US POLITICS election/post-election edition: your country will improve immediately.

np: Sewer Election - Choking In Shit And Decadence

old thread US POLITICS: "I figured clueless was better than argumentative."

Alan Grayson, R.I.P.

He was a delightfully hilarious congressman with his heart in the right place, and one of the creepiest sleaziest campaigners I've ever seen. I will miss him.

i voted! all tea-party ticket.

I voted for Crist.

I love paper ballots, maybe because it's the only time in my adult life where I get to color things in by hand.

yeah, me too, alfred.

I voted but I presently live in the red zone so who gives a fuck (actually I'm presently overseas which is making all this election nonsense feel pleasantly distant).

I think I'll hit .500 today. Yay, democracy.

IL's paper ballots are absolutely enormous. 11x17, maybe? Huge.

it's the only time in my adult life where I get to color things in by hand.

Join the Board of Elections; I understand this is a perk.

He was a delightfully hilarious congressman with his heart in the right place

Is being an abusive egomaniac really having your heart in the right place?

good luck america

if you take everything super-literally then "his heart's in the right place" because a damnation-with-faint-praise sort of deal

Symmetry requires.

Felt pretty good voting against Jan Brewer and for medical marijuana. The usual feeling of throwing ice cubes into the mouth of hell felt less good.

Oh boy. From Slate.

After an excruciating eight years of Bush, the thrill still hasn't worn off for me of once again having an intellectually nimble president, not to mention one who doesn't pride himself on going with his gut when it comes to foreign policy. Whenever I watched Bush speak extemporaneously, I'd feel alternately embarrassed by and for him. I'd be tempted to cover my eyes, as if watching a clumsy figure skater botching double Lutz jumps. And whenever I interacted with someone from another country, I'd feel compelled to mention that I hadn't voted for Bush.

But when I see Obama on television, I'm unfailingly struck by his intelligence and charisma, by his easygoing humor, by the magnificence of his megawatt smile. He just makes me proud, and perhaps this is where I should admit that if there are two categories of Obama critics—conservatives who never liked the guy and have in some cases become unhinged since he was elected, and centrists or Democrats who voted for him but now feel let down—I suspect that, in the visceral nature of my response to our president, I have more in common with the unhinged nut jobs. By this I mean that my Obama admiration is a kind of emotional inverse of the right-wing Obama antipathy: I can pretend it's all about policy, but in truth, it's much more personal. Where his detractors dislike him because of, say, that Muslim vibe he gives off, I like him for similarly nebulous, albeit slightly more factual reasons.
I like that he's married to—and seemingly still quite taken with—a strong, opinionated, gorgeous woman, and that he has two ridiculously cute daughters. I like his mind-bendingly multicultural extended family. I like that in a campaign interview in Glamour magazine, he could fluently and unabashedly talk about Pap smears. I thought that the beer summit of 2009 was delightful. I was even excited when Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, not realizing until pundits explained otherwise that I was supposed to be aghast at its prematurity. And I wasn't a bit offended by Obama's alleged 2008 debate gaffe—a line the otherwise irreproachable Frank Rich mentioned yet again in a column as recently as September—in remarking to Hillary Clinton, "You're likable enough, Hillary." Oh, and did I mention that I actually voted for Hillary in Missouri's Democratic primary? I was one of those Democrats who thought it'd be nice to have an entrée of eight years of Hillary, with Obama as a vice-presidential side, followed by eight years of a more seasoned Obama as the main course. I was always an Obama admirer, but maybe the fact that I was initially rooting for Hillary has prevented me from feeling the disappointment in his presidency expressed by certain Obamamaniacs. So swoony and ardent was their Obama love during the campaign that it couldn't be sustained; my more measured affection, by contrast, has grown over time.

At this point, I love Obama so much that I recently thought if it were 1961, I'd probably display a bust of him in my living room.

CURTIS SITTENFELD was wsnking as he wrote this.

"he"?

That comment -- please tell me it's not from someone paid by Slate -- jibes w/ my belief that when Churchill said democracy was the worst form of government except for all the others, he was emphasizing NO, REALLY, IT SUCKS.

would prefer "He"?

xp

http://asset3.venuszine.com/article_image/image/3209/viewer_wide/CurtisSittenfeld_.jpg?1199395367

well EXCUSE ME for assuming someone named "Curtis" was a guy

In NY I will be voting for the Dems for state AG and comptroller -- both races are polling even and I will gamble that they'll be marginally better than the Repug, esp since the GOP AG guy worked for goddamn Goldman Sachs -- and otherwise voting straight Green where they have a candidate, abstaining from the other races.

NO to reducing term limits (again) to two terms from three (ie fuck you, Bloomberg emperor asshole).

I like his mind-bendingly multicultural extended family.

he could fluently and unabashedly talk about Pap smears

Where his detractors dislike him because of, say, that Muslim vibe he gives off,

Aw, Curtis Sittenfeld. She also, for what it's worth, wrote American Wife, a novel that asks us to imagine George W. and Laura Bush getting it on.

Also, if there was stylist for that photo of Curtis, s/he should be 're-educated'.

a novel that asks us to imagine George W. and Laura Bush getting it on.

And just like that I understand the anti-porn crusaders

I voted this morning. Voted Dems in state races and a combo of Greens and Dems in city/county races. Also Forrest Claypool for county assessor, who's ordinarily a Democrat but is running as an independent against Democrat Joe Berrios, a machine party hack.

did you know that Toy Story 3 accurately reflects the mood of the nation going into this midterm?

likely accurate, it seems to me:

Everyone knows Democrats are going to take a beating tomorrow. Estimates vary on how bad a beating -- and, hey, you never know, there could be some surprises. But I do know this: Democrats and their supporters are going to be blown away by the narratives that are seeded on election night and emerge in full bloom by Wednesday morning.

Some you're ready for: The election proves that America is a center-right country. Voters have ratified the Republican agenda. Democrats took a bad economy and made it worse.

But those are the easy ones to predict. If history is a guide, Republicans will parlay this victory into grand proclamations about "what it means" in the same way you might start a negotiation with an over-the-top demand. The higher your initial demand, the studies suggest, the higher the ultimate settlement price. Same thing going on here.

Unfortunately, history also suggests Democrats won't counter with a ridiculously low offer. If you thought Democrats had trouble putting together a coherent message during the campaign, wait until they're a defeated and demoralized party. They won't be up to countering these narratives, which willing friends in the media will help the GOP perpetuate. It's not going to be pretty.

Why am I getting Republican text-message spam?

I seriously thought that Slate column was a parody when I first read it – something written to make fun of Obama's most ardent supporters in '08.

in the same way you might start a negotiation with an over-the-top demand.

Unless you are Obama

Shrub has to be the only President in my life I can think of who didn't lose the House in his first midterm election.

Well, being that it's only changed hands twice in 50 years...

I did a connect-the-dots ballot rather than wait for the touch screen this morning, and when I turned it in the machine told me there was an overvote. Lo and beyond, there it was: Ed Washington. Apparently I voted both for and against his reelection as one of 3423 judges.

"What happens now?" I ask the lady.

"Well, either you fill out a new ballot, or the overvote gets discounted."

"Just that one vote?"

"Yes."

"The rest of the ballot is unaffected?"

"Correct."

"Sorry, Ed Washington, whoever you are!"

My local polling place is the Teamster's Temple and the local House Rep is running unopposed. There hasn't been a Republican on the city council for 90 years. I don't think this is a sign of a particularly healthy democracy.

LOL Ohio:

10:50 a.m. --We have received an update to the earlier story about the voting snafu at R.J. Smith Elementary School in Massillon. The presiding judge of that precinct had her car stolen this morning, as she was warming it up before driving to work.

Inside the car were keys to unlock the voting machines. Without the keys, the polls were unable to the scheduled time of 6:30 a.m. The Stark County B.O.E. sent a troubleshooter to unlock the polling machines around 7:15 a.m.

As a result of not opening at 6:30, eight people were turned away at that time. At least one of those individuals has returned to cast his vote.

fucks sake

ACTUALLY one-party rule vs EFFECTIVELY one-party rule -- what else is there?

xxp

i voted green party candidate for TN gov because a.) the republican's going to win by a huge amount anyway; b.) the democrat's an anti-gay-adoption posturing legacy candidate (daddy was a guvnor back a ways); c.) the republican's sort of an ok guy by current gop standards and also mayor of my city, so on balance i don't really mind him getting elected even tho there's no way i can actually vote for him; and d.) if the green party ever ekes up over 5 percent in any of these elections, it can actually get a dedicated ballot line next time around.

i also voted against a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to hunt and fish, because i'm not sure that really needs to be a constitutional right. and it's not like anyone's going to try to ban it, anyway. but i'm sure it will pass.

Matt Taibbi:

Rahm's gone, midterms are here. How do you foresee the next two years of the Obama administration playing out?

The Republicans are going to win now and retake at least one house. What few reforms have been enacted, there's going to be an effort to role those back. Nothing serious is going to get done now for at least two years. Obama's going to win re-election in 2012. The Tea Party thing is now so big that there's no way that the Republicans can nominate someone who's not friendly to the Tea Party. But whomever they nominate is going to be nuts, so that person is not going to win the swing vote. Democrats will sweep through to victory and do nothing again for four years

10:42 a.m. --Voters in Parma are having some problems finding a place to park at the polling location at Pleasant Valley Elementary.

The school is not in session for the students today, but they do have a teacher work day. With the teachers at the school, the parking lot is crowded and several voters have reported leaving the location because they can't find a place to park.

Follow Ohio election lulz here: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/political/blog-election-day-live-updates

from the other side of the rust belt, can i say, ohio, get your fucking shit together

we've only been doing this for a century or so

have these been linked yet?

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/5-reasons-republicans-could-do-even-better-than-expected/

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/5-reasons-democrats-could-beat-the-polls-and-hold-the-house/

from the other side of the rust belt, can i say, ohio, get your fucking shit together

everything went to hell after mark hanna died.

Obama is complicated

We'll know in thirty years, won't we.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704050204576218970652119898.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

somewhere bush is blushing

ugh time to donate some more $$$ to the ACLU

What kind of "game" is Obama playing here, curmudgeon?

"Bad cop"

or just stubbornly following the same hands-off approach he did on health care, except now he's got a Republican House.

I don't want to derail the thread with an ancient argument, but Obama quite clearly did NOT take a hands-off approach to health care. He made it quite clear -- several times! -- that he had no interest in a public option and would reject any plan that advanced one.

wait I don't remember him ever saying he would reject it

I read it in The WaPo in the last few months of fall '09; I'll dig it up.

While tea party folks were making noise that summer he was not speaking up for anything. His "game" if it is one, is to let others debate and then go with what he perceives as the centrist bipartisan Dem leaning stance.

^ding. and if he were polling in the high 50s i would say well bully for him, but he's not so i'm kinda o_O

The real president of the united states is congress

isnt it what the public perceives as the centrist bipartisan stance

omg capt lorax..........................otm

thought Scott Brown was president.

you could def write a program for doing what Obama does

(similar to HAL 9000 actually)

"hal, get us a public option!!!!"

"i'm sorry morbz. i can't do that."

so right now there's a low sound coming from Obama... "Daaaisy...Daaaisy"

no o oval office speech: "He doesn’t want to equate what he regards as a smaller, time-limited mission with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51910.html

okay

"what he regards" = chilling

he has the greatest confidence in the mission

obel peace prize

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/03/my_worlds_collide.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Talking-Points-Memo+%28Talking+Points+Memo%3A+by+Joshua+Micah+Marshall%29

Bill Cronon is a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin. A few days ago he wrote an oped in the Times critical of Gov. Walker and his push to abolish collective bargaining rights for public employees in Wisconsin. About a week before that, he wrote a blog post -- the first in a new blog called Scholar as Citizen -- examining just who's behind this big anti-union push. He focused on a group called ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council).

Less than two days after Cronon published the blog post, the Wisconsin Republican Party filed a state open records request to gain access to Cronon's personal emails to get a look at what communications or discussions or sources or anything else went into writing it.

how do you get access to personal emails via an open records request wtf

whoa yeah i'm confused as to how that could be legal

he's a state employee, they'll say

Here's the (legally dubious) explanation from the same article:

Now, 'personal' is up for some reasonable debate here. This is his university email. And he's a Professor at the University of Wisconsin, the state university. So he's a state employee. Still, he's not an elected official or someone doing public business in the sense you'd ordinarily understand the term. Nor are they looking at anything tied to the administration of the University, which is legitimately a public matter. In the ordinary sense we tend to understand the word it's his personal email. And the range of requested documents leave no doubt about what they're after.

Not sure how "personal" is defined, but thanks to Florida's sunshine laws we can request emails from state employees.

Our reporters have successfully requested professor and administrator emails.

That's partly why Palin switched to her yahoo account while governor: that way no one could request emails sent from her state account.

oooo Walker is so gonna recalled

Gov. Scott Walker's (R-WI) staff says that no one on the staff ever read an e-mail sent to them in February by a deputy prosecutor in Johnson County, Ind., which encouraged the Walker administration to stage a "false flag" assault or assassination attempt on Walker in order to discredit unions in the Wisconsin political battle over Walker's anti-public employee union legislation.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/walkers-office-we-never-saw-the-false-flag-e-mail-from-indiana-prosecutor.php?ref=fpi

"..................we dont know anything abt that"

GE makes $14 B in profis, pays no taxes, gets a $3 B credit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html

BEAUTIFUL pic of Obama w/ the CEO, his appointee to his Commission on Bullshit.

Let's just call off this country.

The shelters are so crucial to G.E.’s bottom line that when Congress threatened to let the most lucrative one expire in 2008, the company came out in full force. G.E. officials worked with dozens of financial companies to send letters to Congress and hired a bevy of outside lobbyists.

The head of its tax team, Mr. Samuels, met with Representative Charles B. Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which would decide the fate of the tax break. As he sat with the committee’s staff members outside Mr. Rangel’s office, Mr. Samuels dropped to his knee and pretended to beg for the provision to be extended — a flourish made in jest, he said through a spokeswoman.

That day, Mr. Rangel reversed his opposition to the tax break, according to other Democrats on the committee.

The following month, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Immelt stood together at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem as G.E. announced that its foundation had awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Mr. Rangel’s district. Joel I. Klein, then the schools chancellor, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who presided, said it was the largest gift ever to the city’s schools.

that must have been one hell of a blowjob

help w/ teh maintenance on his Caribbean condo

so not sorry to see Rangel gone.

he's still in office, y'know. I'm sure the GOP chairman is a pillar of virtue.

lolbama damage control on GE story:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20047212-503544.html

Embarassing.

some tax experts question what taxpayers are getting in return. Since 2002, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States while increasing overseas employment. In that time, G.E.’s accumulated offshore profits have risen to $92 billion from $15 billion.

Yep,GE's Ceo will sure help with job creation ideas. Ha.

sooo there's this asst prosecutor from indiana who's just been fired because it has emerged that he sent some emails advising WI gov. walker to fake an assassination attempt or something.

well, someone found an amazon reader review of his from 99. praising a race-war prep kind of book:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1QGK1DF4QHDMC/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0929408179&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very good predictions, December 18, 1999
By
Carlos F. Lam
This review is from: Civil War Two: The Coming Breakup of America (Paperback)
This book is an excellent prediction of what is to come in the next century. Not only are black and hispanic militancy on the rise, but White movements are gaining adherents daily, probably in response to the crimes perpetrated against Whites by these other races. Mr. Chittum's predictions are also backed up with statistics, and he also shows that past multiethnic empires have broken up. Read it and prepare.

the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Two-Breakup-America/dp/0929408179/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1301087863&sr=8-1

Product Description
This fascinating book looks into the very real possibility that America could descend into a racial civil war in the coming decade. Frightening, but full of facts that are difficult to argue with. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author
Thomas W. Chittum was a rifleman in the United States Army in Vietnam in 1965 and 1966, a rifleman in the Rhodesian Territorials in the early Seventies, and a rifleman in the Croatian Army in 1991 and 1992. He was a computer programmer for most of his adult life. He is now a writer and lives in rural New Jersey. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

forget about GE, what about the oil subsidies. Obama proposed a relatively (and pitifully) small 4 billion dollar reduction in them, but we won't even get that.

ohhhh yeah

So, I understand and agree completely that oil subsidies are a much bigger deal, but that kind of reaction is kind of what's wrong with the left's response to stories like this. Do not forget about GE, it was on the front page of the NYT today and has people angry right now. Anyone who thinks corporate welfare is absolute bullshit should be talking about pretty much nothing else but GE in their political discussions for the next week, at least. Not about issues that are similar to GE, not about bigger issues than GE, but GE, GE, GE, because GE is a story with traction right now.

Here's a softball for the President Gas crowd:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/political-connections/obama-a-lot-like-ike-20110324

I think it's a good piece. It tries to explain a common method in the way Obama approaches things, pointing out the advantages and the costs in almost equal measure. It's tilted a little towards the sympathetic side. (I wanted to check to see if someone's already linked to it, but loading this whole thread has become a nightmare. Should someone maybe start a new one?)

yeah it's getting to be that time

US POLITICS SPRING 2011 - Let's just call off this country

yes!

US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

I've been hesitant to get into this guy, but I really can't find anything assailable about this piece:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411?page=1

It's like he writes what at first sounds like needlessly inflammatory hyperbole, but then when you go over it everything he's saying is true.

SORRY! WILL REPOST TO NEW THREAD!