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

Typical Gergen!

bit of a digression, but i just launched into a facebook fight with a relative who is pissed that another piece of the dream act passed in california. how is there even opposition to this?

I fucking hate David Gergen

how is there even opposition to this?

racist scapegoating, one of america's favorite pasttimes

http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/files/2011/01/Gergen.jpg

"Shakey, Shakey...let me explain. You need to dial down the rhetoric if you want any hope of wooing independent voters."

Even my mother has accepted that 'global warming' does not mean the weather where you are will get hotter all the time, thanks to the concept of 'climate change' being a perfectly serviceable summation of what's going on. Intellectually she knows that 'global warming' means the overall temp does go up, but using the term still makes her go LOLalgore in 2011.

― chavatar (suzy), Thursday, June 2, 2011 2:39 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

the phrase "global climate change" seems to irritate my [beloved family member], like he sees it as trick, some rhetorical sleight-of-hand. "what about global warming," he'll say, as his favorite arguments are lined up against dubious IPCC reports that purport document warming trends. if i shift the debate to the idea of man's responsibility for and ability to mitigate potentially dangerous climate change in general, he's less well-prepared and retreats to, "remember global cooling?"

actually no I don't remember global cooling

when did that happen

when so-called independents read about ... backing away from closing Guatanamo, they rightly wonder, "What's the difference?"

I don't think so. the percentage of the population that actually wants to see Gitmo closed, civilian trials, etc. is REALLY pathetically small.

― metally ill (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, June 2, 2011 5:25 PM (52 minutes ago)

people don't know what they want, or what's good for them. the average voter doesn't know shit about shit. democrats were elected as alternatives to republicans in those wave elections of 2006/2008, and instead of enacting actual liberal policy in several areas - with the too-weak stimulus being the major fuckup (not to say that there weren't/aren't institutional barriers to these kinds of policies - how strong those are is subject to another debate we've had here a million times as well), they governed down the center. i'm convinced the avg american could stomach these cries of socialism if it meant he had a job; we won't know. ideally, peabrains that vote on things that matter in america need to be led rather than followed

k3vin, the Hamiltonian!

"remember global cooling?"

s'like, remember phlogiston?! hah, smarty pants, explain THAT!

Like a metronome pulled to one pole, George Will never fails to remind his audience that global cooling was all the rage in the seventies; he even holds up the TIME cover advertising it.

I do remember phlogiston! or rather, I remember what it was *supposed* to be. I've never even heard of global cooling before.

there's a great video out there debunking the 'global cooling' business.

basically there was like one issue of time or newsweek in the late 70s that talked about 'scientists are afraid of global cooling!!' but none of the scientists quoted in the piece say they really are, or are equally afraid of warming trends at that point. and a search of scientific literature from that era reveals plenty of early research into warming and no research on cooling trends at all.

basically if someone says, 'what about global cooling, they were afraid of that in the 70s!!' they're either lying or believe someone who has lied to them.

xps lolllll

i thought it was in the early 00s when ppl thought the growth of the hipster population would make the entire globe cooler than in the past

when I visited Bushwick last June it was pretty cool.

the brooklyn glacier never panned out tho

basically there was like one issue of time or newsweek in the late 70s that talked about 'scientists are afraid of global cooling!!' but none of the scientists quoted in the piece say they really are, or are equally afraid of warming trends at that point. and a search of scientific literature from that era reveals plenty of early research into warming and no research on cooling trends at all.

basically if someone says, 'what about global cooling, they were afraid of that in the 70s!!' they're either lying or believe someone who has lied to them.

― goole, Thursday, June 2, 2011 3:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

OTM, but it was a little more than just a single issue of a magazine. there were alarmist books, news and talk show time, supposedly reputable scientists with dire warnings. basically it was a combination of misleading trend data and worry about how chemicals in the atmosphere might reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth. while it's since been debunked, there was some legit scientific support for the idea. remember a lot of worried talk about the coming ice age...

90 degreez in Ithaca yesterday, a frost warning in effect for tonight. Climate change, global weirding, whatever. Stop calling it global warming. Stop it. It doesn't get at the heart of what matters.

Climate change, global weirding, whatever. Stop calling it global warming. Stop it. It doesn't get at the heart of what matters.

― shaane, Friday, June 3, 2011 1:56 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

Well it kind of does!

if we want to get at the heart of what matters we need to call global warming "republicans are assholes"

That's pedantic. This is a pol thread. People are still going to get too cold and too hot, in more extreme and frequent oscillations. Calling it global warming confuses the issue, which is the impact of global warming on climate change.

That's pedantic. This is a pol thread. People are still going to get too cold and too hot, in more extreme and frequent oscillations. Calling it global warming confuses the issue, which is the impact of global warming on climate change.

― shaane, Friday, June 3, 2011 2:24 AM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark

but the earth being hotter is the root of the problem. Ice caps melting, coastal cities turning into venice etc. I feel like we're abandoning the term because people are total fucking morons who think "durr, it's snowing I guess it's not really warming." But it IS really warming. The term isn't silly or inarticulate.

But whatever, I understand language and branding matters.

Pretend you're Nancy Reagan and please whisper that last sentence in Obama's ear.

i think i'm just going to pretend i'm nancy reagan, pop open a beer and leave it at that for the night

t the reception, Gromyko was quick. He immediately spotted Nancy and ignored everybody else and went over to her. (He could be charming if he wanted to be.) As he talked to her he asked, “Does your husband want peace?” She said yes. Then he bent down and whispered in her ear, “Then every night before he goes to sleep, whisper in his ear, ‘Peace!’ ” Now, Nancy is pretty quick herself, so she drew him close and said, “I’ll whisper in your ear, ‘Peace!’ ”

Was that the same reception where she fucked Frank Sinatra under one of the tables?

He whispered in his ear, "Peas."

i think i'm just going to pretend i'm nancy reagan, pop open a beer and leave it at that for the night

― Z S, Friday, June 3, 2011 2:31 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

<3

Washington Monthly quoting others on Romney's speech yesterday. I wonder what his grand ideas to save the economy are other than low business taxes and little regulation. Snooze......:

The Associated Press, to its credit, ran a fact-check piece of its own, documenting clear falsehoods from Romney’s kick-off speech, including (1) a bogus claim that Obama made the recession “worse”; (2) arguing that the president “traveled around the globe to apologize for America”; (3) insisting that Obama “raises” taxes on “entrepreneurs and employers”; (4) falsely claiming he never raised taxes during his one term as governor.

And while we’re at it, National Journal noted that Romney’s condemnation of the administration’s economic agenda overlooks the fact that Romney endorsed much of that same agenda in 2009.

Good morning! Great economic news!

Too bad Kevorkian isn't here to put us all out of our misery.

i think we should cut taxes and deregulate stuff

also, firesale on public lands and assets

As Romney noted, the problem is: We are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy

Would it be possible, just fucking once, to have a conversation between political parties that doesn't involve outright lying and demagoguery? Like maybe a moment of historically high unemployment, endlessly rising oil prices, accelerating greenhouse gas emissions and American troops involved in about thirty wars all over the world would provide, you know, a good opportunity.

(And yes I know oil prices have edged downward recently but this appears to be a reaction to general economic malaise rather than anything else)

I think it's backwards, though, Tracer. The more stressed the system gets, the LESS likely an outbreak of highly contagious honesty becomes. There's too much at stake to tell the truth, in a really unpleasant way.

Would it be possible, just fucking once, to have a conversation between political parties that doesn't involve outright lying and demagoguery?

Cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.

Tracer, it's impossible to have a conversation when Wall Street, oil companies, credit cards, ethanol manufactures, et al are buying Congressmen.

so, John Edwards indicted for misuse of campaign funds

It's just crazy. You'd expect a fringe party of racists to make up lies in order to get a headline or two, but people like Romney already have the limelight. The stuff he said during that speech - he should be laughed out of town!

I guess that's the strategy, though - if Republicans can keep the debate in the realm of nonsense and bullshit, they have a chance to win the argument

That's what makes politics fun!

the nonsense and bullshit are having real effects, i think about this all the time

this column at businessweek, about a scared businessman on an airplane, is going around:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-26/carter-economic-stagnation-explained-at-30-000-feet.html

will wilkison reacts: (not my favorite person in the world, btw)

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/uncertainty-and-economic-recovery

What you see here is that "managers and administrators" as well as "owners and proprietors", the groups that do most of the hiring, are significantly and increasingly more likely than average to vote Republican. This raises a fascinating possibility: that Republican-leaning businesspeople freak out when Democrats are in power. Let's call this "partisan regime uncertainty". Now, maybe there is a good reason Democrats in power make Republican businessfolk afraid to make a move, which would help explain the relatively dramatic flight of owners and proprietors away from the Democrats. Or maybe individuals most likely to run a business are also most likely to fall for empty, right-wing free-market rhetoric, and this has made them increasingly likely to see Democrats as forces of socialising chaos. I don't know. In either case, we get partisan regime uncertainty.

If this is a real phenomenon, and I would love to know whether it is, there are a couple of important implications. First, Mr Romney's regime-uncertainty argument against President Obama could make him popular with nervous Republican burghers who, like Mr Carter's seatmate, believe this message to be true. Second, and this is the humdinger, a Republican president could accelerate the economic recovery simply by virtue of being Republican.

kevin drum:

So I call BS. Even Will Wilkinson, who thinks the regulatory uncertainty theory has some merit, is dubious. He suspects that to the extent any of this is happening at all, it's mostly some kind of Fox effect: Republican business owners have been hearing about the endless socialist evils of the Obama administration for so long that they've actually started believing it now and they're scared to death. There's no real reason for it, but hey — where there's smoke there's fire, right? And if enough different people on Fox and Drudge and Limbaugh, their rantings all passed along via the local Chamber of Commerce or something, keep talking apocalyptically about how Obama is wrecking the country, then there must be something to it. I guess I'd want to see some evidence for this, but it at least sounds plausible. More plausible than the alleged tsunami of new regulations that's preventing people from hiring even when business is booming, anyway.

(Will then goes on to posit that this is a permanent feature of the economy that we ought to take account of, perhaps by electing more Republicans. I think I'd prefer a somewhat different, more reality-based approach to this problem myself.)

er here's that second link

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/06/scaring-ourselves-out-growth

Republicans like to go with this we can't have "uncertainty" nonsense when they want to criticize evil Democratic socialism, but they're perfectly happy to create uncertainty in regards to their proposals on Medicare, Medicaid, debt limit issues, US government spending bills & shutdown of the government discussions.

And do these Republican business owners have to be reminded again that the economy didn't exactly boom under Dubya.

...yes?

Republicans like to go with this we can't have "uncertainty" nonsense when they want to criticize evil Democratic socialism, but they're perfectly happy to create uncertainty in regards to their proposals on Medicare, Medicaid, debt limit issues, US government spending bills & shutdown of the government discussions.

this is a really good point

from tpm:

Paul Ryan was chased by a protester waving a giant Bible and decrying libertarian author Ayn Rand on his way out of the Faith and Freedom Conference, a social conservative gathering in DC where he delivered a speech on his budget.

"Why did you choose to model your budget on the extreme ideology of Ayn Rand rather than the faith of economic justice in the Bible?" the blond, 20-something male asked. He said he wanted to "present" Ryan with a Bible to teach him how to help the "most vulnerable."

Ryan talked to reporters briefly and signed autographs for fans, largely ignoring the protester.

Oh, I'm sure Ryan believes in the New Testament and Ayn Rand!