(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com)
__
Couple positive pieces, to finish up the week. In case you haven’t gotten around to it yet, here’s the link to Doug Brinkley’s Rolling Stone cover interview with President Obama:
… Barack Obama can no longer preach the bright 2008 certitudes of “Hope and Change.” He has a record to defend this time around. And, considering the lousy hand he was dealt by George W. Bush and an obstructionist Congress, his record of achievement, from universal health care to equal pay for women, is astonishingly solid. His excessive caution is a survival trait; at a time when the ripple and fury provoked by one off-key quip can derail a campaign for days, self-editing is the price a virtuoso must pay to go the distance in the age of YouTube.
Viewed through the lens of history, Obama represents a new type of 21st-century politician: the Progressive Firewall. Obama, simply put, is the curator-in-chief of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society. When he talks about continued subsidies for Big Bird or contraceptives for Sandra Fluke, he is the inheritor of the Progressive movement’s agenda, the last line of defense that prevents America’s hard-won social contract from being defunded into oblivion…
If Obama wins re-election, his domestic agenda will be anchored around a guarantee to all Americans that civil rights, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, affordable health care, public education, clean air and water, and a woman’s right to choose will be protected, no matter how poorly the economy performs. Obama has grappled with two of the last puzzle pieces of the Progressive agenda â health care and gay rights â with success. If he is re-elected in November and makes his health care program permanent, it will take root in the history books as a seminal achievement. If he loses, Romney and Ryan will crush his initiatives without remorse…
And here’s the transcript of Tuesday’s Des Moines Register interview, which is just about impossible to excerpt fairly:
Q: One question — as you watch voters here and just everyday interactions with people that are so undecided, so fearful of either choice — I found people becoming even more ambivalent and even voters making statements such as it really doesnât matter whoâs President anyway because of the problems in Congress and really thatâs whatâs going on — what would you say to a statement that somebody was saying, it doesnât really matter who should be President?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, what Iâd say is that it will matter to millions of Americans who may or may not have health care. It will matter to millions of seniors who maybe — or soon-to-be seniors who may be faced with the prospect of a voucher system for Medicare.
It will matter to young people all across the country who were born here, pledged allegiance to our flag, went to school here, and are Americans in every way except they donât have documentation and would continue to be at risk of deportation.
It will matter to middle-class families who are going to find themselves locked out of the discussion in terms of how we balance our budget, or at least reduce our deficit, facing the prospect that things like the tax credit we put in place for kids going to college, the earned income tax credit, a whole bunch of things that make sure working people stay out of poverty — that could all go away.
The consequences on just about every indicator out there would be enormous…..
***********
Apart from more political reading (and for those of us on the East Coast, keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Sandy), what’s on the agenda for the day?
Patricia Kayden
“I found people becoming even more ambivalent and even voters making statements such as it really doesnât matter whoâs President anyway”
Anyone who can’t see the differences between our two political parties is willfully blind. Even when I lived in Canada, I could see the stark differences between President Clinton/Dems and Gingrich/Repubs. If anything the differences have become more entrenched since then.
TheMightyTrowel
@Patricia Kayden: Sometimes it’s actually easier to see the bigger pattern from a distance – within the states the various echo chambers and 24-hr news channels have an incredibly high noise:signal ratio. When you’re out of that bubble you only catch the news that’s important (with only occasional irrelevant flotsam and jettsom attached)
Schlemizel
@Patricia Kayden:
People that obtuse deserve what they get, the problem is they keep dragging the rest of us along with them.
I was having a discussion on facebook with a friend who is pimping Jill Stein. The woman is old enough to know better (old enough to remember Nader & Bush/Gore)but was saying the same stupid stuff. It is driving me to despair!
Raven
I have to use up some leave so it’s off to get a load of compost for the princess. We have a great yard and garden but limited truck access to the back so I have to unload it one wheelbarrow at a time and run it down hill and around a couple of tight corners.
Joseph Nobles
People who don’t see any difference in the parties are confusing the parties with the federal government, which works just like James Madison designed it to be: the best purple-making machine on earth.
Davis X. Machina
Oh, they’re the-opposite-of-blind.
“No Logo” is, in fact a logo, and is just as likely to impress your friends as Rag + Bone, or Carhartt, or what have you…
Baud
@TheMightyTrowel:
This. It’s so confusing out there for people who pay only a little attention to what’s going on. The people I can’t stand are those who do pay attention to politics and still believe there is no difference between R and D. And for some reason, those people always seem to be on our side of the divide — left-leaning Villager centrists or ideological purists. Except for the occasional libertarian true-believer, it seems like everyone on the right knows what the differences are.
PDiddie
Nick Anderson is far and away the best thing about the Houston Chronicle.
Raven
@Davis X. Machina: Have you seen these weird ads for Duluth apparel? They have “Ballroom Jeans”
Baud
It’s amazing to think that, if Obama is re-elected, this will be the last federal election in pre-Obamacare America. I curious to see how this will change American politics.
JPL
One major difference between the parties is Medicaid. It wasn’t that long ago that care for the youngest and oldest among us had bi-partisan support for access to health care. Romney wants to cut the program and hand the funds over to the states. Why not just let states pay for it? Why should my federal tax payer money support citizens in other states?
We are on a slippery slope and I personally fear the results of a Romney/Ryan election.
Patricia Kayden
Baud said: “it seems like everyone on the right knows what the differences are.”
Yes, they certainly do. Wonder why some on our side are so confused.
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: Another big difference is Medicare. If it is turned into a voucher system, hospitals would have no reason to treat those unable to pay in emergency rooms. EMTALA is tied to federal funds not tied to private insurance companies.
WereBear
“No difference between the parties” is the Swiss Army knife of excuses.
For the rigid “Left” it is saying only Rainbow Sparkle Pony would suit them; that is who will get their precious vote!
For the truly clueless indecideds, it’s a way of masking their inability to understand policy. And I don’t entirely blame them for it; our press has made an art form of not explaining a damn thing, ever.
But for many, it’s a way of giving that excuse to others to excuse their laziness, their insecurity, their inability to take responsibility for voting.
Heck, everybody’s saying it! They are all carbon based lifeforms, what’s the difference?
gene108
@JPL:
If poor people voted in proportion to their numbers, they’d have a bigger say in what gets done to them.
That was ACORN’s biggest “sin”; they were focused on registering poor people to vote and have a political voice that would be able to drown out the astroturf/Republican money-powered-noise-machine.
Also, too I think a lot of people are totally unaware of what poor people have to deal with and how their lives aren’t all chuggin’ 40’s and hangin’ out on the front stoop, because we have enough social safety nets in place to prevent the rise of shanty towns and Third World-esque slums.
arguingwithsignposts
FYWP!
JPL
@gene108: I really wish democrats would define pro-life as those in need. Obamacare provides health care for thirty million uninsured. If that is not pro-life, I don’t know what is.
arguingwithsignposts
FYWP! It’s 6 am in the morning and it can’t handle 5 commenters. Jesus, Fuck, would someone fix the damned commenting system. I know, I know, Cole doesn’t want to pay extra for more server space. Yada Yada Yada.
TheMightyTrowel
for those not easily shocked, some insight into the positions of Mormon missionaries.
Cassidy
This never ceases to amaze me. I have a bunch of “libertarian” friends and a couple of real Libertarian friends. The real ones are consistent; we don’t agree on shit except for social issues, but even then it’s let society sort it out and abolish gov’t type stuff. The other’s though are all jazzed about Gary johnson, can’t wait to vote for him. I like reminding them he ran in the Republican Primary.
Punchy
I have this suspicion that the GOP is going to litigate the shit of these election results. Norm Coleman writ huge.
MrSnrub
Local wingnut radio talking points for the day. The Lena Dunham ad shows the contempt that Obama has for women! This is what he thinks of your daughters!
My agenda is to get thru 8 hours of work while resisting the urge to kill someone. My Wednesday deadline isn’t going away, and yet I repeatedly have to solve other people’s problems.
arguingwithsignposts
I don’t even know WTF happened with that one. But it is perfectly illustrative of the bullshit that is the comment system at this point.
TheMightyTrowel
@arguingwithsignposts: too right!
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: There is also the fact that the right has spent 40+ years painting liberals and Democrats as wimpy monster so that people do not want to be associated with them while at the same time acting like monstrous assholes so that no one wants to be associated with them either.*
*Sorry for the possibly convoluted syntax. It is early and I am not yet fully awake.
JPL
@arguingwithsignposts: you are not alone..
Davis X. Machina
@Raven: I get their catalog. I especially like the ‘hidden crotch gusset’ bit.
I do so prefer all crotch gussets, ceteris paribus, to be hidden….
Hidden Crotch Gusset, of course, is the small NH town that votes just after midnight every election…
amk
cole’s vista moment strikes again.
It’s not a FYWP problem. There are other blogs that work
fineok with wp without this continual fuck ups.Kane
Anyone see Letterman last night? The look on Trump’s face when Dave tells Trump and the audience that Trump’s clothing line shirts are made in Bangladesh and that his ties are made in China is priceless. The audience laughed and mockingly applauded as only moments earlier Trump was saying how China is ripping our hearts out.
max
@Punchy: I have this suspicion that the GOP is going to litigate the shit of these election results. Norm Coleman writ huge.
Depends on how hard they get beaten. Any close race will be litigated to hell and back, of course. (That’s their right, as long as we get to litigate right back.)
Of course, a lot of people think the Presidential election will be close and I don’t. (‘Down to the wire’ implies the winner won’t become obvious until election day. That seems obvious, what with all the landslides from Bullshit Mountain. ‘A close race’, on the other hand, implies a small margin in the popular vote count and/or the EV count. I doubt either one of latter.) The Senate is going to break our way. The fight for control of the House – that’s tight, and we’re disadvantaged there. Time for the final round of donations!
Our moderate R friends are certainly doing their damndest to work on liberal nerves. ;) All their efforts will be for naught. Sad. ;)
And you know, thank God for that. I always thought that was complete bullshit anyways.
max
[‘Less bullshit, more sticking it to Mitch McConnell!’]
Davis X. Machina
Well, property still isn’t theft. And Obama hasn’t yet called on us to expropriate the expropriators.
So I’m voting for Romney, and to give all my stuff to rich people.
It’s just logical.
Raven
@Davis X. Machina: I’d never heard of them till they popped up on Tweety.
piratedan
man, Joe is really fucking that chicken this morning. The quiet milquetoast guy tells him what his polls are saying and Joe blindly ignores what he’s said and engages in the pipe dream that Ohio is reachable despite the +5 that has Obama up in Ohio. He’s betting on the “aw shucks, WTH” vote coming in for Romney.
Schlemizel
@Kane: I’m not surprised that Trump is treated the worst by the NYC media. They know him better & for longer and he is well hated in New York.
A friend of mine is an iron worker & he was telling me the bridge workers in NYC told him that they would pee off the side of bridges when Trumps yacht went under. That was back in the 80s.
TDS portrayed Trump an an ape eating its own shit & Colbert offered to donate $1million to charity if he could “dip my balls in your mouth”. Trump is a joke & we owe a lot to the people who show the nation that he deserves only to be laughed at.
JPL
Another difference between the parties, is Public Education.
Romney believes in vouchers. What is unique about our country is the early start of public education. Boston Latin was founded in 1635.
amk
@Schlemizel: That colbear takedown of trumpster you put my balls in your mouth so that for once something goes into it rather than anything that comes out of it was simply superb.
SenyorDave
@piratedan: He’s betting on the “he’s still blackity, blackity, blackity” vote.
Raven
@piratedan: He’s such a swarmy motherfucker.
gene108
I’ve become resolved to the fact that Democrats will not be able to pull off another LBJ-Goldwater/FDR v. Challengers type smackdown in the next few decades/my lifetime.
Four decades of right-wing tropes about how Democrats are weak on national defense, want to take your money and give it to poor minorities, murder fetuses, etc. cannot be undone until the generations raised on that mindset pass on.
I’m squarely in the the most pro-Republican generation out there, the “Generation X” post-Watergate/Vietnam-era folks, who grew up with their parents revulsion at government over Watergate and Vietnam, but without the “OMG! FDR saved Pa’s farm” frame of reference.
There’s so much that should just be laughed off that Republicans say and do that isn’t is because for a couple of generations people have been conditioned to fear the crap out of the alternative, i.e. Democrats/Liberals.
gene108
@piratedan:
Watched Morning Joe for my usual 2-3 minutes, so I could keep up with the Balloon Juice crowd a bit.
He was talking about how this will be another 2000 type election, where Obama wins the EC but loses the popular vote.
I don’t see that happening, unless solid blue – way more populous states – voters decide to take nap and stay home in a couple of weeks and the red state folks turn out in droves.
Elizabelle
@gene108:
I don’t want the Confederacy choosing my next President for me.
And I lasted less than two minutes with three Morning Joe viewing attempts.
That Fox poll that has Romney up by five points in Virginia? Not believable, but Joe’s frantically pumping it.
Chyron HR
@gene108:
He is aware that we have a Republican-approved precedent for what to do in that situation, right?
Kane
@gene108: Take a look at the numbers where countless polls show that the public overwhelmingly favors Democrats on national defense, choice/abortion, healthcare, foreign policy, education, social issues and a host of other issues, and sees Democrats as more interested in serving the middle class and the poor.
As the demographics and the face of the country continues to change and the republicans continue to move further to the extreme right, the probability of our seeing a major smackdown of the GOP for years to come is quite likely.
Linda Featheringill
@gene108: #50
Morning Joe: “He was talking about how this will be another 2000 type election, where Obama wins the EC but loses the popular vote.”
I’m not masochistic enough to submit to Joe in the morning but I find this interesting. Joe’s wrestling with the probability that Obama will win. Hmmmmmm.
And I agree with you. Mitt’s not likely to walk away with the popular vote.
Elizabelle
Comforting myself that Morning Joe’s political masturbating is going to encourage Obama’s supporters and Democratic voters to get to the polls.
Todd
I went through Hurricane Sandy here in Jamaica. We got in Saturday night. Sunday and Monday, everything was great. The shit started Tuesday – they moved us to another unit Wedesday, and we didn’t catch sun again until yesterday afternoon. The red flags are still out on the beach, so no ocean swims or diving, because the waves are pounding like a motherfucker. We leave tomorrow, dammit.
Sitting right by the ocean, al you hear during the hurricane is a constant roar, like a revving jet. They did a good job – only sporadic power outages, and the only lost net connections occurred when power was down. Wife never lost her cellphone connection.
hep kitty
@Patricia Kayden:
fixt
Davis X. Machina
@JPL: And then they had to open Harvard in 1639 so the Latin School boys would have someplace to go…
kd bart
US GDP grew 2% in the third quarter. Exceeding the estimate of 1.7%.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/26/news/economy/gdp-report/index.html?iid=Lead
mai naem
@gene108: You’re wrong. To my embarrassment I hadn’t really looked at Texas’ numbers on the electoral map for years. Texas’ electoral votes are I believe the second largest. If you flip Texas to blue in within eight years, still have an electoral college, have the rest of the regular blue states – have Colorado, Nevada and AZ go blue – you would have a genuine landslide. The Repubs would be down to the South, Dakotas, Idaho, Utah, Wy and Montana. Furthermore, if you get a landslide looking election low info people vote with you because they want to vote for the winner. What I worry about is that the Dems don’t have a Hispanic ready for the ticket in 2016 when the Repubs do. And, no Ken Salazar and Bob Menendez don’t count.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Pundits and media personalities never revisit anything.
They were all in agreement that the auto rescue would fail. It didn’t. They were all in agreement that Ohio had to end collective bargaining or, I don’t know, the sky would fall. Ohio saved collective bargaining and the unemployment rate has dropped steadily, and state revenues/outlays are recovering, as they always do after a recession. Wisconsin and Indiana ended collective bargaining, Indiana completely and Wisconsin as to public employees, and they haven’t done markedly better in the recovery than Ohio has. WTF was that all about? Are we just never going to discuss it again? Wow.
They’re just wrong all the time, and I could live with that, they are, after all, in some bizarre “bold predictions” business so they have to weigh in constantly on shit they know nothing about, but there’s absolutely no accountability on being wrong if one never goes back and looks at what actually happened versus whatever bullshit they were all spewing.
They should devote half the time to making predictions, and then the other half to admitting they were wrong about the predictions they made 6 months prior.
arguingwithsignposts
@Kay:
Seriously, if Bill Kristol were a surgeon …
I_am_a_lead_pencil
“Americaâs hard-won social contract”
The use of the term “socal contract” is bothersome – often used to justify social arrangements that the term user would like to see adopted. Wish they had chosen another phrase here.
The Red Pen
Meanwhile, conservatives are asking the tough questions that Americans really care about. For example, Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator:
I finally figured out how Romney is going to save the economy: he’s going to incorporate stupidity as a component of the GDP. Finally, Republicans will be able to drive the growth they’ve often bragged about.
Schlemizel
It would be good, at this point in time, to reflect on how stupid the average American really is – and then to remember that as stupid as that is half the population is even dumber than that
Kay
@arguingwithsignposts:
The reason I’m so hostile to them is I have to conclude they’re adverse to my interests. If they were HAPPY they were dead wrong about the auto rescue or collective bargaining, one would think they would rush out there and say that, with a huge sigh of relief. “Remember all that dire shit we predicted, in unison? Thankfully, none of it happened.”
Apparently they’re NOT happy. They were hoping it would go the other way.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Patricia Kayden: Because we’re “principled.” At least those of us who live in places where they can afford to be principled.
For all of you New Englanders who think that its ok to vote for a Republican “on principle”, you need to spend a while down here in Texas where I can show you the difference between Republicans and Democrats, like where Rick Perry is going to continue defunding Planned Parenthood because they perform abortions occasionally, thereby denying 50K women access to healthcare.
Xenos
@Schlemizel:
Nothing particularly American about that. Somehow, however, stupidity has been weaponized in the USA. I would like to blame Rupert Murdock, but it goes a lot deeper than that.
Xenos
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): <non-republicans really need to avoid voting for third parties this time around. Any vote for anyone left of Obama will be treated by the media as a vote for Romney, and we desperately need to win with a margin that stops an anti-legitimacy campaign. Given this reality, a vote for Stein, for example, is almost as foolish as a vote for Nader back in the day.
rikyrah
Rachel Maddow did a really good segment on how the Obama Campaign never left Ohio, and what that could mean for this election.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#49562256
Todd
@Kay:
When you’re a bootlicking courtier, amplification of the status quo becomes your currency.
The Red Pen
@Davis X. Machina:
It really is.
The other day I was talking with my Life Coach over a couple of $12 PBRs, and we agreed that the working poor obviously aren’t feeling enough pain if they can’t be bothered to take to the streets and protest drone strikes. Maybe when Romney takes away their food stamps, they’ll be sorry they didn’t support a public option.
It’s tough, but fair.
Yutsano
@kd bart: Considering the state of the economy in Europe right now, that ain’t too bad.
Schlemizel
@Xenos:
Agreed that stupidity is hardly an American only trait. But the stupidity of the average American afflicts my life in ways stupidity in the rest of the world cannot. In fact, American stupidity has been aptly demonstrated to have a negative impact on the rest of the world well in excess of its proportional size.
Its stupidity tied to a military exponentially larger than even its next closest competitor, an ego unchecked by reality, avarice without limits and a psychopathic disinterest in the well-being of its fellow humans. None of those (except the first) is unique to American either but the combination is what makes it so outstanding.
jeremy
Yeah the modern republican party is going to put a non white person on the top of the ticket? LOL ! If you were talking about the republican party of the past I could see it but not with this republican party. And Rubio is a lightweight who only holds sway with florida Cubans. Other than that he can’t get the majority of the latino vote. Sandoval is a not starter for the republicans because he raised taxes to balance the budget, and Susanna Martinez has too many family issues which is why she decided not to be on the VP shortlist for Romney.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Xenos: I choose to agree with you even though I can’t quite make out what you are saying.
Amir Khalid
It’s Eid al-Adha. The major holiday that marks the end of the Haj season. Se ww got that going on in the Muslim world. And I understand some kind of ceasefire was negotiated in Syria for the occasion, or somebody tried to negotiate one. I don’t know how that held up yet.
Schlemizel
@The Red Pen:
great comment! 8-{D
PreservedKillick
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
All of us New Englanders are going to almost universally reject republicans, right across the board. We’re voting on principle, you betcha.
I will say this – a truly sane set of republicans could do very well up here. Very well indeed, but they’ve all been turfed out of the republican party and replaced by either outright nutjobs or faux-sane-republicans like Scott Brown.
Litlebritdifrnt
Why isn’t this getting more attention
Via http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-morning-plum-romneys-false-scare-story-in-ohio/2012/10/26/5f8edbbc-1f58-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_blog.html
I mean the man ran with an internet rumor in his stump speech, WTF?
ed_finnerty
@Kay
That’s why economists write so many books. So they can explain why everything they said in their last book was wrong.
Or if you are Michael Ignatief you can explain why being wrong and cheerleading the nation into a catastrophy was the right thing to do because you were “…wrong for the right reasons.”
Schlemizel
@Amir Khalid:
Would I be guilty of profiling if I said Eid Mubarak to you at this time?
either way, Eid Mubarak. seriously
jeremy
Romney is not winning the popular vote. Besides 2000 where Bush cheated the EC winner always wins the popular vote. That is nothing more than wishful thinking by Republicans. Right now Romney is down 3 points in the popular vote and with the ground campaign I could see Obama winning 4-5 % in the popular vote and around 350 in the EC.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@PreservedKillick: Scott Brown.
jeremy
@Schlemizel: Sorry. Sandoval is a non starter.
Davis X. Machina
@Litlebritdifrnt: Whatever it takes to close the sale.
Glengarry/Glen Ross 2012!
PreservedKillick
@Litlebritdifrnt:
The man ran around for months claiming that the navy had the fewest ships since 1917 and nobody called him on it, either in terms of actual numbers or in terms of absolute stupidity.
The man claimed that Iran’s path to the sea was Syria for months and nobody called him on it or pointed him at a map.
The man is flat out full of shit and living in a bubble that supports his world view.
And the public is eating this up.
Do not blame Romney. Blame the electorate.
Kay
@rikyrah:
It’s nice that she’s doing it now, rikyrah. I have to say, though, all I heard during that period was how Obama had abandoned labor because he wasn’t appearing personally in Ohio. That wasn’t true. Obama himself didn’t campaign, but everyone who was active in Issue Two knew OFA were helping. They were also absolutely crucial in the effort to repeal the voter suppression law here, too (successful, and the same time as Issue Two).
No one here working on repealing the collective bargaining law wanted Obama to appear. He’s a lightening rod, and it would have become a partisan issue, and we wouldn’t have won by 22 points. Republican voters would have dug in had it become “Obama versus Kasich”. Labor knew that. They kept it issue-oriented and non-partisan deliberately.
Davis X. Machina
@PreservedKillick: When it works, that makes it true.
PreservedKillick
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Exactly. Mr Faux Sane Republican, elected thanks to the (truly) worst opposing campaign I have ever seen.
And now getting turfed out, based largely on a campaign based on exposing him as a member of the republican party.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Xenos:
Becoming even slightly informed takes some effort. Which is easier, laying back and letting the MSM drip-feed you its narrative or getting off of the couch and doing some reading?
Linda Featheringill
@Amir Khalid:
Happy Holiday.
Is it a party holiday or a religious, re-dedication holiday?
Just Some Fuckhead
Brinkley is a little more Democratic fangurl than historian but he had a pretty good synopsis of the state of the politics of the nation in his lead up piece to the interview with Obama.
The interview was a bit of a downer as it was just the usual canned stump speech talking points. But I guess you can’t expect much more than that two weeks from an election. :)
Kay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
It will get a lot of media attention in Ohio. They track the actual auto industry in local media, not the imaginary auto industry.
God, but Romney is a liar. He opposed the auto rescue, so now he’s going to make shit up to scare them into voting for him. He’s repulsive.
hep kitty
I gotta say, it would be an exercise in futility to GOTV where I live. I need to donate to GOTV efforts in OH.
As Mike Papantonio (a southerner himself) said, Dems need (at least for now) give up on the south, as far as the national elections go, and apply your resources where the matter.
rikyrah
@Kay:
EXACTLY.
ONE AND HALF MILLION AMERICANS have employment because of the auto bailout. …
and, they aren’t man enough to say that they were wrong, BUT I’m glad one and a half million Americans have gainful employment.
because, they have gone about committing economic treason against this country since January 20, 2009.
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: Do you have a feast or something to mark the occasion? Or a special greeting for the day?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@PreservedKillick: But that’s my point. Why should it take millions of dollars to point out to people that no Republican running for office in the early 21st century is anything but a woman-hating, poor-bashing, racist homophobe? I realize Coakley was crap as a campaigner, and the party in the state did them no favors, but still.
Amir Khalid
@Linda Featheringill:
It’s the latter. It commemorates that business when God demanded of Abraham that he sacrifice his son, which you will no doubt recall from your own religious education if you were raised Christian or Jewish. Bigger in the Middle East, because that’s where the action is (i.e. the Haj), than out here in Asia.
gene108
@Xenos:
There are generations of white people, who were raised on the belief that America is the greatest, freest, bestest country that has ever been and will ever be.
When the Civil Rights movement, Women’s Lib movement, Watergate and Vietnam started to show people our shit does in fact stink like a smelly turd, these folks recoiled. This stinky version of America went against what they were taught and they looked for outlets to reinforce and comfort them.
Thus people were attracted to Reagan’s optimism and when Reagan left office, they started looking for outlets to reassure them like Reagan did and thus they stumbled onto Rush Limbaugh and gravitated towards Fox News, which reinforce the “you’re O.K. just the way you are” belief they were weened on.
PreservedKillick
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
He ran as a very convincing independent (who happened to be on the R ticket.) Is there a desire for a truly moderate republican around here? You bet there is! This state voted for moderate republicans for years, until Romney shut that down (AHEM – memo to the rest of the country, lookit what actually happened here in Massachusetts, the guy was governor here during a time of general economic growth and stifled us, wouldn’t work with the dems, and ended up leaving office with a 35/65 approval rating while simultaneously totalling his own party.)
What Warren is doing, quite deftly, is pointing out that Scott Brown may *say* he’s an independent but he *votes* like a republican. Meanwhile, Scooter is all over the place proclaiming his independence. Which might work except for things like his Norquist pledge and his actual, you know, *votes*. The mailers from the various right-wing nut job groups are not helping him, either.
I would point out something entirely else. If you want to destroy the republican party at the national level, I can’t think of a better way to do it than to somehow induce them to put Mitt Romney in the white house. Seriously. He’ll fuck up the country badly, but he really will do more damage to the republican party than Bush. Much, much more damage.
Linda Featheringill
@Amir Khalid: #99
Yes, I’m familiar with the story. I was raised in a backwoods Christian fundamentalist environment and this story was often referred to. The point was that God does not demand human sacrifice and if some cause demands too much in the way of sacrifice, it might not be in line with God’s will. Thus suicide missions, for example, probably would not be pleasing to the Almighty.
Those back country holy rollers were often correct, I think.
gene108
@PreservedKillick:
I just wish someone would go to Wikipedia and point out there are currently 22 aircraft carriers IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. The U.S. has 11 of them.
Mind you the other 11 the rest of the world have aren’t nuclear powered and most are refitted ships, i.e. India buys a decommissioned carrier from Russia.
Our navy, if it went to war, could probably wipe out the naval power of the rest of the world right now. Forget about turning our manufacturing a capacity over to military production, like we did in WW2 and how much larger that would allow us to expand our existing fleet.
PreservedKillick
@gene108:
There’s the rub, it probably doesn’t matter. Ballistic anti-ship cruise missiles would probably put the whole Navy on the bottom in very short order, or at least severely curtail its actual usefulness.
catclub
This needs more coverage:
Why Freddie mac resisted refi’s
http://www.propublica.org/article/why-freddie-mac-resisted-refis
“In closed door meetings, two Republican-leaning board members and at least one executive resisted a mass refi policy for an additional reason, according to the interviews: They regarded it as a backdoor economic stimulus.”
Culture of Truth
Or as I put in Bobblespeak:
Gregory: does Obama have a plan for the next four years?
Axelrod: yes – preventing the Republicans from destroying America
Gregory: ok but what else
Axelrod: stop Romney from giving rich people another five trillion dollars!
Maude
@Todd:
I was thinking about you this morning and hoped you were okay. You dodged it.
Democrat Partisan Asshole
@PreservedKillick: Cruise missiles are not ballistic, ballistic missiles cannot be cruise. If you’re talking about the Chinese ASBM, that’s still in development.
Although when it’s perfected, yes, it will be the end of the aircraft carrier. However, we still have the best subs in the world, and those alone are loaded with enough weaponry and have the range to pretty much wipe out every major city on the planet. And those can’t be touched by any missile.
Democrat Partisan Asshole
@catclub: If what is alleged in the article is true, the boards of both Fannie and Freddie ought to be executed for treason.
I’m not joking.
hep kitty
@Democrat Partisan Asshole: I love your nym. That is all.