2012: Obama's America - General Post Election/US Politics Thread

Jumping off from here:
The Choice of a New Denigration: the US Election Day 2012 Thread

this surprised many

haha

so, the social cataclysm that conservatives predicted would happen in the last four years... that's going to happen in the next four, now, right?

can't decide if i'm annoyed by fork's boring thread title or relieved that he didn't try out a pun

when will it be legal to start up my all-gay satanic daycare center?

should've worked Butterschotts into the thread title somehow

xp

i know this is the post-election thread but these guys -

http://www.workingamerica.org/

did incredible work for the obama campaign, they deserve some in-thread big ups

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/opinion/krugman-lets-not-make-a-deal.html

This seems to me the new left-wing consensus and it makes a lot of sense to me. Tax break repeal for wealthy, no cuts to social services, or we go over the cliff. And if we do go over the cliff, reintroduce the tax breaks + payroll vacation for the middle class and dare House Republicans to not pass them. I think it's really brilliant tbh. I don't ever write letters to the WH (tho I write letters to my asshole local Republicans all the time) but I wrote them today to push them to follow this strategy.

someone please fix the thread title

this thousand year long election cycle made me forget how much I fucking hate john boehner

So...Petraeus.

how can you hate an oompa-loompa

xp

Haha:

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/weekly_standard_republicans_must_play_white_identity_politics_better_next_time/

I enjoy these silly things far more than I should (sorry if it was posted on the previous thread).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLIJc7YE_jw

It's still a pun if it's just a number-pun!

He BETRAYED US alright

Some kid just zipped by on his bike chanting ”Obama won!” Then he mocked Mitt as ” Romney noodle.”

probably thought u were mad cuz u white

So: what's the over/under on whether a Grand Bargain is struck by Christmas?

xpost Wasn't chanting at me or in any particular direction, he was just generally chanting with pride and happiness.

I kind of agree with Krugman, but man.

no grand bargain i hope

some dude (not that one) down the block has had his windows plastered with homemade 'fire obama the liar'/'i don't believe the msm' etc. signs. they are written out in the same font that calvin's bully moe used to speak in.

anyway, where can i find an enormous poster of obamacellphonesmirk.jpg?

yeah i'm not one to put too much faith in dems standing ground, esp congressional dems, but they did manage to resist watering down defense cuts when EVERYONE (and obv republicans, probably why they agreed to it in first place) assumed they would buckle and w/ no imminent election and a triumphant moment and the wind at their back i'd hope they'd be even more aggressive. whatever grand bargin does emerge it'll be nowhere near as favorable to gop as what was on the table in aug 2011, thank god.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md8gabRTEH1qltl50o1_500.jpg

haha

this guy hosts a radio show:
https://www.facebook.com/roger.fredinburg/posts/4188394302242

Nice

I kinda wanna know who this guy is so I can friend him

A big reason to avoid Papa John's.

So what is the response to this? Conservative guy on my fb posted the story about the Georgia guy and was all "See what happens when you elect Obama"

Modify legislation so that businesses that transform full time into part time jobs to evade the mandate get fined.

Do we have links/articles about how all of this works? I thought there were tax break proposals for small businesses to make up for Obamacare costs?

But that's the rub: Papa John's isn't a small business.

oh yeah, for Papa John's, but what about these other bozos, like that guy in Georgia who fired staff that he suspected of voting for Obama to get down to under 50 employees?

The guy who runs the coal mine?

The story on that Georgia guy -- the radio show caller? -- omitted his name and occupation.

Yeah. Not the coal mine guy, the guy who omitted his name and occupation.

kinda lol but mostly sad that employers are using this as an excuse to pull some walmart shit

http://nymag.com/news/politics/elections-2012/obama-romney-economic-plans-2012-10/index2.html

Here is how it will happen. On the morning of November 7, a reelected President Obama will do … nothing. For the next 53 days, nothing. And then, on January 1, 2013, we will all awake to a different, substantially more liberal country. The Bush tax cuts will have disappeared, restoring Clinton-era tax rates and flooding government coffers with revenue to fund its current operations for years to come. The military will be facing dire budget cuts that shake the military-industrial complex to its core. It will be a real-world approximation of the old liberal bumper-sticker fantasy in which schools have all the money they require and the Pentagon needs to hold a bake sale.

All this can come to pass because, while Obama has spent the last two years surrendering short-term policy concessions, he has been quietly hoarding a fortune in the equivalent of a political trust fund that comes due on the first of the year. At that point, he will reside in a political world he finds at most mildly uncomfortable and the Republicans consider a hellish dystopia. Then he’ll be ready to make a deal.

Leading up to the New Year, there will be a concerted effort to preempt this policy shift, by bringing the two parties together to consummate a version of the endlessly touted (but little-understood) Bowles-Simpson agreement that GOP House members rejected. This is already under way, and is being described in the press as a noble bipartisan effort to avoid something terrible. But it is more accurately understood to be a conservative attempt to avoid a massive shift in leverage in Obama’s favor. Some Democrats get this. (Charles Schumer is one of the few willing to take a hard-ass line against Bowles-Simpson). I also believe that, despite his silence on the matter, Obama gets it, too.

So the pizza will no doubt have that 14 cent increase and now he's cutting hours too? Sounds like PJ shareholders are gonna have one hell of a fiscal year!

That's lovely enough to get us liberals masturbating but we righly mocked Peggy Noonan for believing in signs and signals and vibrations.

on the other hand David Brooks understood the consequences of a suddenly recalcitrant Obama in today's NPR segment. If I were a Democrat, he said, I'd let the tax cuts expire too -- suddenly the government will have all the revenue it needs.

it's a really great idea and makes total sense for obama for pursue. if you read further chait lays out the case in even more compelling detail. obv i'm not totally convinced, i wasn't sure obama would win until returns came in for florida, but it seems very reasonable and maybe stands an okay chance of happening??

But if Obama allows taxes to go up, he'll never be elected again! Oh, wait. I mean, whoever runs as a Republican next election will campaign on lowering taxes, plus constricting social freedoms! Oh, wait. That already happens.

So, yeah, let's go over this fiscal bump and see what happens. Maybe will our military budget morally wounded, Iran will finally spring its trap and invade!

Like Chait admits at the end, we have to believe Obama could summon every ounce of his everybody-chill-the-fuck-out side to resist a unanimous howl of protest from both parties, editorial writers, Beltway commentariat, donors, and potential '16 nominees if he lets those cuts expire.

....and I don't believe it.

our military is so big at this point that even w/ the spending cuts iran is no threat to the united states. the only threats that iran represents (nuclear weapons, regional hegemony, control of the strait of hormuz) we can either handle already, or no amount of military spending can impact.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRzulF_7kHz20ez8ZXcUeZGoRD77xg0dgJ2IZhO0lXl75yXptPI

Also, I was kidding about Iran.

It makes more and more sense to me. Satraps from both parties understand the truth: the federal government will be awash in revenue if those cuts expire. That's what scares Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan to death. But these people count on Obama's unwillingness to resist national bipartisan outrage -- he blinked in summer '10, didn't he?

There's also Wall Street. Obama would have to weather a massive one- or two-day drop (maybe longer!) in the Dow, comparable to what happened several times in '08. To survive this would require every one of his talents.

we can even ameliorate the cliff before it hits, or retroactively, by re-proposing tax cuts for the middle class, even offering a bill to increase military spending (just not to previous levels). make the consequences explicit - republicans can shoot down a middle class tax cut bill bc it takes away their leverage on the sequester, but then they'll be publically rejecting middle class tax cuts. good luck to them making the case to america that they're pro tax cuts, but only for the wealthy.

yeah cuts expiring is best-case scenario imho. I'd like to see it, and it might happen, but I wouldn't put it as the likeliest outcome. can/road etc.

If the White House picks up Chait's vibrations and intimations (who knows -- he might be offering the White House's own battle plan as a trial balloon), and Obama takes this chance, it would be the greatest act of political courage in our lifetimes. We would have reduced the deficit and suddenly strengthened Medicare, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act.

OK I'll stop.

Krugman wrote about the same thing today, and Yglesias a week ago. This idea has been going around (I first heard it on NPR before the election, tho I can't remember who was floating it.)

The only parallel I can think of is the Reagan White House and Paul Volcker deliberately plunging the economy into a recession with a tight money policy to squeeze inflation out of the system. It cost Reagan dearly for two years though.

going over the fiscal cliff would cost obama absolutely nothing except some pundit hand wringing

it would not plunge the economy into rescission, it would just improve the democrats bargaining position

'the greatest act of political courage in our lifetimes' i mean srsly

Here's today's Yglesias column.

The conceit here is the frankly bizarre idea that since Obama wants to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, he needs to engage in some kind of bargaining process. But this is silly. The Senate already passed a plan to extend the middle-class tax cuts. Now the choice before the House of Representatives is whether they want to vote to pass that plan before the new year or after the new year. Grover Norquist, the conservative Solon on taxes, appears to have made a metaphysical ruling that a vote for partial extension (before the new year) is a vote for higher taxes. That’s silly, but the dictates of holy writ are often a bit arbitrary. All Republicans need to do is wait until the Bush tax cuts have already expired. At that point, a vote for a tax cut that Obama will sign—i.e., the middle-class tax cuts only—would clearly be a vote to cut taxes rather than raise them.

To take the bargaining process seriously at this point you have to believe that come 2013, House Republicans would actually refuse to cut taxes on the grounds that the president’s tax-cut proposal doesn’t cut taxes enough. Then they would blame the economic drag and middle-class pain that their own refusal to cut taxes had caused on the Democrats. But that doesn’t pass the laugh test as a political argument. It ignores the fact that the GOP quite genuinely wants to see rich people pay lower taxes. And since rich people have lots of income that falls below the top bracket cutoff, they actually benefit massively from the middle-class tax cuts Obama favors.

kicking the can off the fiscal cliff into a sea of tax revenue

no one is planning on going over the fiscal cliff and then just not climbing back up

A dumb-ass cable reporter the other day, flummoxed, said we're plunging off the fiscal can.

we're not plunging off the fiscal cliff. we're plunging the fiscal toilet.

the fiscal gentle down slope

time to shit or get off the fiscal toilet

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_l9Pg2dX-9Fc/S93uyMZPQAI/AAAAAAAAApU/sLQgfBZa-V0/s1600/tidy+bowl+man.jpg

Oddly enough, was talking with my dad yesterday -- not a 'plugged in' guy when it comes to all the discourse out there, not a net hound or anything -- and also a bit of a deficit hawk, perhaps the most 'conservative' he is these days. And he pretty much thought Obama should take it over the cliff as well without hesitation, for all the various reasons outlined.

A big reason to avoid Papa John's.

Food poisoning was reason enough for me.

Meantime, the loneliest website:

http://www.mittromney.com/

I mean I honestly love how the only thing going there besides that message and a signup thing is a link to buy MittMerchandise.

On the "Merchandise" page:

"Free Shipping • Limited Time Only"

I would assume, yeah.

Looking forward to this rich job creator creating tons of jobs, which is something the government could never ever do.

Why immigration reform might be really, really good for our economy:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/the-next-trillion-dollar-stimulus-its-immigration-reform/265018/

Mentioned in several columns, but even if we go over the "fiscal cliff," they have a year to compromise before a lot of the cuts really kick in. So Obama in theory could have his cake and eat it, too, benefitting from the elapsed Bush cuts and putting pressure on the House, while postponing or otherwise avoiding the new deep cuts in the budget for something less harsh.

From past performances, however, I suspect Obama will either give in or give something major up before we even approach the cliff, as a misbegotten goodwill gesture tossed into the void.

What can Obama do? According to Grover Norquist, he's already a lame duck president:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/09/phony-fiscal-cliff-congress-cuts-grover-norquist

Would like to drown President Grover fucking Norquist in a bathtub of ILX's choosing. He's only one guy, why can't the rest of us find a way of telling him to fuck off that actually results in him fucking off?

So much for Petraeus's political prospects. Slate's reporting the other woman was his biographer, Paula Broadwell.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IElsLkrJyo8/TyH8TZ1_KiI/AAAAAAAACO8/BUoY-KmpyS4/s1600/paula_broadwell.jpg

I'm all in.

Oh, and the now rather awkward Daily Show interview.

I'm imagining that Republicans will fight the spectre of massive defense cuts with the spectre of More Benghazi?

ok so his alleged lover wrote a book about him called All In.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 9 November 2012 22:30 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

From CIA Director Resigns

Guess who's hinting at running for reelection...

Would like to drown President Grover fucking Norquist in a bathtub of ILX's choosing.

On CNN last night, he seemed utterly sad and diminished (as opposed to smarmy and smug, when everything's going his way). Unfortunately, you know he'll still continue to exert a lot of influence, at the House level at least.

from an article about another low-level gop dude frothing at the mouth:

Hardin County Republican Party Chairman Kent Batman was surprised by the content of Morrison’s Tea Party newsletter.

“Wow,” Batman said. “OK, well — I guess I need to start taking a look at his newsletters.”

Batman: All In Against The Tea Party by Grant Morrison

kent fuckin batman???

Kent Batman definitely belongs on the Great Real Names thread.

"Oh honey, we got a Christmas card from the Batmans!"

It's like someone being called Ringo Jagger

Wow, I was just going to mention MJ's son Prince, but then I read that his birth name is actually Michael Joseph Jackson Jr. Who knew?

It's like someone being called Ringo Jagger

Jagger Beatle, really

Florida is a state with a bunch of Democrats who are knuckledraggers. I think if Crist were to run against Rick Scott, he'd have a really good chance. xps

http://m.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/paul-ryans-very-mixed-election-day-in-wisconsin-3t7iit7-178024521.html

frum brings it, gregory says romneys problem was tone lmao http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/frum-on-morning-joe-remarkable-15.html

Romney's problem was content. Or, lack thereof.

gregory: 'the fiscal cliff hangs over these legislators' everything upsidedown

http://i.imgur.com/MvvYo.png

hahaha frum listening to mark halprin talk abt leadership

hes had enough!

Frum was saying the same stuff on CNN opposite Mary Matalin yesterday. It was great--you could tell how agitated she was.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2012/11/10/ac-matalin-frum-republican-loss.cnn

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md3pvhJjTh1qzozwoo1_500.gif

I'm at the library and can't play the CNN clip right now, but I love where Matalin patronizingly/contemptuously calls Frum an "intellectual."

DR. KRUGMAN

ha omg now scarborough is making some tortured sanctimonious churchill metaphor abt how terrible it is that the conservative media mislead their audience into believing they had a shot in the election, this is what he said a week ago

“Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a toss-up right now is such an ideologue. They should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops, and microphones for the next ten days, because they’re jokes.”

I liked this quick cutaway to Frum yesterday when Scarborough made his grotesque Churchilll analogy.

http://www.zazzle.com/president_christie_2017_bumper_sticker-128871514419852534

Put on your clown suit and go play in the street

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/11/07/how_ridiculous_gerrymanders_saved_the_house_republican_majority.html

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7125/8164038143_d4746f7d1a.jpg

I'm at the library and can't play the CNN clip right now, but I love where Matalin patronizingly/contemptuously calls Frum an "intellectual."

he says 'agAInst', how much more intellectual can you get

and CANADIAN

frum brings it, gregory says romneys problem was tone lmao http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/frum-on-morning-joe-remarkable-15.html

― lag∞n, Saturday, November 10, 2012 11:44 AM (1 hour ago)

yeah frum killed that

what is even frum's deal these days, how is he still a republican

well he says he loves romney he was just ruined by the party and that although obama has not raised taxes yet he did run on doing just that 'thats why were republicans'

he caught himself and switched from saying 'they' to 'we' when talking about how much the republicans had failed

on the couple times i ordered disgusting papa johns during election season i made sure to more then offset the cost with a donation to boldprogressives. made for an expensive pizza.

Frum and Larison are the only conservatives I still read but only because they agree with me.

on the couple times i ordered disgusting papa johns during election season i made sure to more then offset the cost with a donation to boldprogressives. made for an expensive pizza.

― bnw, Saturday, November 10, 2012 1:40 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

your process and DJP's are going to be streamlined by the 2016 election when Morbius is delivering pizza

Frum and Larison are the only conservatives I still read but only because they agree with me.

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, November 10, 2012 1:46 PM (8 minutes ago)

you read the corner every day!

Matthew Dowd has been good on This Week as of late. I suspect he's drifting in Frum's direction.

I "read" The Corner.

haha i know

Dowd, a political consultant/bounty hunter, is good and shrewd but he's drifting towards Gergenlandia.

Located next to Halperinstan, right?

new Soviet bloc iirc

so Romney's voteshare at current count is down to...47% (.9...but still)

Another article on the shift in the Cuban-American community.

sooooo was ordering a couple pizzas from papa johns on election night a little tone-deaf on my part?

also taste-deaf

Papa John's is the worst

so sorry to hear you're deaf and ageusiatic gbx :(

i looked up that word on the internet just now

What, do none of you have Papa Murphys by you?

This trend of businesses firing people cos Obama got elected. Are there 4-year-olds running these companies or something? This is some playground-level "I'm gonna destroy my sand castle cos teacher says we have to share" thinking.

Or, non-thinking. This is literally a public temper tantrum.

dont think theres any evidence of a trend

prob a repost but if u go to mitt romney's fb page (https://www.facebook.com/mittromney) and keep on refreshing u can watch the # of likes drop

I would not have handled well seeing this facial expression every day until 2017.

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/c223.0.403.403/p403x403/396576_10151158799556121_1554362058_n.jpg

Mitt Romney

2 hours ago.

From the bottom of our hearts, Ann and I thank you for your support, prayers, efforts, and vote. We are forever grateful to every one of you.

Darlene McGonigle After all the things that were said about you from people that had a lot to gain by scaring people about you. I am so glad to have seen you in the campaign. I am glad I checked further and then we saw you really out there and I have to say, I am so impressed with who you are. You are a hard worker. You are a smart man and you know how to make money. I applaud you that you can take a failing business and bring it up and sell it. I do think some just can't keep the ball rolling with a business as you can. I love the fact you are a Christian man. I am glad you stand up for your principles. At first I really wanted you to fight meaner to assault the attacks that Obama and his people were making on you. Now, I am glad you did not stoop and lower yourself to play the dirty game that Obama and his workers did. Had you lessened yourself, then that is another good man shot down in a sinners eyes, and we need all the good men we have. Thanks for running and sharing who you are with us.

Marie Jenkins Ya when they show the map he should have won most of it was red.they cheated

Denise Gallaway To all of you that think this country owes you GET this through your thick heads we owe you nothing I happen to be one of the hard working people of this nation and what are you nuts going to do when we get tired of supporting you and you have mo skills so you cant work for yourselves grow up you wanted obama now you live with a lieing cheeting underhanded cheet hope this country is still here in four years oh common cents tells you cant spend your way out of dept just a dumb idea . A Gallaway

sorry. i'll stop. choice quotes from mitt's facebook could be a good thread though. oh so much richness to choose from.

She was working so hard she never learned how to punctuate or spell. POBRECITO.

Marie Jenkins Ya when they show the map he should have won most of it was red.they cheated

This. I still hear this.

prob a repost but if u go to mitt romney's fb page (https://www.facebook.com/mittromney) and keep on refreshing u can watch the # of likes drop

I just spent a minute going back and forth between his and Obama's, during which Romney dropped by about 75 and Obama added 100.

prob a repost but if u go to mitt romney's fb page (https://www.facebook.com/mittromney) and keep on refreshing u can watch the # of likes drop

this is really the best best thing

Haha

Every time I think the number has stabilized it drops AGAIN

sorry. i'll stop. choice quotes from mitt's facebook could be a good thread though. oh so much richness to choose from.

― scott seward, Saturday, November 10, 2012 10:00 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lotsa talk about firing workers who like obama on facebook

I quoted 乒乓's post about Facebook on Facebook, and I've already gotten one like. I feel just like Jon Lovitz in The Wedding Singer--Mitt's life is falling apart, and I'm reaping all the benefits.

The joke is that I can hear Mitt doing Lovitz's lines in my head, it's a perfect fit.

Thankfully I've been saved from myself. Someone named Alene Skousen Bowler posted the following on Mitt's page: "Have you noticed if you ever post anything against Obama it won't print it. I have several times." I couldn't resist replying: "It's part of the giant conspiracy--try to carry on with your life." Big surprise--my comment won't print.

to me it seems like, idk, the death star exploding over endor and then being on endor watching all of the tiny bits and pieces of it burn up during reentry

Larry Boyd I am grateful to you both, Governor. It was so refreshing to see some competence and class in action. So sad that so many are blind to truth. I feel that the dems played upon fears to women that contraception would be a thing of the past, even though your record as Gov. in Mass. proved otherwise. And I respect you and agree with you that abortion is so hurtful. Don't we all deserve the chance to at least draw breath? And in cases of rape, the RU486 pill could be used instead of waiting to stop life. Thank you for running a race that must be punishing in its pace. You could surely have sat back on your wealth and not tried to make a difference, but you gave so much of yourself - Ann, too. I think America missed a great opportunity. As I read my Bible each morning, it seems that we are repeating mistakes of the past which will have heavy consequences. People have been deceived. I am a degreed professional with my own business that is just about to bust. It is a burden to think that the families of the ladies that work for me depend on my business, and nobody has gotten a raise in 5 years. May divine providence continue in my little world. And may God continue to bless you and yours. Btw - I still find myself humming "I want Romney" to the tune of "I want candy"! It puts a smile on my face in these truly scary times. Your strength and grace are a beautiful thing- keep on! Tiffany Boyd, DMD

I am a degreed professional with my own business that is just about to bust.

It is a burden to think that the families of the ladies that work for me depend on my business, and nobody has gotten a raise in 5 years.

May divine providence continue in my little world.

Btw - I still find myself humming "I want Romney" to the tune of "I want candy"! It puts a smile on my face in these truly scary times.

Feeling this.

I'm more prone to "Da Do Rom Romney."

imagine if your boss kept singing 'I want romney' all day at work

http://www.tubecityonline.com/almanac/images/11071984bloomcounty.jpg

romney on the beach there's nothing better
http://i2.crtcdn1.net/images/ed/2012/05/25/921799.jpg
but i like romney when it's wrapped in a sweater
http://i2.crtcdn1.net/images/ed/2012/05/25/921799.jpg

hurley more like *hurls*

Michael Graham I am so bummed, I was excited about you, as a small manufacturer I was ready to buy a new machine on wednesday, I could have created a new job. now I'm thinking a used one so I dont have to hire anybody.you have my vote always!
about a minute ago · Like

this is kinda just a fantastic way for a lot of people to do what they were gonna do anyway, it's true w/ the bosses firing people, but I bet there are lots of parents who are like 'sorry kids you can't get ice cream tonight, obama won'

I was probably gonna create a new job at mcdonalds but instead you guys have to eat sugar packets for dessert

'sorry sam...I just don't think we can be together any longer...it's not you...or me...it's obama'

'and its a shame because if we stayed together our relationship would be creating new jobs'

if these businesses aren't successful enough to handle providing their employees with healthcare isn't that just the free market thinning the herd?

ive read like twenty articles that same the same thing but i still cant quite comprehend romney holding the same theory as the unskewed poll guy who everyone had been mocking for a month http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/why_romney_was_surprised_to_lose_his_campaign_had_the_wrong_numbers_bad.html

feel like his presidency would look a lot like the campaign in that regard

It's basically like they just looked at the economic numbers and said, "This guy can't win, the unemployment rate will kill him, all we have to do is show up." I think they really believed that, they kept talking about how "fundamentals" were going to decide the race. Almost like it was an abstract thing that didn't require any real human action.

Also, can't possibly roll my eyes hard enough at this: Romney advisers say it was impossible to compete against Obama’s huge war chest.

Richie Romney and his SuperPACs whining about a war chest is just ...

"Abortion is so hurtful"

Missed this--one of the more entertaining hissy fits I've seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UNO5_I3YDc

"Derision, division, destruction, distraction"--she sounds like Jackie Chiles.

she's drunk, right?

She's a shotglass of Butterschapps away from going full Dankert.

what a fuckin ghoul

"I don't care what you think, Van..."

Love when they call the election a squeaker. Romney wins 332-206, 51-48%, you can just hear Matalin and Rove and the rest saying, "Close call--we better tread lightly."

http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2012/election/

this is kinda just a fantastic way for a lot of people to do what they were gonna do anyway, it's true w/ the bosses firing people, but I bet there are lots of parents who are like 'sorry kids you can't get ice cream tonight, obama won'

the thing is most of the people you see saying "I'M A SMALL BUSINESS AND I'M NOT HIRING ANYBODY" are like internet marines, they're not actually business owners at all - they're people who fantasize about being able to punish the president for winning by fucking up the business they don't actually own. lotta pathology out there imo

internet marines?

you mean people who say they are marines on the internet?

The Secret Marines

Love when they call the election a squeaker. Romney wins 332-206, 51-48%, you can just hear Matalin and Rove and the rest saying, "Close call--we better tread lightly."

Dem gains in both house and senate, too. Not enough to take a majority or supermajority in them, respectively, but still the GOP lost ground in all phases.

lollllllllll from that slate article

“It just defied logic,” said a top aide of the idea that Obama could match, let alone exceed, his performance with minorities from the last election.

it shouldn't, but it amazes me how openly disappointed and rueful these guys are that minorities voted

Wtf I remember matalin being annoying but not pyscho...her &carville still aren't married are they?

this is kinda just a fantastic way for a lot of people to do what they were gonna do anyway, it's true w/ the bosses firing people, but I bet there are lots of parents who are like 'sorry kids you can't get ice cream tonight, obama won'

the thing is most of the people you see saying "I'M A SMALL BUSINESS AND I'M NOT HIRING ANYBODY" are like internet marines, they're not actually business owners at all - they're people who fantasize about being able to punish the president for winning by fucking up the business they don't actually own. lotta pathology out there imo

―Inconceivable (to the entire world) (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned),Saturday, November 10, 2012 6:32 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Joe the Plumber didn't actually own a plumbing business right?

woah matalin looks like she hasn't slept since the election in that vid, screencap looks like a goddamn mug shot

you mean people who say they are marines on the internet?

yah - feel like there's tons of specifically marines-based personae online, I thought I saw like a 60 minutes about False Marine Syndrome but I'm not getting a hit on that? but yeah, people in comments threads who Own A Business And I'm Firing Everybody!! ...no you're not, you work at Long John Silver's man, be honest, it's cool

Really enjoyed this piece I just noticed -- it's a dude's status update from two days ago, but damn:

https://www.facebook.com/rob.ellsworth.10/posts/10100232574271105

Reminds me of the Firesign Theatre line -- "Mister Armchair Quarterback, Mister Wheelchair General"

xp

Good find, Ned.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/333184/kristol-yup-time-raise-taxes-rich-people-eliana-johnson

this election was particularly good for schadenfreude, all those billions of repub dollars wasted, romney somehow actually thinking he was going to win, racist twitter posts, i've been soaking it all up

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/liberal_schadenfreude_obama_s_win_brings_out_too_mean_gloating_on_social.html

I'm with you--loving it.

after an election losers should be forced to hit the talk show circuit and be good sports while the hosts make fun of them and play videos of all their gaffes

I think that's basically exactly what Nixon and Dole did after losing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ihI5_Vg6A

http://i.imgur.com/oJMP5.jpg

hoho yep dave i did really think i was gonna win *forced smile, shrug*

all those billions of repub dollars wasted

I think part of Rove's reaction to Ohio being called was genuine and utter bafflement that he spent $300 million for absolutely nothing. I expected him to say, "But I've got the receipt right here!"

receipt = Megyn Kelly

reference to pat secretly rolling a tape recorder to capture nixon at the piano seems ironic now

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/twitter%20gloat%201.png

obv smugness can grate, but i can't really be bothered to empathize with republicans, seems pretty clear that most people in america will benefit from the obama win so gloating at their current suffering is also a form of celebrating their long-term good fortune, they just don't know it yet. also the most vocals ones among them say pretty nasty things all the time, including post-election, harder to take the counterfactual high road when they are currently saying tonnes of horrendous shit about dem constituents

can Lindsey Graham even speak English?

"It's one thing to shoot yourself in the foot, just don't reload the gun," Graham said. "So I intend not to reload this gun when it comes to Hispanics."

i know we stopped talking about this a few days ago, but re:

And then, on January 1, 2013, we will all awake to a different, substantially more liberal country. The Bush tax cuts will have disappeared, restoring Clinton-era tax rates and flooding government coffers with revenue to fund its current operations for years to come. The military will be facing dire budget cuts that shake the military-industrial complex to its core. It will be a real-world approximation of the old liberal bumper-sticker fantasy in which schools have all the money they require and the Pentagon needs to hold a bake sale.

what's hilarious about this to me is that if wingnuts were even slightly paying attention, they would realize that obama's inevitable compromise to avoid the nightmare of existing in a substantially more liberal country is proof that, uh, he's not substantially liberal. and it's also funny to think about what would happen if republicans were in power with the inverse situation - all they have to do is sit tight until January 1, and somehow a bunch of tax cuts for the wealthy go into effect and the military gets a huge boost to their budget? Can you imagine Reagan or W compromising rather than just letting it happen?

GOP '13: "We will not shoot Hispanics."

I read the Yglesias piece in Slate, and the logic seems flawless: don't do anything, take a short-term political and economic hit, expired Bush tax cuts + military cuts hugely cut into the deficit, then pass a middle-class tax cut to restart the economy. The only thing is, you're still dealing with Republicans on the latter. Even though not to pass such a cut would hurt the economy and hurt themselves politically--there's no way they could rationalize not passing it--do they care anymore? Wouldn't they be happy to take a ruined economy for another chance at a failed Obama presidency? Serious question--or am I missing something?

we support a self-shooting policy

Military cuts might be the biggest problem. I can see the Republicans spinning it as Benghazi Two: Open Season America.

I get weak in the knees thinking about how pissed the Republicans are if the do-nothing-and-let-the-tax-cuts-expire approach gets used, ""'"//[[[//////////\].\]'
\
][
{+{/{//”/[/[/[[//{/=[[/[/[/[?[=÷[=/[/≥
lk

half of that post was written by a 14-month-old baby can you guess which half

what's hilarious about this to me is that if wingnuts were even slightly paying attention, they would realize that obama's inevitable compromise to avoid the nightmare of existing in a substantially more liberal country is proof that, uh, he's not substantially liberal.

― Z S, Sunday, November 11, 2012 2:35 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lotta blogger dudes are talking like its a given that obamas gonna take the plunge but im not sure where this is coming from, im p afraid hell do some fake ass grand bargain, tho the gop has said no higher taxes for the rich which should be a non starter, which brings me to something i wondered abt the previous grand bargin proposals how much of it was just political positioning, he mustve known the gop would pass on any tax increases at all, also how much did liberal dems hold their fire on ss cuts knowing that the gop wasnt gonna bite

anyway i dont trust obama to play it tuff on this one but am open to the possibility of being pleasantly surprised

expired Bush tax cuts + military cuts hugely cut into the deficit

they won't hugely cut into the debt considering they're both certain to be bargained down

I get weak in the knees thinking about how pissed the Republicans are if the do-nothing-and-let-the-tax-cuts-expire approach gets used, ""'"//[[[//////////\].\]'
\
][
{+{/{//”/[/[/[[//{/=[[/[/[/[?[=÷[=/[/≥
lk

― Inconceivable (to the entire world) (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, November 11, 2012 2:53 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

half of that post was written by a 14-month-old baby can you guess which half

― Inconceivable (to the entire world) (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, November 11, 2012 2:54 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Throw in some $ and you have the beginnings of a perl coder

personally i find it a bit reverse ageist to be assuming 14-month olds are not capable of coherently posting to ilx

i think his approval rating could take a major hit if he takes the nestea plunge, i guess it depends how well dems explain it to americans before it happens, but i think rn just about everyone would freak the fuck out and blame him

that's partly what I was addressing on Friday: he'd have to absorb possible drop in public opinion, Wall Street anxiety, and the ire of Very Serious pundits, plus his own inclination to be a guy who makes deals with enemies.

I think Obama could come through this okay if congress Dems can corner their GOP colleagues and get what they want. If not, congress's approval number are already garbage anyway.

yeah but if there's ever been a time he can be flexible w/ his approval rating it's right now xp

true, and hes got 4 years to make it up again

still a ballsy move though

prob the way to do it is to start by offering up a bill thatll restore everything except the high end tax cuts, then you make a big show of attempting to negotiate w/the republicans, then on the first day of the fiscal cliff you offer up the same bill again, itll be v hard for republicans not to vote for it as at that point its a middle class tax cut / increase in military spending bill w/no tax increases cause theyve already kicked in

for sure, and even more of a ballsy move for anyone running for a seat in 2 years. but the timing is good for a ballsy move, and it rarely is. so it might actually happen. xp

republicans have a huge incentive to make a compromise and we may yet see one if they are a rational body at all. right now they have let's say 5% leverage and obama has 95% leverage. their 5% is the temporary bad press of dysfunctional government brushing off on obama and maybe market dipping. but after we go off the cliff they'll have 0% leverage. it's in their interest to get at least 5% concessions to avert the fiscal cliff. i guess this will be an indication of whether congress has any functionality at all left.

idk if theyre ready, its all so sudden

prob the way to do it is to start by offering up a bill thatll restore everything except the high end tax cuts, then you make a big show of attempting to negotiate w/the republicans, then on the first day of the fiscal cliff you offer up the same bill again, itll be v hard for republicans not to vote for it as at that point its a middle class tax cut / increase in military spending bill w/no tax increases cause theyve already kicked in

― lag∞n, Sunday, November 11, 2012 3:06 PM (3 minutes ago)

maybe we don't have to restore alla the defense spending tho

one man is not a very good sample set but bill kristol's early surrender on this is a v good sign. the gop is still gonna be in freak out mode for a while. maybe we need to convince them that hispanics really, really love raising taxes on millionaires, like it is their favorite thing in the world.

otm xp

asking them to raise taxes especially, going against their core belief

the ~real~ core belief for all politicians is getting reelected

and that can only happen w/ the latino vote, and latinos love this more than they love tacos

maybe we don't have to restore alla the defense spending tho

― all mods con (k3vin k.), Sunday, November 11, 2012 3:10 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would certainly like to see none of the defense spending restored but i kinda doubt theres any will to do so atm

tbf raising taxes on the rich is p much everyones favorite thing

basically the gop is in rebuilding mode and it won't be a year from now.

and taxing rich people still popular. always popular.

xp yep

what woould we put the odds at of having the top rates extended? is it more than a 25% chance?

at least 50-50 I think

yeah that's what i figured/feared

oh wait I misread that, no I think there is at least a 50% chance they're raised

yeah that was poorly worded tbf

100% chance top rates are raised imo. Not necessarily by full amount, but Obama can't not raise them at this point.

how significant a source of revenue would a likely tax on the rich be?

feel like the rich are gonna have to eat a slight tax increase even if its not all the way back to clinton rates, nightmare scenario is obvs dems settling for loop hole closures etc for the revenue end

something like $700B over 10 years iirc. it's a good start

xp

On the Democratic side of the equation, Washington Sen. Patty Murray took a hard line on fiscal cliff negotiations and suggested that Democrats should be willing to go over the cliff if need be, a welcome sign for progressives who are worried that President Obama will cave too easily. “We can’t accept an unfair deal that piles on the middle class and tell them they have to support it,” she said on “This Week” on ABC. “So if the Republicans will not agree with [revenue increases], we will reach a point at the end of this year where all the tax cuts expire and we’ll start over next year. And whatever we do will be a tax cut for whatever package we put together. That may be the way to get past this.”

1 down

thing im really curious abt is if the senate will do anything w/filibuster reform, theres no way theyll get rid of it outright this year but theres a chance they could modify it, harry reid once a staunch traditionist on the matter has been talkin tuff

yes i was gonna ask about that, what are the prospects for that?

lotsa people have...hopefully the modifications are more than just symbolic tho

best would be if they made it so 41 senators needed to be in the chamber to filibuster

very good prospects for something to change - like I'd put it at +75%, very ? when it comes to what that change is

man nate silver has turned us all into deathdrone

haha

we need to start betting imho

mods could you code that in, should only take 5 mins thx

when do we get mod reform

mod reform has very low chances of happening, like 20-30%

Chuck Schumer apparently working on immigration bill w/ Lindsey Graham

i think they should change the name of the filibuster, preferably to something without "buster" in it

filikeaton

imo people should not be ____-busting things, period

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/liberal_schadenfreude_obama_s_win_brings_out_too_mean_gloating_on_social.html

Seems like the writer is saying that Republicans were not gloating in 2004? I seem to remember this:

http://static.musictoday.com/store/bands/2497/product_medium/BXCD020.JPG

whenever anything happens somebody gloats

there are like 60m people who voted for obama, of course like 100,000 people will be obnoxious gloaters

social media has made it more public and makes it easier to highlight the gloatiest of the gloats

my old congressman maurice hinchey, who was pretty great and way more liberal than our district, is retiring after this congress. his old district got changed and the dem who tried to succeed him got creamed by an incumbent republican :(

x-post I guess since I was reading political blogs back in '04 I saw more than my share of Conservagloating

i privately gloated and engaged in extensive schadenfreude

haha 'the gloating was done among family and friends in a small ceremony'

it was a traditional all american gloat

lol

Checking up on Glenn, and it appears that one man's gloat is another man's business opportunity
http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/11/07/glenn-we-are-going-to-double-down/

good idea

Learned something today:

filibuster (n.)
1580s, flibutor "pirate," probably ultimately from Du. vrijbuiter "freebooter," used of pirates in the West Indies as Sp. filibustero. Used 1850s and '60s to describe lawless adventurers from the U.S. who tried to overthrow Central American countries. The legislative sense is first recorded c.1851, probably because obstructionist legislators "pirated" debate.

I miss that dudes creepy apocalyptic ramblings being televised nationally every day. Xpost

And when I woke up at 3:00 in the morning, I realized, boy ... we haven’t fixed it for that cliff, if you invert that fiscal cliff or the cliff that we have made for ourself on almost every front, the educational cliff, the societal cliff, not just the fiscal cliff. If you invert that, it’s a mountain. And we hadn’t even begun to climb the mountain yet. How could we possibly take the steam out of our shovel? We can’t.

donating money to theblaze might be one of the best ways someone on the left can spend their money on politics atm

How could we possibly take the steam out of our shovel? We can’t. Makes you think.

How could we let our lettuce wilt? How could we let our balloon-poodle deflate? How could we let our triceps sag?

glenn beck passing the plate is such a true american vision

May God richly bless your sacrifice, as you give us the strength and the power to deliver value for your investment.

because, as the Bible tells us, nothing is more important to God than money.

Connect that Perlstien article about the GOP con-men up with the Glenn Beck panhandling. Seems like a great illustration of your standard authoritarian social-dominator dynamic, where you get a vast swath of people raised to be unquestioning credulous obedient followers set upon by the sociopathic.

Appearing Sunday on ABC's "This Week" Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), a member of the Democratic leadership, telegraphed her party's intentions if Republicans refuse to accept a tax increase on the wealthy.

"To solve this problem, the wealthiest Americans have to pay their fair share too," she said. "If the Republicans will not agree with that, we will reach a point at the end of this year where all the tax cuts expire and we'll start over next year, and whatever we do will be a tax cut for whatever package we put together. That may be the way to get past this."

Didn't Norquist signal that a pre-Jan. 1 tax deal would be counted as a violation of the sacred pledge, but a tax increase on the wealthy in 2013 would be just "What could we do?"

Just put all House republicans on this bus. Heck, I'll even throw in a Blaze subscription to tide them over on their wild rant filled joy-ride with Norquist at the wheel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozjN_bmfI5c

Checking up on Glenn, and it appears that one man's gloat is another man's business opportunity
http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/11/07/glenn-we-are-going-to-double-down/

Glenn advised listeners to "buy farmland" in the event of an Obama victory

Isn't it the land that gets seized first during a socialist revolution?

personally i find it a bit reverse ageist to be assuming 14-month olds are not capable of coherently posting to ilx.

― all mods con (k3vin k.)

personally I find it pretty humorous that k3v is unaware that the term ageism refers to both prejudice against youth AND the elderly. I'm just gonna assume he's too young to know better... ;)

Most people wouldn't know what to do with farmland anyway. Farming is a knowlege intensive pursuit and ignorant people don't do well with it for the first x years until they learn wtf they are doing.

farm=more places to dig holes to hide your gold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lRN9_zw-Jw

honestly very impressed with the production values of the show

lol he has the oval office mocked up behind him?

XP Re: Perlstien GOP con-men / Glenn Beck panhandling, here's David Frum doing a postmortem on Scarborough:

The real locus of the problem is the Republican activist base and the Republican donor base. They went apocalyptic over the past four years. And that was exploited by a lot of people in the conservative world. I won't soon forget the lupine smile that played over the head of a major conservative institution when he told me that our donors think the apocalypse has arrived. Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex.

The whole 15 minute discussion for the schadenfreude addicts and masochists.

hell I was hard just hearing anybody saying "lupine" on cable television

xp: you don't have to farm to profit from farmland. Plenty of farmers lease farmland, and there are companies that much like rental management companies which will post your property listing(s) and manage the payments. The problem with farmland as an investment is its already experienced a big boom, a lot from Wall St. money flooding in, so there's a very good chance a current entry would be buying at the top.

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/images/c2-70fig1.gif

Rental rates haven't risen nearly as fast, so it makes a lot of sense for farmers to rent and skim value from naive Wall Streeters, rather than pay the carrying costs on the land themselves.

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/html/images/c2-20tbl1.gif

has anyone read the frum kindle single on why romney lost yet?

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/11/09/how-much-did-money-matter/

i love that you have to LEAVE THE EAST to buy farmland??? its a shame that there are no farms in the east. the barren wastelands that are new york and new jersey and new england. don't get me wrong, i'm all for beck's fans moving to the mid-west. i will help them pack.

its p hilarious beck doling out this advice from manhattan

I thought he built his studio complex in texas

hey he moved to texas i stand corrected

Beck's show is broadcast from a blimp slowly circling the globe, 24-7, out of the reach of radio jammers and government tax agencies. Once a week or so it releases the contents of its toilets as ballast. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, he will rain his poo on you.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQK0P-U0qbsqfSVafnBIGJa4uRd6qSIi9jjBH5ViZtzCtqxfT067g

glen beck why is he so bad and hated

has anyone read the frum kindle single on why romney lost yet?

― balls, Sunday, November 11, 2012 6:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha, or his novel?

http://disappearingromney.com/

Now you don't have to bother refreshing Mitt's fb page. You can just watch a plummeting chart in realtime.

that is beautiful

brilliant

Watch it inspire a counter-campaign though (which will still end up being a drop in the bucket). Reminds me of when our 8th grade social studies teacher wanted us to organize a response action to the Russian plot (scooped in the Weekly World News) to have their entire population jump at the same time, knocking the Earth out of its orbit.

Ha I was just thinking that

some one needs to forward that to the mittster

But, I mean, who seriously unlikes an entity?

If O had lost this election it never would've occurred to me to unlike any of the O related pages I'm attached to now. Are most people that hardcore about curating their FB pages?

prob as people see romney posts in their feed theyre goin oh no and deleting that shit

Has that entity been posting stuff? It might turn into a page hawking a Romney book or just have paid republican material pretty soon.

couple thank you posts since the election

http://i.imgur.com/e8lQr.png

have no idea why people would be sick of seeing that famously warm open smile

i like how pleased with himself jamie d. henry looks.

I refreshed Nate Silver's FB page three times, but his likes were static. No mass migration going on.

So you're calling me "Ghetto" Allison?,,,

God I never wanna see Mitt's face ever, ever again

^ can a mod rename this thread xp

But, I mean, who seriously unlikes an entity?

If O had lost this election it never would've occurred to me to unlike any of the O related pages I'm attached to now. Are most people that hardcore about curating their FB pages?

― Raymond Cummings, Sunday, November 11, 2012 10:37 PM (50 minutes ago)

thing is you really liked obama

Ah

Blackboard message on "The Simpsons" tonight: "I will not concede the election until Karl Rove gives me permission"

i see a lot of people like brands these days (or at least facebook wants me to know people are liking them), and i assume they expect to get some free shit. And the chances of Mitt Romney giving people a victory coupon have definitely diminished.

'if you want free stuff vote for the other guy' --mitt romney

Mitt is over, plz move on and march against Obama thx

np marching now

I'd rather march for some specific policy change than against some individual. Makes more sense.

march for marching against obama

howbout an individual who embodies zero policy change?

Morbs' Views: Fair and Balanced

that would be you. and i refuse to march against the morbz.

x-post

no dude, under my policies all the 'stuff' comes to me

countdown until Scalia rage-induced heart attack

and when he falls he falls on top of Alito and Slobbo.

http://whnt.com/2012/11/12/alabama-among-states-petitioning-the-u-s-government-to-secede-from-the-country/

It’s a movement by the residents of at least 15 states, including Alabama, where people have petitioned the government to secede from the United State of America.

It’s something the president would have to sign off on, so it seems to be an unlikely scenario.

I see.

plz plz plz

I would not want to be a pet dog or a living room wall in Alabama after this past week.

we should let one state do this just to show the rest of them why it's actually not in their best interests and that one state should be alabama

Other states where residents are asking to be allowed to secede include Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Kentucky, North Carolina, North Dakota, Indiana, New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Montana, and Oregon.

the mason-dickhead line

i'm guessing that if alabama had to live without federal money it would change its name to Casinostan.

new york seceding from new york is more important than new york seceding from america, but both could also work

come on you cant let alabama go w/o mississippi, it would be lonely, they can to a trinidad and tobago type thing and call their country alabama and mississippi

if they could find a way to grow a cash crop with low labor costs, idk, they could make it work

Indiana couldn't even stand being the only state in the region not observing Daylight Saving Time, how the hell is it going to cope with being its own separate entity?

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petitions

Almost every petition on the front page is for a state requesting to secede.

Raise employment in surrounding states with newly-trained border guards, a big wall around the state.

Ashley Bodel 3 hours ago

Vanessa, I do not care if the man is Black, or if he was purple with polka dots, no one I know is upset about the fact that he is black, as a matter of fact VEEERRRY few people in this country really cares about that fact. Ma'dam please stop being so racist to assume that all white people are against black people. That is water under the bridge and that fact is most white people are not racist at all, but because of black people paranoia like yours your own people have become racist. Please have a think about how you word things again.
Why I actually dislike the man, is because he has lied, cheated, manipulated and pretty much done everything he could to damage this country. Sure Obamacare might have been a good thing, if EVERYBODY got it, but now thanks to him there is a gap, people who do not work and sit on welfare are pretty much all taken care of, people who are rich do not have to worry about it, but your average working american, (who can be Black, Hispanic, Asian and whatever. ) can pretty much no longer have health care. It has now officially become cheaper for companies to pay the fines then to pay for people healthcare and that is what they are doing. Yet these people are working, and thus can not get Obamacare at the moment. What about those people hm? What about the countles vets I see on the street of ALL colors because of yes Obama?
And as for god, he left this country a looong time ago.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20121112_In_59_Philadelphia_voting_wards__Mitt_Romney_got_zero_votes.html

Georgia not even capitalising it's name on the petition, have some price, Georgia, hold your head up.

No, wait, stop.

*pride.

Harris, in an interview, said he works for the GOP mostly because he believes city neighborhoods need attention from both parties.

"I open the door to the community and let them be exposed to diversity in the political party," Harris said. "I want political community-based leverage."

Harris cast his vote for Romney, but he's also an Obama fan.

"I love both of those people," he said.

I don't think I have ever in my life seen someone say "I love both presidential candidates!"

"Yankees, Red Sox, I wish both teams could win!"

man, not even a single person accidentally voting for Romney, that is crazy

there are like 60m people who voted for obama, of course like 100,000 people will be obnoxious gloaters

I had no idea the board had that many registrants

lurkers, silently gloating

the mason-dickhead line

Deserves to be noted.

Although voter registration lists, which often contain outdated information, show 12 Republicans live in the ward's third division, The Inquirer was unable to find any of them by calling or visiting their homes. [...] A few blocks away, Eric Sapp, a 42-year-old chef, looked skeptical when told that city data had him listed as a registered Republican. "I got to check on that," said Sapp, who voted for Obama.

got to check on that he said looking nervously around as his neighbors sharpened knives and slowly hit baseball bats into their hands

So on those petitions, the administration is supposed to provide some response to anything with more than 25,000 signatures.

"Thank you ALABAMA for expressing your interest in/concern about SECEDING. The issue of STATES WITHDRAWING FROM THE UNION is one of great interest and concern to this administration. Please rest assured we will give diligent consideration to your request for THE PERMISSION TO FORM YOUR OWN THIRD-WORLD COUNTRY. God bless America."

I had no idea the board had that many registrants

They'd probably be more visible presences here if strawmen didn't have such a hard time typing.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11/man-with-romney-tattoo-on-face-is-disappointed.html

tipsy, I'm stealing that and posting it in the comments.

“I’m a tattoo guy, and it was something fun,” he said. “I was trying to make politics fun. I didn’t change no lives; I’m no hero. But I shed blood for this campaign, and I’m glad to know that I did all that I could.”

“I’m the guy who has egg all over his face, but instead of egg, it’s a big Romney/Ryan tattoo. It’s there for life.”

this dude is hilarious

if they could find a way to grow a cash crop with low labor costs, idk, they could make it work

if alabama seceded how quickly would they reinstate slavery?

immediately but its the year 2012 and even alabama is a more progressive place - they would allow white people to be enslaved too

also you can now earn your way out of slavery by being on a team that wins a bcs game

debt slavery has a long illustrious past and i'm sure there are tons of suitable candidates in alabama

Okay northerners, here's where I have to step in. There are elements in the southeast that are backwards and contrary and regressive, but saying they'd reinstitute slavery is pretty ridiculous.

mordy doesn't stand for mordant, does it

Is it though? xp

It is.

Considering their fairly retrograde views on economics, debt, personal responsibility, their history of human rights violations in both actual slavery and post-emancipation Jim Crow Laws and racial violence, and the extreme economic hit their society would take leaving the United States, I don't think it's totally insane to wonder whether we'd see a reemergence of debt bondage in Alabama.

It's already in place, it's legal, it's not technically based on skin color, it's called the service sector of American employment, etc etc

how much do you think a person would cost, just hypothetically

depends on their skills, like could you have a computer programmer slave?

I mean obv not in alabama

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Winston

i'm pretty sure Walmartistan will handle the slave situation with professionalism and care.

http://www.cepro.com/images/uploads/walmart_installations.jpg

depends on their skills, like could you have a computer programmer slave?

― iatee, Monday, November 12, 2012 11:30 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean obv not in alabama

― iatee, Monday, November 12, 2012 11:31 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, because Alabama is only home to about a full third of Nasa's engineering force, so you're right...nobody there could possibly understand a computer.

I read that they use a huge catapult

Captain Save-a-Gomer

w/ a confederate flag on it

I mean obv not in alabama

You could definitely have a computer programmer slave in Alabama. He'd be the smartest computer programmer you've ever met, but he'd also live in Huntsville and have a government job. So that's a problem when they secede.

Johnny Fever otm, basically

I'm not in favor of secession, but for iatee to keep pretending that parts of the country he doesn't like aren't vital to the nation's economy is consistently one of the most boneheaded things to occur on ilx.

Is Alabama vital to the nation's economy?

if they could find a way to grow a cash crop with low labor costs, idk, they could make it work

if alabama seceded how quickly would they reinstate slavery?

― Mordy, Monday, November 12, 2012 10:14 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

immediately but its the year 2012 and even alabama is a more progressive place - they would allow white people to be enslaved too

― iatee, Monday, November 12, 2012 10:15 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If Alabama wanted cheap labor so badly, why did they pass one of the most restrictive illegal immigration laws in the country? Crops were withering in the fields out there this year because there were no workers who'd do that job anymore.

we didn't say they were smart about it

JF, iatee embraced his part as an ilx troll quite a while back, do keep up.

alabama gets $2.03 for every tax dollar it pays and things like NASA are basically there because of politix not because there's some natural vitality in the alabama economy

cool.

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama will meet with corporate executives at the White House as he uses the nation’s fiscal problems to start rebuilding relations with business leaders. Though many of them backed Mitt Romney, scores have formed a coalition to push for a budget compromise similar to the one the president seeks. He hopes to enlist them to persuade Republicans in Congress to accept higher taxes on the assurance that he can deliver Democrats’ votes for future reductions in fast-growing entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

I wish the NYT had asked the administration about Sen. Murray's idea.

Nothing brings out the alpha-asshole in blue-staters like mocking the South. Andrew O'Hehir:

Maybe the fact that the Christian-Caucasian-libertarian-capitalist-nationalist cultural faction has absorbed another bitter political defeat will spark some new dynamic in American life. But I wouldn’t bet on it. An angry, declining minority that believes itself oppressed can be an unstable and dangerous phenomenon. The worst sin of the secular-multicultural-communitarian-internationalist-environmentalist faction (other than all that oaky California chardonnay) is its smugness and superiority, its sense of historical mission and its confidence that it has nothing to learn from its diminished opponents and bears no responsibility for their plight. Pride goeth before the fall, as a text prized by both sides for different reasons puts it. If we can’t find a way to address the American cultural divide, beyond insults and quadrennial beauty contests, it is sure to destroy us.

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/10/hey_liberals_you_havent_won_the_culture_war/

ya I don't think only 15% of white people in alabama voted for obama because they were sad about being mocked but it's interesting to learn that you secretly believe what america needs is 'a way to address the american cultural divide' morbs

the american cultural divide: a collection of states that receive an inordinate amount of money from the government, that historically supported slavery and jim crow, that don't believe in evolution, are against gay marriage, want to ban all abortion, contraception, and teach abstenance-only education, that believe global warming is a myth, that want to defund government social safety net programs, build a wall across the southern border, oppose all gun restrictions, etc. the rest of the united states is far from perfect but i think any defeat that this particular political/social movement suffers is good news for everyone in the world.

yup

also you can now earn your way out of slavery by being on a team that wins a bcs game

― iatee, Monday, November 12, 2012 11:16 AM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah honestly i think alabama would run into a lot more problems with the NCAA than the USA over secession. those guys don't fuck around

i don't secretly believe in shit.

by all means continue cheerleading for secessionist tinfoil hat types tho

"sure to destroy us" is pretty tinfoil

Mordy OTM

well it's all a matter of what will destroy us first. NYC underwater is gonna be quite a hit for the elites.

this is so stupid, the country is more tightly knitted together economically and culturally than it ever has been, and differences in ideology that have a chance of making a political difference are comparitively minor

do you really think O'Hehir was suggesting some sort of political rapprochement on those dead issues?

other than college sports, i can't think of one thing that alabama does/is known for. other than negative things. i don't have anything against the people there. i'm scared of them, but i don't hate them or anything.

apostate william kristol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj59fB9WKus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fachmkjXcoA

Fred Wesley is from Mobil Alabama

yeah yeah people come from there. people come from everywhere. rich musical tradition, blah, blah. i mean lately.

economically sure, but as far as 'cultural political issues' go, I'm not sure you could say it's more knitted together today than the 80s/90s. dubya and obama were both polarizing figures.

xp

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/03/other-notes-from-alabama-and-mississippi.html

I mean 26% of people believe in evolution, 14% of people think obama's a christian etc. etc. and uh...67% are finally okay w/ interracial marriage. pretending like there's not an enormous cultural divide in this country is kinda ridiculous.

I'm from Mobile, Alabama and I am here to answer any and all questions you might have about this backwoods wonderland.

i think you have to try to quantify 'enormous'

...and St Rachel Maddow is not going to fix it. xxp

I guess I shouldn't be so quick to judge all Alabamans based on the small cross section of smart and kind people I've met from the state. I do know that I'd live in Alabama before San Jose, CA.

I think those stats are a good place to start w/ that quantification. we live in a country where some people are arguing for gay marriage while other parts still haven't fully got on board w/ interracial marriage.

67% are not necessarily okay with interracial marriage, but believe it should be legal. The remaining 21% believe it should be illegal.

have no doubt large swathes of Alabama are at least prettier than fucking San Jose

Anybody who would choose to live in Alabama is certifiable.

Interracial marriage was taught as a sin in my Christian High School. My good friend who is reasonably intelligent and nice still doesn't believe in it.

nobody is going to get me to defend rachel maddow or san jose fwiw

there's been a major 'divide' of some sort in the u.s. for decades. as crazy as it is i don't think the anti-obama stuff quite measures up to the intensity of the tensions over the civil rights movement or vietnam.

anti-bama vs. anti-O-bama

well, citizens killed each other with some regularity over the civil rights movement and Vietnam

That O'Hehir thing is either nonsense or I'm just persnickety today. Also WHY IS HE NOT EVEN MENTIONING AUTHORITARIANISM?

it was easier to get away with it xp

Peggy Noonan, 2011:

The other day a Republican political veteran forwarded me a hiring notice from the Obama 2012 campaign. It read like politics as done by Martians. The 'Analytics Department' is looking for 'predictive Modeling/Data Mining' specialists to join the campaign's 'multi-disciplinary team of statisticians,' which will use 'predictive modeling' to anticipate the behavio...r of the electorate. 'We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions...

Chicago Tribune article today (not online yet) mentions that the analytics department put a photo of Mars on the wall.

What better way to bring some locales into the 21st Century than by heavily reducing its federal funding for infrastructure, education, health and welfare.

wait, what's wrong with san jose?

the cultural divide we have is a legacy of earlier divides and compared to those it is way more attenuated than it was. that o'hehir piece is pretty dumb.

My own fundamental cultural precepts point toward the belief that one side descends from the Enlightenment, more or less, while the other traces its roots (again, more or less) back to the medieval Church.

lol dummy which one do you think you're in?

san jose is a place where everyone is a computer programmer, but it is not culturally preferable to alabama

san jose is just freeways and tech campuses and some houses that look like boring houses but cost $2m, there is no there there

the person living in the $2m dollar house bought it from vc funds toward his iphone app

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9S0pzCBkLTk/0.jpg

"I think even the president can agree that the tutorial missions of Assassin's Creed 3 take far too long"

i wish everyone in the scary states well. may god bless them all.

Maine is the scariest state. You've got the Casper reboot and all of those little shops selling miniature lighthouses next to gray foggy beaches.

old fishermen in galoshes with hook hands

i only think of maine from stephen king books so i def believe you

what kind of polling does king do before writing those books, I wonder

Certainly photosofwhitepeoplecrying.com and the like aren't exactly helping with the right thinking minorities are out to get them.

it's time to tear down the tumblrs that are causing so much strife in america today

I mean yeah it's not a major thing but I really don't like the whitepeoplemourningromney thing -- mean-spirited, and very much in the obnoxious tradition of white people using "white" as a pejorative to signify superior racial sensitivity or something.

I mean I really think the approach shouldn't be "lol white people u lost america" but "there is no reason an america with more room for non-white people has to have less room for white people"

do you think that would make a good tumblr?

Mainly, it's pretty disheartening that "someone says something mean about someone else on the internet" is even considered news.

xxp That's not actually true in the sense of declining privilege, though!

lots of white people voted for obama

"I think even the president can agree that the tutorial missions of Assassin's Creed 3 take far too long"

― captain angeroo (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, November 12, 2012 12:49 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dying

the gop operates thanks to and in the interests of a white voting bloc. there is nothing offensive about point that out, even in tumblr form.

I mean it's actually something that *needs* to be talked about more publicly

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/11/us-politics-absurd-britain-george-iii

While the American founding fathers were in conscious reaction against England, they unconsciously echoed its political culture. With the constitution cementing that in place, it means that American politics today is closer to British politics at the time the Americans rebelled than British politics today, and Obama resembles George III more than David Cameron (politically rather than personally, that is). He is both head of state and chief executive, and does not need, or indeed now have, a congressional majority. Like the king, he has to barter with the legislature, using cajolery, bribery or appeals to loyalty

what if they are offended by our tumblrs is such concern trolling

xxp That's not actually true in the sense of declining privilege, though!

― purveyor of generations (in orbit), Monday, November 12, 2012 1:08 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok but a lot of the lol white people who tend to actually buy into the "white people losing america" thing aren't all that privileged, and I really doubt the purpose or efficacy of sending the message "sorry working class white guy who no longer has a union job or a pension, you are going to have to give up your privilege."

san jose is just freeways and tech campuses and some houses that look like boring houses but cost $2m, there is no there there

― iatee, Monday, November 12, 2012 12:43 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when i was a kid driving to my grandparents house in san jose it was apricot orchards for miles, now nothin but computer programers as far as the eye can see

Yeah plenty of white people. White men, even. But take the crackpot who voted Romney who thinks minorities are out to get him and grab his stuff, and he hears about a website featuring LOL WHITE PEOPLE. Wouldn't that reinforce his worst suspicions.

I get voting demographics shifts and all but framing it like this rather than "LOL RICH PEOPLE" or something else is a dumb trend. Imagine post-Romney win and there's a bunch of "LOL BLACK PEOPLE" websites instead.

ok but a lot of the lol white people who tend to actually buy into the "white people losing america" thing aren't all that privileged, and I really doubt the purpose or efficacy of sending the message "sorry working class white guy who no longer has a union job or a pension, you are going to have to give up your privilege."

when exactly do you think they should be getting this message?

"What if they are offended by our tumblrs" is not the point at all, it's "maybe we should not have a snarky attitude toward everyone who didn't vote for Obama and instead try to figure out how more of them might come to see that Obama represents their interests"

obama doesn't represent their interests

their interests are 'white people don't lose america'

oh come on

so, petraeus. are we talking about petraeus here? or not.

"What if they are offended by our tumblrs" is not the point at all, it's "maybe we should not have a snarky attitude toward everyone who didn't vote for Obama and instead try to figure out how more of them might come to see that Obama represents their interests"

― drunk 'n' white's elements of style (Hurting 2), Monday, November 12, 2012 1:14 PM (27 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im just gonna wait for them to die personally

white people going "lol white people" is corny and annoying for reasons i've posted about many times before but feeding a white supremacist's persecution complex is not really one of those reasons

CIA Director Resigns xp

al otm

http://i.imgur.com/9Q6HD.gif

i don't buy the tom frank/kansas/"voting against their interests!!" line, because i take people's stated interests at face value. i think "false consciousness" is a pointless argument. if white panic is what some people are about, then that's what they're about. that's their interest! *dusts off hands*

xp ty lag99n. great thread title.

if only we could convince these people who believe interracial marriage should be illegal using calm and patient arguments, and we start and get so close but then no we just screw it all up cause they see the tumblrs making fun of them and then they get so bummed out

if only we could stop clinging to our tumblrs and twitters

i object to that gif until she does the double vincent vega move and i give in

everyone on ilx needs to get on board w/making fun of white people asap

i'm ok with making fun of at least one white person.

but include some black people or you'll end up like lena dunham

why is some dude following me around so cruelly making fun of me, i suspect its because hes white

::gives lagoon a new hat, waits for him to get attached to it, then throws it in the river::

that guardian article re: American political system is really interesting, thx

I had no idea that senators were chosen by the state legislature!

Mobile is great to visit. awesome seafood, state's largest flea market on the weekend was great to see when I was there last summer. Downtown has this weird mix of French colonial and Art Deco. No open container laws, etc.

No comic book store, tho.

come on that lol white people romney voter site was funny. if you didn't think that was funny you extra-white and need to get the prune out your butt.

the pre-eminent comic book store used to be Sincere Comics, and it was the worst place ever. xpost

ive long suspected that infamous internet truth teller and zing legend some dudes absence from the wdyll thread was an attempt to hide his embarrassing whiteness, but now through this photo i obtained from anonymous internet sources i have proof, as you can see his fascination w/hats is also in full display

http://i.imgur.com/0ULEg.jpg
ilxor.com poster 'some dude'

that's not me, but it is your hat that i stole

this explains so much

state's largest flea market on the weekend

fwiw, every city in Alabama has what it claims to be the state's largest flea market.

I resent the implication that Bristol Palin, along with her family, is a member of the human species.

Everything about this is priceless.

That leaves some asking where do I go from where and what about UnSkewedPolls.com. I remain an independent journalist and columnist and will continue to publish articles and commentaries for the readers who read my articles on Examiner.com and my web sites. UnSkewedPolls.com is just one web site and one project I did, and depending on your point of view it was proven wrong, it has run its course or it will fade away. It is merely a web site and only part of what I do and will do. There will be other web sites, and the more important web sites I work with will remain in place.

okay i am definitely all for Fleamarketstan.

The flea market was fun, but the number of puppy breeders was off-putting. At least two dudes sold snakes. One of the knife show tables inexplicably had a fully working new pachinko machine, LED screen, etc. No less than six different tables had used and vintage video game systems. Atari Jaguars everywhere.

the fact is that in alabama all fleas are enormous (and ubiquitous)

Ok i gotta rep for GA.

http://s3-media2.ak.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/rK425o0CmC9_t-P1RqCxNA/l.jpg

I think everyone who has read my articles and visited the web sites, including those who supported and agreed with them and those who did not.

please tell me this is not a typo

georgia is a peach! everyone loves georgia. its sweet like candy. (i have no idea what its like...)

Atlanta is fun and polluted

http://i.imgur.com/5L35d.png

bury me here

"and depending on your point of view it was proven wrong."

^^^ best gucci mane chorus that never happened (xpost)

holy lolg∞n

he should start a blog network, unskewed sports, unskewed food...

I wanted to live in Atlanta for a very long time as a younger person, and then I got the opportunity and now I call it home. It's a pretty nice place. Good food. Reasonably easy to get around in (as long as you're not trying to get around between 4-7pm). I could see myself staying for a long time. It feels more like home to me than other places I've lived as an adult.

unskewed credit rating sounds like promising market space imo
xp

Don't actually understand this point in that Guardian article:

Even worse, since the 17th amendment of 1913, senators have been elected by popular vote. Until then, they had been chosen by state legislatures, as is still true elsewhere.

Why "even worse"? I'm not a fan of the ridiculous structure of the Senate, but I don't get why popular vote is somehow worse than having the legislatures appoint. Has this guy seen any of our state legislatures?

they should fill the House of Representatives in a manner similar to selecting ppl for jury duty

i think the "even worse" is meant to link to this sentence in the next paragraph:

"Direct election of the Senate conferred a wholly unjustified appearance of democratic legitimacy on a wildly unrepresentative body."

I think the implication is that the constitution was so shitty that that only came to be in 1913 xp

they should fill the House of Representatives in a manner similar to selecting ppl for jury duty

do you really want to be ruled by old people who had nothing better to do

I mean we kinda are already but at least the democratic process keeps these people one level away from pure power

http://www.examiner.com/article/we-re-riding-that-long-black-train-to-economic-oblivion

Jesus was a Food Stamps kinda guy.

Selling your soul should only be done on the free market.

so much for elvis

I will never forget the man, who instead of saying "I am too busy to perform adequately as a juror" or "I feel a personal bias toward this particular case" to get out of jury duty, chose to say "I do not believe in the American judicial system" with a blank face to the presiding judge.

i had jury duty the other day and only like a third of the people who were called for that day showed up, so they had to let us go since they didn't have enough people to seat a full jury

since the 17th amendment of 1913,

there were others passed that year, eh

i was the only person out of like 50 people who raised their hand when they asked if anyone would be prejudiced against law enforcement in the case. i think i actually just told that on ile somewhere else. only time i had to go to courthouse for jury thing.

I tried as hard as I could to get onto a DWI jury because I wanted to see a live case but I guess the defendant was a massive racist or something because his lawyer kept digging and digging and digging for things in my background that she could use to disqualify me, finally settling on the fact that I knew something like 10-15 kids growing up who died or were irreparably harmed in alcohol-related incidents, most of which involved drunk drivers

when i left the courthouse after being there all day my car had been towed. it was a sign from god. never go to jury duty.

oh man I want to get on a dwi jury so bad

will you be prejudiced against the defendant for driving cars?

would it be perjury if I didn't say so?

The only time I served (the first of four calls) I ate oatmeal and tried to fart often enough for the attorneys to smell them. I was picked. Just my luck that the case involved a civil suit against a candy company.

the only time I got jury duty I was called to the oakland courthouse and the form told me the time, it was like 6 pm or something, then I went there and the courthouse was closed, and I called the official number again and it said 'your jury duty has been completed'

it was super mysterious

if the attorneys are too far away, the farts will diffuse below detection level regardless. You should have valued proximity over productivity

I was on a DWI jury once. Dude was caught driving with a suspended license, with open beers in his car. When he was caught, he was 30 days away from his license being reinstated. We found him guilty. It was kind of infuriating, though, to later learn he had 6 prior DWIs on his record; these were inadmissible as evidence. But his half-empty beer can -- now about two years old -- was admissible. Stank up the jury room.

I sat on a county grand jury all day, twice a week, for three months. Y'all are lazy.

i think the "even worse" is meant to link to this sentence in the next paragraph:

"Direct election of the Senate conferred a wholly unjustified appearance of democratic legitimacy on a wildly unrepresentative body."

Ah. Well, that's silly. I agree with the "wildly unrepresentative" part, but I can't think of anything about the Senate that would be better with appointed members and I can think of a lot of ways it could/would make things worse.

xp:
My only time on jury duty I think the defense wanted me because I said I had a lot of friends who were public defenders. But I still voted to convict the guy...

I worked a temp job once where i was hired for a mock trial, some car company trying to test their legal metal for a really sad accident that happened. Our jury decided in their favor because everything they did was legal but it was pretty eye-opening to see the legal system at work. It seem like 10% facts and 90% presentation is what really counts.

fyi, having relatives that work in law enforcement is a good opening to getting out of jury duty (I had to argue with the lawyer that my retired police officer 2nd cousin and my then-probation officer 1st cousin did not bias me towards or against automatically believing the word of law enforcement professional)

legal metal should totally be a new genre

barristercore

Tortsoise.

so is wave of anti-erskine bowles pieces a good sign that maybe he won't be the next treasury sec or a sign that he's almost definitely the next treasury sec? plz god the former

I walked out of the courtroom having been sentenced (well, suspended judgment) for a dwi and someone was ticketing my parked car because the meter ran out. At that point, I was totally cool with paying a parking ticket, some things are just not that big of a deal.

it was iatee writing the ticket iirc

the ticket said "you have a car, fuck you ($100000000000000000000000)"

sometimes I think it would be awesome to be a traffic cop in new york, but there are quotas etc.

I dun think bowles is gonna be treasury sec

about as likely as Condi Rice being sec of state

without reading any of them, i kinda feel like that's just the press trying to fill the "erskine bowles treasury sec" SEO slot

keep in mind that the press loves centrist fucks like Bowles.

a lot of people are talking about erskine bowles as treasury secretary. will erskine bowles be the next treasury secretary? read our insightful, no-holds-barred take on erskine bowles, possible future treasury secretary.

Still laughing about that Peggy Noonan being confused about data mining quote upthread. Of my friends on the campaign, one was working on integrating GIS voter data from fifty separate state systems, each of which did things differently. The idea that the campaign was reading tea leaves with made-up numbers is pretty far off of reality.

more like Bowels, amirite

the press is also biased towards people that people have heard of because a speculative article about somebody who isn't really a public figure isn't as juicy

erskine bowels and jury doodie

I wonder what it must be like to be Peggy Noonan for a day -- twenty-four hours characterized by swoons of enthusiasm that end with invitations to talk shows to discuss how my swoons are actually the swoons of the body politic. The body politic of course would look like 200 million Ronald Reagans.

1,000 pts of right

http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/9972/large/conservativeisland.jpg?1352608041

bein peggy noonan for a day is the best job in the world is what youre saying

Joe Bide does aight

The body politic of course would look like 200 million Ronald Reagans.

this is the worst takeoff of "Being John Malkovitch" imaginable

Being Ronald Reagan would mean a hearty breakfast every morning, photo ops, reading things from 5X7 cards, and going to bed early with Mommy. What's there to hate?

Another story on the state of things. I didn't know the last bit about Ailes and McConnell:

The sexual harassment scandal around Cain offered a vivid example of the different goals of the two groups. To the entertainment-based right, it was a great opportunity to rally the faithful against a purportedly liberal media targeting a black conservative. It touched almost every erogenous zone for the likes of Rush Limbaugh. But for the operatives and thinkers, the story threatened to tarnish the GOP with a sex scandal and make a martyr out of a marginal figure they were already cringing over before POLITICO reported the harassment charges.

Long after the primary ended, the entertainment-based right was still promoting figures that many in the GOP believe are harmful to the party’s brand. Take Donald Trump, who made regular appearances on “Fox & Friends” all year and delighted in pushing the discredited idea that Obama wasn’t born in America. Why energize black voters and turn off moderates broadly by elevating a buffoonish figure questioning the president’s legitimacy? Because it’s good box office. (To be sure, other nonpartisan outlets, including POLITICO, not to mention Romney himself, did their share of enabling Trump).

“It’s like a weird version of identity politics for people who like trash culture and reality TV,” said Douthat of Trump.

This same financial-political tension also arose two years ago in one of the most high-profile GOP Senate primaries in the country between Grayson and Rand Paul. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, worried that his hand-picked candidate wasn’t getting equal time on Fox to make his case, called Fox President Roger Ailes to ask that Grayson get similar treatment as the oft-interviewed Paul, according to a source familiar with the call. Ailes, who consulted on McConnell’s first Senate race, had tough news for his old friend: Paul was just a better draw.

Really want to wipe the image of touching Limbaugh's erogenous zone from my brain

a) I was referencing the scene where Malkovitch goes through the portal and finds himself in a world full of Malkovitches that just say "Malkovitch", but that's immaterial really since:

b) in 2012, "Being Ronald Regan" would consist of lying in a coffin, decomposing

maybe when we die, we really do go through a portal into ronald reagan's coffin

I tried and failed to think of a "Reagan Reagan" quip.

i loved this description of trump:

"He played very well with blue-collar-type Republicans, and the campaign saw that," said one source in Trump's camp. "If you have no education, and you work with your hands, you like him. It's like, 'Wow, if I was rich, that's how I would live!' The girls, the cars, the fancy suits. His ostentatiousness is appealing to them."

http://nofaceperformance.org/ronald_reagan_gif_1.gif

ronnie sad-eyes bj

they've really got their finger on the pulse of the working man, there

loving that vibrating bologna loaf of a man

we should really do a vbl auto-replace gif for trump

GOP soul searching continues

grover norquist: romney lost because he's a "poopyhead"

http://gawker.com/5959763/that-one-time-grover-norquist-called-romney-a-poopyhead-on-live-tv

there was some brief poopy discussion of that on the election thread a little while ago.

When asked whether Obama's electoral success was a mandate to enact his tax plan, which involves raising taxes for the wealthiest Americans, Norquist offered this gem: that we voted for Obama because his campaign successfully branded Mitt Romney as a "poopyhead."

gawker missed a golden opportunity to say "Norquist offered this nugget" rather than "this gem", imo

loool

Which of the above scenarios do you believe is closer to the truth of what actually happened in the 2012 election?

Scenario 1 -- Massive vote fraud
Scenario 2 -- Some vote fraud
Scenario 3 -- Obama legitimately reelected

Please click submit below to finish the survey.

Scenario 4 -- "Poopyhead"

has the right given up on blaming sandy+christie

come now, there's plenty of blame for everyone

christie is still one of like 3-4 national figures in the republican party right now so they aren't gonna want to shame him too hard

can someone photoshop "Marco Christie."

how many national dem figures are there?

1) obama
2) biden
3) hillary
4) cuomo?

schumer, bill clinton, harry reid, pelosi

mayor dude from Texas is aiming for national status

does Franken count, since he used to be a nationally-known actor/comedian?

sherrod brown, elizabeth warren, al franken

Here's an article on Ohio gerrymandering. GOP has a 3-1 representative advantage despite the state being evenly divided.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/11/in_evenly_split_ohio_redistric.html

I would say there are a few tiers, obama, biden, clinton, reid and pelosi are 'tier 1' in a 'even people who don't follow the news/politics have heard of these people' (tho the recognition numbers for the last two might be kinda depressing)

then cuomo, schumber, franken, warren, jerry brown, etc. are all kinda tier 2, people who follow the news have heard of these people

yup, only gonna get worse if/when supremes overturn voting rights act

haha schumber

sry jerry brown you have to be this important to ride on tier two

I would imagine a higher % of people have heard of jerry brown than know he is currently governor of california

Deval Patrick may get turned into a national figure at some future point; I don't think he's quite there yet but I may be undercounting his national exposure

Mayor of Columbus Michael Coleman was being fast-tracked to the national stage before his wife's brush with the law

also: Cory Booker

tier 2 also contains anyone w/ a scandal in the news over the last year or two, that's really the best way to build yr recognition numbers

aka the Weiner-Spitzer Gambit

"Cory Booker" sounds like the protagonist of an eighties sitcom.

Corey Booker Might Lose!

more like Cory Booker Stole Your Girlfriend

Saw a mention earlier of something I don't know to be true or not, but do you not have to be a seated member of the house to be chose the speaker? Some goon was saying that this would be a perfect time for LOL ALLEN WEST to be given the position, but if that's really a thing in the house rules then WTF.

Speaker Allen West would be a helluva great time.

I'll start the direct-mail and social media campaigns now.

(Slate) More surprisingly, even Romney's fellow losers in last week's election seem to be gaining Facebook fans at the same time he's losing them. Dewey noted that Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein have seen increases in their follower counts since Nov. 6. That suggests that a lot of people aren't just unfollowing Romney because he lost. They're removing him from their list of "likes" out of disappointment or spite--or, perhaps, because "liking" Romney just isn't cool anymore.

Not out of spite, which is not a good reason--I know that from Seinfeld. Also, "anymore" is funny if it's meant ironically, which I assume it is. It's even funnier if it's not.

Doug Ireland (longtime gay muckraker) suggests gay progressives hold Obama accountable, toss their HRC black tie:

http://gaycitynews.com/back-from-the-abyss/

susan rice reportedly a lock at state. gop will lose its shit.

is there any chance Cory Booker seeks the presidency in 2016? because that would cause the GOP to lose their shit so bad and it would be really funny.

driving around the country fixing citizens flat tires, picking up litter

cory booker's a joke guys

yup

'really good at twitter' / everyone come stay at my place I will buy you burritos / etc doesn't scale to state office let alone a national campaign.

wow. missed all the secession talk in the Internet today. 1000% in favor of that.

booker vs christie will be such a great race tho, just as a spectator

and people who are jokes never ever run in the presidential primaries

xp

'really good at twitter' / everyone come stay at my place I will buy you burritos / etc doesn't scale to state office let alone a national campaign.

Post-Citizens United though

haha

for sure feel like the corey brewer debunkers on this message board are being no fun

don't see him jumping in as soon as 2016 but i could see Booker at least being on a ticket as VP at some point -- assuming that the Chris Rock "if we had a black vice president and a white president, i couldn't WAIT to kill the president" rule doesn't apply post-Obama

FBI officials declined to identify the agent, who is now under investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal-affairs arm of the FBI, according to two officials familiar with the matter.

haha maybe i was right about the gov't keeping track of every employees extramarital affairs

a good vp doesn't draw that much attention to him(/her)self

lol wrong thread (xp)

don't most VPs spend a couple years going "HEY LOOK AT ME I SHOULD BE PRESIDENT" before settling for #2?

yeah but they fail at it!

i guess Cheney did that but it was in a quiet, menacing snarl in the ear of a terrified George w bush at a deserted Denny's in Casper, wyoming

Can those of you with GOP relatives please send them this clip of His Highness:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/from-god-himself.html

iatee that makes no sense.

^^phrase i would just keep on the clipboard if i allowed myself to bother even wasting my time talking to iatee more often

if iatee means they fail at being nominated for prez, then yeah

who let some dude into the politics thread anyway

this are not many times when i consider "your mom" an appropriate or even effective response, but this is one of those times.

please spare us, this much sharp wit is too much for this lil thread

also the 100 best cbs sitcoms of the 00s are not gonna organize themselves

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/318/347/a39.gif

guys.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A7jCdDtCYAAMttg.jpg

yesssssssss

haha how did you end up with one?

a kid i was playing basketball with tonight put it on as we were all leaving and i gave him $20 on the spot