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

er, being proposed, for the time being

even in 'safe' states; there's one in the works up here

http://minnesotaindependent.com/80819/republicans-introduce-voter-id-constitutional-amendment

perhaps a lot of democrats will have the choice to stay home in protest made for them!

in the Things More Interesting than Republicrat Presidents Dept, Taibbi talks to Spitzer on sweetheart loans for Wall St wives:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/talking-real-housewives-of-wall-street-with-eliot-spitzer-20110422

is minnesota still considered safe?

Minnesota hasn't been safe for 6 years or something ridiculous like that

i was thinking today it would be fun if we had a king or a queen so we could have a royal wedding

Sadly, that 5 to 4 Supreme Court verdict on behalf of corporations will likely be repeated in the Wallmart case.

Nice to know that sucking up to corporations trumps states' rights federalism for these guys.

My state is so much fun: our latest experiment in lunacy.

― My mom is all about capital gains tax butthurtedness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),

I haven't shelled out for an online Times pass, so clicking on this link counted against my 20 free ones for the month. Might be time to start ID-ing links in posts as NYTimes articles? I would have asked for Cliffs instead of clicking on it if I'd realized it was a Times article.

if you ever hit your limit just go up to the address bar, delete everything after the "?" character, and reload

is it really that easy after they talked it up like that

yeah there are so many ways around it that I think the goal is just to make you feel guilty

and hey that worked for the music industry, right?

haha

i think their idea - probably correct - is that the percentage of people who will think to do that, or know to do it, will be more than offset by the amount of money they'll be making from everyone else. in a way it makes everybody happy. the geeks - who might complain the loudest - still get everything for free, and everybody else has to cough up.

if you ever hit your limit just go up to the address bar, delete everything after the "?" character, and reload

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Thursday, April 28, 2011 9:48 AM (8 minutes ago)

cool, TY TH

I believe if you use a diff browser u get another 20.

anyway in the perennial people who think voting for obama is an unacceptable capitulation vs. people who think not voting for obama is an irresponsible sulk debate i am pretty much on the first side and would say that it's not really about being so ideologically pure you have impossible expectations, it's about the obama administration not meeting the ones you had.

like, anyone of national political prominence is obligated to corporations to the point of employment and thus we're not going to get anything else anytime soon in terms of deference to "wall street", but i'll still vote for one of these guys if they seem like they'll offer tinkery social reforms--reproductive rights etc (which is pretty much all the american "left's" accomplished since 1964)--or like they'd offer some kind of opposition to the DoD's decadent-imperial-phase surveillance-state domestic-counterinsurgency Vision For America (although like i recognize that we are small and at the mercy of powerful forces and everybody's gotta Ride The Beast or w/ever). obama's obsessed with the strategy of political concession so there go the social reforms and when someone asked him if the conditions under which bradley manning was being held were appropriate he said "the pentagon has assured me that they are" so there goes the other thing. plus i mean i am not a "scotus" guy and i don't know to what extent this was in obama's hands but the justice department seems to just be plowing on in its rush to recognize powerful sociopathic robots as protected-class human citizens. so it is not all that fun to vote for him anymore, and the short-term worst-case of a republican being in office for four years is not as bad as the long-term worst case of this kind of "centrism" continuing to be as far left as this country's government is willing to go because it gets "realistic results".

BUT ALSO i am pretty confident at this point of his winning a second term so there's that too.

obama's obsessed with the strategy of political concession

this, succinctly, is my biggest issue with Obama

Except for a depressing article I read six or seven weeks ago, I haven't heard much about Obama's progress in appointing federal judges – I can't believe an adjunct professor of constitutional law doesn't understand the importance of preserving your legacy. I'm reading now about how Eisenhower, no lawyer, personally interviewed and vetted federal judge appointees because he wanted to preserve Brown.

"tinkery social reforms--reproductive rights etc (which is pretty much all the american "left's" accomplished since 1964)"

I take it the Affordable Care Act's barring of denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions isn't anything more than a "tinkery social reform" to you?

Like, I'm sympathetic to the idea that the US government is aimed primarily at the preservation & amplification of privilege, and that this is something to fight against: but I also think it's key to note when steps toward that have been taken.

anyway in the perennial people who think voting for obama is an unacceptable capitulation vs. people who think not voting for obama is an irresponsible sulk debate i am pretty much on the first side and would say that it's not really about being so ideologically pure you have impossible expectations, it's about the obama administration not meeting the ones you had.

its also the extent to which you assign moral weight to the act of voting

ive been feeling pessimistic lately anyway, i think mitt romney is going to get the nomination and if obama cant lower gas prices or unemployment significantly hes going to lose

i assign moral weight to brushing my teeth though xpost

(it's good!)

ive been feeling pessimistic lately anyway, i think mitt romney is going to get the nomination and if obama cant lower gas prices or unemployment significantly hes going to lose

Yep.

I take it the Affordable Care Act's barring of denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions isn't anything more than a "tinkery social reform" to you?

Like, I'm sympathetic to the idea that the US government is aimed primarily at the preservation & amplification of privilege, and that this is something to fight against: but I also think it's key to note when steps toward that have been taken.

kicking and screaming like the child I will always be, I have to agree with this. Barring denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions is huge and very meaningful to many people who have suffered at the hands of insurance companies for a long time. I'd be pretty surprised if the insurance dudes didn't have several airtight workarounds for this already worked out before the bill even passed, but at the bare minimum - as a symbolic gesture of doing what's right - this one's gotta be praised.

don't get me wrong I'm still Morbs Jr. and think all you Democrats are imperialist running dogs

minor nitpicking contd -- i have to believe some great society programs / establishment of the EPA / etc qualify as progressive victories post '64

I take it the Affordable Care Act's barring of denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions isn't anything more than a "tinkery social reform" to you?

lots of things i really care about fall into this category. this particular thing was actually super good news for me personally. it's not that i'm not noting it, it's just that there's less weight on this scale than the other one, for me.

minor nitpicking contd -- i have to believe some great society programs / establishment of the EPA / etc qualify as progressive victories post '64

You forgot "Reagan dying."

and 9/11 might of been an inside job, so there's that

there's been decent student loan reform in recent years too

hmmm? haven't they cut Pell Grants etc significantly?

and 9/11 might of been an inside job, so there's that

― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Thursday, April 28, 2011 3:40 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lmao

real student loan reform: get govt out of the loan business entirely, allow loans to be discharged in bankruptcy

that would be much better, agreed

basically I feel better about Obama if I don't read the international section of your daily newspaper.

Except for a depressing article I read six or seven weeks ago, I haven't heard much about Obama's progress in appointing federal judges – I can't believe an adjunct professor of constitutional law doesn't understand the importance of preserving your legacy. I'm reading now about how Eisenhower, no lawyer, personally interviewed and vetted federal judge appointees because he wanted to preserve Brown.

― My mom is all about capital gains tax butthurtedness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, April 28, 2011 3

Obama cheerleader Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly blog has been posting periodically about how the Republicans have blocked voting on nominated judges, and I have read confirmation of that in the Washington Post and elsewhere. But I have read that Obama's also been slow in putting nominations forward, which coupled with the Republican slowdown tactics means that there are a number of judicial positions sitting empty.

i think mitt romney is going to get the nomination and if obama cant lower gas prices or unemployment significantly hes going to lose

I wrote on some other thread a number of months ago that I thought Romney was going to get the nomination, but two or three people shot it down because of his health-care problem. I'll hold to what I said then: self-preservation is a very powerful instinct, and if the Republicans are in a position to win (for some of the reasons cited above), they'll go with their best chance at winning. The health-care problem will be rationalized away somehow.

Whether those reasons are in play at the election nears, I don't know.

at this point in time I feel like romney is gonna get it but GOP in-fighting post-nomination is gonna ruin his smooth "I'm a businessman, I can fix things" candidacy

yeah, i agree with that. i mean i thought the whole point of the last two years was that the GOP doesnt real give a shit about the health care bill as a policy. they hate it because its obamas bill. and lots of polls are showing romney beating obama in fla, nev., n.h.

i agree with clemenza, i mean. i dunno about GOP in-fighting, though god, i hope so.

I seriously believe we should all register Republican and vote for Bachman/Palin/Trump in the primaries

romney might be their john kerry, a competent enough candidate for conservatives in normal times but unable to match the feeling of the base who aren't in the mood for a second-best consensus candidate.

xps

yeah obv this comes down to how he plays out in individual states

I don't think health care itself is gonna do him in, but trying to play for the tea party might. you can't get the nom without looking crazy for a while.

yeah goole otm

also dan otm I want trump in the news as long as possible tbh

so basically yr agenda is the same as Obama's.

generally, yes

is that news