the President (on the advice of Axelrod, who went on tv days ago talking up a possible compromise) backed down so as not to offend a potential swing demographic. To me it's simpler and fits the data just as well.
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posted
I would say it does fit most of it just as well, but there's still the question of why the decision was made-at this time-in the first place. I mean, it's not often Republicans can lay the charge of attack on religion towards Democrats and actually have it be in the ballpark of fact.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Voting for the lesser of two evils is always going to result in a continuation of bad candidates winning and good candidates not having a chance.
It's too bad the American system leaves us no choice except to vote for the lesser evil, or else let the greater evil win.
If America were the only country we harmed with our actions, I'd consider taking your stance. But I'm not going to risk killing off another 100,000 Middle Easterners by handing the presidency to a Republican.
Support Americans Elect.
They're expected to make the biggest Third Party bid in decades. I don't think they've nearly hit critical mass, but I'm paying attention, and I've considered getting involved.
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posted
I'm not sure Americans Elect will have much of a splash. i just checked out their site, and while it appears to be a great idea, it looks like it got hijacked (unsurprisingly) by Ron Paul's minions.
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posted
As Ross Perot got 19% of the popular vote (according to a quick googling), I assume you mean since him?
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Anthonie: I'm not sure Americans Elect will have much of a splash. i just checked out their site, and while it appears to be a great idea, it looks like it got hijacked (unsurprisingly) by Ron Paul's minions.
I don't really think that's true. I wouldn't be surprised if Ron Paul supporters push AE in some way, but a lot of the point of the movement is to find non-partisan people from outside the mainstream field. That hardly describes Ron Paul. Besides, AE starts electing reps to their convention within a few weeks, and the GOP nomination will still be ongoing.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
It does seem like such a good idea. I'm hoping it does work to affect change in the current political climate. But from the current list of "potential candidates" at the site, I'm not holding my breath.
I guess I'll try to leave my cynicism at the door for a bit and see what happens. I'm definitely intrigued enough by the idea that I will keep up with the news with their coming convention.
Thanks for the heads up about them.
Posts: 293 | Registered: Apr 2000
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quote:Originally posted by SenojRetep: The quote is from Amanda Marcotte's blog post at Slate. Personally I find her suggestion a pretty big stretch. I think the more likely explanation is the straight-forward scenario that the decision on contraception was made, popular umbrage was ginned up, and the President (on the advice of Axelrod, who went on tv days ago talking up a possible compromise) backed down so as not to offend a potential swing demographic. To me it's simpler and fits the data just as well.
posted
Well. Anyway. The latest anyone but romney is now Santorum.
quote:If they could secede, then they would have become independent sovereign nations. The POTUS has the power as Commander-in-Chief (Art. II, sec. 2) to take military actions against threats to the United States, including other nations, without a formal declaration of war from Congress (e.g. the Korean War, the Vietnam War, etc.). Since the South 'fired first' with the attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln's actions--at least, using a modern interpretation of the President's powers--would have been completely constitutional.
Uh, again, anyway.
Also there's three avowed white supremacists all walking around and speaking at CPAC, I'm beyond understanding anything that is going on with that party
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:CPAC is here, so it’s time for everyone’s annual look at the psychos invited to the premier conservative event of the year, and those unfortunate enough to have been excluded.
GOProud, the gay Republican group that was founded because the Log Cabin Republicans were considered too concerned about gay civil rights and not sufficiently focused on “fiscal issues,” is not invited this year, because they are too “aggressive” about being gay, which made Jim DeMint uncomfortable.
CPAC also uninvited the John Birch Society, which had made a triumphant return to mainstream conservative acceptance in 2010, when they co-sponsored the conference.
But! While the Birchers and the open homosexualists are no longer welcome, there is still room for multiple outspoken white nationalists!
quote:One is Peter Brimelow*, founder of the nativist site VDARE which publishes the works of white nationalists like Jared Taylor, and the other is Robert Vandervoort, who runs a group called ProEnglish and according to the Institute for Research on Education and Human Rights, "was also the organizer of the white nationalist group, Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance," which is affiliated with Taylor.
They'll be appearing on a panel titled "The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity" alongside National Review's John Derbyshire, who believes "that racial disparities in education and employment have their origin in biological differences between the human races," differences that are "facts in the natural world, like the orbits of the planets." I'm not sure whether there's really any daylight between Derbyshire, who is a long-time writer at American conservatism's flagship magazine, and the two other men he's appearing with.
posted
I don't know, I think his judgment was at least called into question. And yeah, while I am personally neutral on the morality of consenting adults exchanging racy pics of themselves with each other on the Internet, I'm not neutral on desiring federal-level politicians to have sufficient restraint and judgment to, if they're going to do so, do it with enough care that scandal is avoided.
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Because once the world had seen his wee willie winkie (thankfully cotton covered), nobody wanted to see any more bits of him.
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quote: And yeah, while I am personally neutral on the morality of consenting adults exchanging racy pics of themselves with each other on the Internet,
I thought he posted some of those pictures completely unsolicited, and that some of this was done without consent of his married partner, which I would put in a less neutral moral category.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Can anyone explain the pros and cons of Race to the Top?
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quote: And yeah, while I am personally neutral on the morality of consenting adults exchanging racy pics of themselves with each other on the Internet,
I thought he posted some of those pictures completely unsolicited, and that some of this was done without consent of his married partner, which I would put in a less neutral moral category.
Yeah, my understand is at least some of his pictures were sent unsolicited to not-quite-underage women without the consent of his spouse, which puts it pretty firmly in the "sleazy" category (and violates the "consenting adults" clause above, since one of them didn't precisely consent).
I'm not, personally, hugely disturbed if a politician is sleazy per se, but I'm in a minority on that I think, and those that do find sleazy politicians abhorrent had legitimate fodder for what followed.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
a dick pic puts him in the category of roughly being an internet troll, from a party that generally doesn't run on moralist issues.
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Morality ain't the primary concern, for me at least. Though someone in the Internet troll category, I don't see why his departure is lamented.
My beef is, hey, what he did was deeply stupid for a politician, self-destructive. And not for a principled cause. Calls his restraint and judgment into question.
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posted
More, it suggests very strongly that he wished for his political career to end, but was unwilling, due to ego, to end it gracefully. Not in the slightest bit uncommon.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: My beef is, hey, what he did was deeply stupid for a politician, self-destructive. And not for a principled cause. Calls his restraint and judgment into question.
And for a politician with his last name I think it counts as double-super-deeply-stupid with a heap of whipped ironic topping.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
I would've liked it had he been as ballsy with it as he was in his dealings in Congress, he should have been upfront and been like "Yeah it was a dick pic, so?" maybe a week or so of question dodging but no one except the partisan right wing would call for his resignation. The internet would've loved him.
e: We need another Lyndon Johnson.
quote: If the circumstances make it such that you can't &#$% a man in the ass, then just peckerslap him. Better to let him know who's in charge than to let him think he's got the keys to the car.
posted
'The Internet' doesn't win elections or media circuses, I'm afraid. And even if he'd been up-front and aggressive in handling it, I still wouldn't want him in Congress. His chicken@#$% way of dealing with it, and the damage he did to his various causes, weren't the issue either.
The issue is, as others have pointed out, if you're going to be stupid and self-destructive and totally impractical because you want to get your sexual rocks off in some way online (entirely aside from very real questions of, y'know, *consent*), you shouldn't be in Congress. That's a serious position with serious power, and surely the very least we can do is require that the people holding that office and that power committ ongoing political suicide for nothing.
He did a fantastically stupid thing, yet he wasn't a stupid man. So, g'bye!
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Posting pictures of himself online isn't rape. So I fail to see how 'consent' really is an issue here, how it affects his relationship with his wife is a private issue that I do not believe the country has a vested interest in. Certainly not since he hasn't made it his platform to run on "family values".
Congress is a terrible place filled with terrible people and does terrible things and he was one of the few Kuccinich type liberal progressives remaining in a party full of fake liberals and conservacrats. It's looking like Elizabeth Warren might be heading down the DNC lapdog root, it's looking worse and worse these days for progressivism liberalism in the United States, the Democrats keep moving to the right.
posted
Wow, we've skipped some levels! Neither I nor anyone else dropped the 'r' word, Blayne. Bringing that into the discussion is a major change of subject.
How it affects his relationship with his wife isn't the issue, and not because it's a private issue. The country does have a vested interest in the judgment of its elected officials, surely you'll agree to that? His platform not being 'family values' is also irrelevant to that point.
Now if you want to talk about Congress as a whole, or how his judgment stacked up compared to so many other members, that's fine. That's also not what we were discussing. So that's, what, three or four substantial changes of subject you've introduced in a two paragraph post?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
You mentioned it being an issue of "consent" the only thing he did was show a racy but not entirely rated R picture of himself on the internet, if you are on the internet and do not practice safe browsing you "consented". It may not have been appreciated but it isn't clear how this can undermine his voting record or stances on progressive principles.
I mentioned him in the first place because he struck me as one of the few decent liberal representatives in the US Congress and his leaving was disappointing and his inability to handle such a minor and trivial scandal equally so. When you have an overall congress so terrible that all decorum has long since flown out the window anyways ("you lie!") it hurts all the more as he was one of the few decent ones left.
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posted
Blayne, he didn't just put the pics ouit there; he sent them to people unsolicited. It is the internet equivalent of going up to someone and flashing them. Offensive and, in some cases, criminal. FWIW, I have no trouble with grown ups who have asked for such pictures exchanging them.
Believe me, I miss him in Congress even more than you do, but criminy what bad judgement!
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Others have mentioned it, so I'll simply agree with them: consent is not only an issue in cases of rape, and everything below rape in seriousness doesn't involve consent.
As for how it damages his causes, does him being a dummy with poor judgment online have any bearing on the truth or falsehood of his politics on, say, foreign affairs such as Iraq and Afghanistan? Well obviously not. I didn't suggest it did. Does his behavior have an impact on the politics surrounding those things? Absolutely. Case in point: resignation. That's an impact right there. Politically speaking, every argument he makes becomes immediately weaker because he's got that hanging over his head.
If he'd done something that would otherwise be foolish in an attempt to, say, change the system so it wasn't so twisted, that'd be one thing. He didn't do that.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Perhaps talking about the fact that several of your expensive cars are American made is not the best way to "connect" with the poor and middle class in Michigan.
quote: “I drive a Mustang and Chevy pickup truck,” he said. “Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually. I used to have a Dodge truck, so I used to have all three [Detroit manufacturers] covered.”
posted
The part about the Mustang and Chevy pickup isn't so bad. I've known plenty of people who have a daily driver and a pickup for hauling stuff around. And what he said doesn't indicate that they're expensive. It's the "couple of Cadillacs" that gets me.
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posted
Not that this helps much with the "failing to connect" issue, but it seems Ann uses two cars because they split time between two homes, one in California and the other in New Hampshire.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
As a Michigander, I thought most of his references were ridiculous. It's the sort of thing I'd expect someone to say if they'd never actually been to Michigan but read an index card with a short list of words associated with Michigan "trees, lakes, cars..." But to talk bout not just the Great Lakes but all the great inland lakes and our magnificently perfect tree height after talking about how he's a native son is just ridiculous. The man didn't have ONE anecdote about a vacation or something he took in Michigan to an actual place? I usually give candidates a break for being too wooden, but Romney looks more and more like a robot every day when he can barely describe his "home state" in human terms.
I did, perhaps, appreciate that he talked about Michigan's nature-loving side as much as he did its manufacturing-loving side. For too long politicians have treated Michigan politics as "hug a tree, kill a Chrysler," but that doesn't actually reflect Michiganders at all. We love the outdoors, and we love our environment.
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