Presidential Politics

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johnny k
What frustrates me about this presidential election is that Obama's soundest narrative is a negative one. "It could've been worse" is not as compelling as "Those motherfuckers have blocked our progress at every turn." But even if Obama could muster that tone, it doesn't really suggest any hope if he's reelected, unless the Democrats get accompanying gains in Congress. What a trick to pull off. I haven't seen the kind of backlash against the Tea Party necessary to swing the balance.

Seems like the best-case outcome, if you're a liberal, is that he gets reelected as the lesser of two evils, and we have four more years of Barack-blocking. Or maybe better is that we give everything over to the Tea Party for a while to just get it out of our system.

Well said. Especially since four more years of Barack-blocking will guarantee 8 years of tea-party madness.

Mind you - one year of tea-party madness will be enough to virtually bring on armageddon (my god, I am a left-wing mirror of the right-wing nutbags, they believe the exact opposite!)

The best thing for Obama's second term might be some kind of Monica Lewinsky type scandal - the tea-party might spend so much time in a self-righteous lather trying to get him impeached Obama may have a chance to sneak through some meaningful legislation while they're distracted.

On a tangent, a quote from Bachmann:

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"Whether we are Tea Party or social conservatives or fiscal conservatives or national security conservatives, if we stick together ... greatness will once again belong to the United States of America,"

Note how "tea-party conservative" and "fiscal-conservative" are deliberately separate (more worryingly "national security conservative" is too - guess they really wanna "bomb, baby, bomb"...)

Tony, I'm more worried about the dominionist and christianists (real things...).

Wow, Tea Party "is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims"" according to the gray lady. Wow, there are so many things in that sentence I would not have expected to see as business-as-usual in American politics, starting with the commonsense knowledge that atheists and Muslims are maligned... .

When did wanting to make the New Testament the law of the land become something people tried to outdo each other on, and not immediate disqualification for office?

Placing himself squarely in a much maligned group,

ddt

>make the New Testament the law of the land

Well, except for "love thy neighbor."

Unless it's The Girl Next Door. Nah, that went out of style, too.

ddt

What, no comment on this Billionaire socialist rant?

Ask and ye shall receive, Tone: http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/15/screw-the-rich-heres-how/

Though I think Gruber's being far too generous by calling this "a crock of shit". Then again, he personally tolerates Mr. AOL. I mean Arrington.

This is one case where I am sorely tempted to log in just to chime in an obscene, personal comment to that article. It would not help, would not contribute to the debate, not educate anyone, not have any basis in fact -- but then again, that's exactly a description of the article.

ddt

So the gist of the article is Buffett and others are asking for this because they want to make it harder for newcomers to become billionaires and "compete" with them?

I love the emotive "screw the rich" title. It's not even "screwing" them - it's making sure the "joe the plumber" types aren't paying a significantly higher proportion of income tax than the Buffetts, Ballmers and Jobs of the world.

I also love the "spend spend spend" line - as if a lot of that spending doesn't benefit him.

When the super-rich are paying a tax rate that's almost 10% lower than 20 years ago, it's not hard to see why there's such a huge deficit.

PBS has a TV programme up about how Americans view the wealth distribution in their own country, this page has the links to the video, plus a little test; http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/08/wealth-how-does-the-us-slice-the-pie.html

eye popping, if you ask me.

Wow. I'd like to live in Sweden I think. Staggering to realise that the bottom 40% of the population has only 0.3% of the nations wealth.

But the tea party claims even discussing this topic is class warfare...

What is most surprising is not the fact that the middle class is all but disappeared, that is a widely known fact. No, what I find most surprising is the fact that there must be a large group of voters who have had their perspective taken away in the past 3 decades, yet continue to believe they still have this perspective and worse, continue to elect public officials that go directly against their best interests.

The concept of libertarianism leans heavily on individualism.

The individual is responsible for their own life and liberty. It's in the constitution, after all.

I have a problem with this reading, though.

One who only relies on their individualism foregoes the power of groupings. Unions lose power, because somehow they are seen as more corrupt than corporations or governments.

One who only relies on their individualism cannot, unless perfectly informed, make the choices which perfect free-market capitalism would demand from a consumer.

One who hates their government, and those aligned with themselves in order to achieve a perfect sense of libertarian individualism is alone.

My beef with pure libertarianism is the way that it relies on after-the-fact litigation to correct all ills. I have to allow the guy next door to build a meth lab, because it's his right, and I can only sue him after it explodes, kills my family, and destroys my property. Or sue his next-of-kin.

And:

1. Assumes that they have received zero help or benefit from living within a government/civilization. Yet they continue to use things like roads, the internet, the legal system, etc.

2. Agreed -- that assumes you have infinite resources and recourse to mount a case, take the time, hire lawyers. Especially if that neighbor was Union Carbide running the meth lab. Why not for all the way and run the courts on a free-market, for-profit model?

3. I could go on

ddt

DPBD

Or is this the wrong thread? ;-)

I'd vote for him.

Have you seen him lately? His vegan (cough) diet is going to kill him.

I'd vote for his corpse.

Can his corpse run in a Dem primary against Obama?

Normally, yes, but as Obama is from Chicago he's got the dead vote sewn up.