Bookmarkable US Politics Thread v3.1: blah blah Big Bird etc

there

what i like about US politics is that y'all focus on the issues that really matter

ikr

btw there's already a politics thread Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

Symmetry!

Haha

this isn't really necessary and there was some decent conversation in the other thread

This is, what, the 4th? 5th thread?

ok, no need for any more emotionally disturbed Dems for me, bye

have a good night!

Someone should really get Nate Silver working on a chart comparing the lengths of Morbs "washing his hands of this thread and all of you cretins" periods, maybe seeing if they were longer or shorter in the '04 or '08 election, or tracking them to major outbreaks of garbage electoral distractions - is Morbs more likely to throw his hands up immediately after some pointless non-event that gets ILX abuzz with horse-race stuff, or is it effectively random?

I mean, if 538 needs material to meet the quota. Just an idea.

What if the thing we've all been missing lo these past few years is that Romney is really schizophrenic?

Working on the Romney must be nightmarish in a Catch-22 esque way

Or maybe like 1984. Just, you know, "up is down," "a square is a circle," etc.

do you mean schizophrenic or multiple personality disorder

The latter actually

could be schizophrenia, i saw him lookin into his hat

was it full of peepstones and golden plates?

LOL

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/15/us/politics/swing-history.html

can't tell if this is great or just visually appealing - seems hard to take in any given state all at once...but still a lot of information thrown in one place really.

http://nymag.com/news/politics/elections-2012/jeb-bush-2012-10/

worth it for the 'dubya has become an amateur artist' moments at least

Takes a strong man to keep from laughing:

This past June, the Bush family and their closest friends converged on Walker’s Point, their compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, to celebrate the 88th birthday of the patriarch, President George Herbert Walker Bush. To herald the occasion, HBO had set up a screening of 41, which was produced by his longtime friend the producer Jerry Weintraub. At the dinner party afterward, there was a palpable sense that Bush was taking a final victory lap. Behind the scenes, the family was already making advance funeral arrangements and encouraging news outlets to prepare obituaries. Bound to a wheelchair and suffering from a Parkinson’s-like disorder, he smiled softly, easily brought to tears.

In the room were Brent Scowcroft, his old friend and former national-security adviser—and the 43rd president, his son George W. Bush. For some, the shadows of the family psychodrama were alive in the room. When W., whose controversial presidency had been a kind of rebuttal to his father’s, was asked to give an impromptu toast honoring the man he had both worshipped and sought to overcome his entire life, witnesses say he appeared pinched and unhappy, his toast perfunctory. “It was highly unemotional,” says an attendee.

what thread is this?

I didn't realize Bush I was that sick; last time I saw him he was still running around like a champ (obv a couple of years ago)

I have a great aunt who turns 100 in a week and, aside from the walker, she is very strong and very healthy, so it always upsets me when I read about the infirmity of ppl a good bit younger than her (esp ppl not THAT much older than my parents)

xp
this is the new rolling politics thread / drone warfare thread

it was supposed to be the new election thread but I used the wrong word in the title

I have sympathy for 41 – not enough to exonerate his Reagan-era sins or to give his presidency the revisionist treatment but he was a decent guy.

not to be confused w/ rolling election thread, the freak out about election thread, the tonight's debate thread, the biden debate thread xp

if anyone wants the xls I can send it to you

Good stuff:

In Bushworld, a powerful paternal and fraternal dynamic has driven the family. Both Jeb Bush and W. spent much of their adult lives competing for the favor of their father. The brotherly combat went back to childhood, when George would line up his brothers for mock executions. “When they were young, Jeb was somebody for George to torture,” John Ellis told the Bush-family biographer Peter Schweizer. “As a kid, George viewed him as a completely unnecessary addition to the family … I think that carried on for a long time.”

In high school, Jeb went through a short period of rebellion as a member of the Andover Socialist Club, smoking pot and wearing his hair long. But unlike W., he settled down just as quickly, meeting his wife, Columba, while on an exchange program in Mexico when he was 17. He got a degree in Latin American studies from the University of Texas, married Columba, and joined Texas Commerce Bank.

Nineteen eighty, the year H.W. first ran for the presidency, was the defining year for Jeb. He had quit his banking career to work full time for his dad, campaigning for him in Puerto Rico, where his Spanish helped his father win the primary.

After the Reagan-Bush ticket won the White House, Jeb moved from the family seat in Texas to make his way in Florida. The reason he left would define him politically and personally: His wife, Columba, known as Colu, had experienced racism among their white, Republican circles in Houston.

When I ask Bush about this, he acknowledges that it happened. “Subtle, subtle,” he says. “It’s very different now, very welcoming, very open, particularly the big open areas.”

Colu gave Jeb an ultimatum: They could either move back to Mexico or to Miami, where her sister lived. He was happy to leave, says a close associate, because “he didn’t want to be another Bush in Texas.”

I love the 'I am a man...it's time to make my fortune' ritual where they hook up w/ billionaire political connections and always end up coming out a millionaire

Yeah, I always picture a guy rolling up his sleeves and setting out on the long road with one of those old-time hobo "stick with a bag" deals over their shoulder, but the bag is a Scrooge McDuck money bag with a giant dollar-sign on it, the kind with a double vertical through the "S."

Silver's latest update, presumably incorporating no debate feedback whatsoever, once again slides Virginia back to Obama. 70.1%/29.9%.