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

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!

omg

please have more ppl chase Republicans while waving Bibles, I need the lols

i am pretty meh about drum usually, but his reaction was exactly my reaction- when you talk about potential regulation impinging your growth projections, you gotta be specific in some way. i've had too many discussions about impending socialism and rights infringements where my question "ok, what regulations have been added that have cost you recently, or what type of exposure is reasonable in the offing?," is met with outraged sputtering.

its kinda like when someone is really pissed about something someone else did, and you ask "what are the actual damages here?" and they just explain how the whole thing is _wrong_, and someone should pay.

xpost

I wonder what his grand ideas to save the economy are other than low business taxes and little regulation

no one is proposing "little regulation", that's just their rhetoric. republicans are proposing regulatory regimes that favor big established players. they have no problem with regulations like: IP laws that essentially benefit the companies who can invest the most in legal fees; prohibiting cities from offering services that compete with private companies; making it nearly impossible to build low-income housing anywhere ... basically, anything that sets up barriers to entry and protects the established order.

considered as a whole, there is effectively no difference in the amount of regulation republicans and democrats are advocating for. it's just a question of whom the regulations will benefit. it pisses me off that we've ceded this part of the argument to them.

i really hope weinertweet becomes a Gen Y euphemism for accidentally publicizing private things

The perils of gerrymandering.

Right: as always, take conservatives at their word: they want to conserve the power of those they favor.

I want to start a thread about the ideal of freedom the GOP offers to make their preservationism appealing to those who currently have little power, based on an excellent article by Ellen Willis I read recently, but it's Friday & I dunno how well it'll go. Plus I should probably read Nixonland before wading too deeply into this topic...but Willis is definitely onto something.

euler, on your putative thread i would wonder how the gop (foxnews-limbaugh spectacle)'s success at projecting its own specific weaknesses (soft on terror, financial goats, epistemological closure) onto those silly libs factors into Ellen Willis's thesis about the gop's successful sale of their ideal of freedom to those who have little power, if that makes any sense

Thanks a lot stubborn Obama:

from Huffington Post re Obama meeting with Dems yesterday. Congressman Waxman urged him to fight-

The president has heard the complaint before. Democrats have accused Obama repeatedly of ceding too much ground to the GOP, especially on health care and the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. But attendees said the critique appeared to rub him the wrong way on Thursday.

"He was a little testy with the Waxman question. Essentially, Mr. Waxman was urging him to fight more," one legislator said. "The president reminded folks that he's the president sitting in that chair and he knows how to negotiate."

Obama also told the assembled Democrats not to count on more fiery rhetoric from the Oval Office.

"He said, 'There's a difference between me and a member of Congress,'" another lawmaker said, paraphrasing the president as saying: "When I say something the markets react, all of society reacts, other countries react. I've got to be careful with what I say. I can't just say it for brinkmanship. I've got to say it in a way so that I get what I want said, but I don't upset markets and so on."

"I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations."

seems as though obama has thoroughly internalized the 'scared manager' thesis

Re. Willis & freedom: it's a critique of the American Left's ability to make clear, let alone sell, their own ideal of freedom, contra the Right's. What it comes down to, on her view, is that the right seized the 60s' promise of freedom in a way that has proved attractive to many Americans, & the left has remained puritanical (in order to avoid being identified with 60s excesses) but has as a result failed to offer a competing ideal of freedom of its own. This seems right to me & has forced me to rethink my own puritanical leftism.The article by Willis is here. This isn't the right thread for a discussion of this issue, & I'm not sure this is the right board for it, but I'll put it out there for now & maybe come back to it here in due time.

where does that leave the libertarians

Blazing up in various basements?

I wonder if libertarianism is the one area where conservatives and liberals could hang out and not kill each other.
ie; "Legalize pot!"
"Leagliaze frenching aliens!"

I've got to say it in a way so that I get what I want said, but I don't upset markets and so on

let's have a President of Markets and then someone for us

haha

I hope Obama sctually said "and so forth" just like Reagan

^^^ was going to make a Reagan allusion but I'm already tarred as ILX's Reaganologist.