US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

man i don't read kos either, but that's a weird thing to get mad about

why do we need a leading poll to confirm that people who continue to identify as republicans are not in touch with the world

xposts

It's the way most of the questions are phrased: "Do you think that [statement that is controversial/ridiculous to kos readers]?" People who do polling know full well that questions phrased like that will get a much higher yes response than a question with two or more specific options. Also:

Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people?

Yes 31
No 36
Not Sure 33

I bet more people think Obama is racist, but were too afraid to tell a live operator the truth.

You don't even think yr poorly done poll reflects those dumb R's being dumb enough. I don't like you.

goole these days it's the main thing i get mad about - this tribal mentality is ridiculous

sure am looking forward to American Taliban, though.

re Kos, see also Keith Lolbermann calling Obama's Q&A w/ Reps "a moment in history."

haha that is massive overstatement but I did thoroughly enjoy Seth Meyers' Weekend Update bit on that:

On Friday President Obama appeared before House Republicans in a historic televised Q & A and performed so well, afterwards GOP aides said that allowing cameras to roll like that was a mistake. Come on Republicans, are you on such a Scott Brown high you thought you could take down Barack Obama by debating him? You realize debates are why he is President, right? Seriously, all you do is complain how Obama is all talk and then you invite him to a forum that is literally all talk. That's like saying, "Let's see how tough Aquaman is once we get him in the water." I'm not saying you were out classed but the whole thing was like the scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when the guy charged at Indiana Jones with the sword and he just shot him.

looool

goole these days it's the main thing i get mad about - this tribal mentality is ridiculous

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, February 2, 2010 12:11 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

it's inevitable!

this is what happens when you let non landowners vote imo

good god, could you imagine how fucked-up our elections would be if you had to own real estate to vote

imagine how (much more) fucked up our real estate business would be

we would probably do things like allow slavery, prevent women from voting, and create a highly undemocratic upper house in the legislature

And if you're gay and own real estate, imagine the awesome levels of self-loathing.

GOP pants-wetters trip over their own dicks yet again:

Republicans may have a hard time keeping up their talking point about how reading Miranda rights to the Christmas Day bomber represented a dangerous new direction under President Barack Obama.

It turns out that that back in December 2001, Richard Reid — the “shoe bomber” — was read or reminded of his Miranda rights four times in two days, beginning five minutes after being taken into custody.

Furthermore, the Bush administration specifically rejected the idea of a military tribunal — another step that Republicans have argued should have been taken in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to bring down Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day and was read his rights after 50 minutes of FBI questioning.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32399.html#ixzz0ePqUNCjG

I meant that the tribal mentality of the daily kos makes me ill

yeah i know, it's not my thing either. the way i tend to think about it is a) hyperpartisans are useful to any political movement, and b) hyperpartisans like that, well, exist and if markos moulitsas didn't come up with a site for them to talk to each other on/direct their energies with, someone else would have

US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

Hope he's a better president than he is a left-back ;_;
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/00980/scott-brown_980247c.jpg

that seth meyers bit was hilarious -- also on the DS last night when they said obama was seeing their talking points in slow motion & they showed a photoshop of obama as neo from the matrix bending back and dodging a bullet

tracer otm about that poll & daily kos - the only people who will find that info useful are people like us and that kind of hi-fiving is useless

lol "useful" prob wasn't the word i was going for

I found this fascinating yesterday. Reagan the leftist?

This one is almost as good. The best recent book on how Reagan handled Gorby and Soviet diplomacy generally is James Mann's Reagan's Rebellion.

The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan, sorry.

depressing

What's depressing isn't even that I agree with Reagan, it's that there's an intellectual underpinning, a coherent argument behind it. With the present bunch it's all mindless CYA for Cheney and everyone's embarrassing flip-out after 9-11.

yep its very much CYA in action - Dubya/Cheney fucked things up so bad bringing so many random people into detention and then torturing them, its like there's no legally and politically viable way forward

And the partisan rump of remaining Republicans will find and use ANY way to justify anything to their (perceived) advantage.

Actually, Cheney has theories, which he's postulated since the Ford years.

Cheney was not so batshit, as I recall, as Sec of Def under Bush, Sr.

I just do not get, at a profound level, how over-reacting and changing our policies and 'going to the dark side' w/terrorists isn't giving them exactly what they want - a terrorized response. It's feckless AND craven.

yeah i dont think anyone here disagrees w/ that, unless i missed something. idk about "giving them what they want" tho - maybe just stop being terrorists and the terrorists will stop too

this is going to be awesome:

Taking cues from the “Contract with America” that led to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, a group known as Tea Party Patriots used a website to gather ideas for what they're calling the Contract from America.

Among the thousands of ideas submitted by more than 100,000 people so far are “Drill Here, Drill Now,” “Abolish the Department of Education,” and “Congress shall not exempt themselves.” The group will ask Americans this month to start winnowing 20 ideas down to a 10- or 12-point platform. The contract will be unveiled on Tax Day, April 15.

http://www.contractfromamerica.com

i smelllll a pollllllll

Under the U.S. Constitution, the Federal government has NO legitimate role to play in education. Unconstitutionally ignoring that fact has encouraged power-lusters to inculcate a spirit of serfdom in school children.

o rly

Nice.

Islamic terrorists have no more chance of "bringing America down" than the Weathermen did in the early '70s. They are the Republicans' greatest blessing. (I will spare you the D Perrin post on this.)

tea party makes me hate the internet tbh, it used to be these people just thumbed through a loompanics catalog & hung around at the greyhound station

Don't think anyone here will disagree with you on that, Morbs, Perrin link or no.

ya rly, although honest and heartfelt thanks for witholding the Perrin link

i'd be very very interested to know just how much and in what ways this mob is being prodded and paid by organized established political players

the answer may be less than we think, but it may be more

"if you control the mob, you control the country"

It's prodded, yes, and organized slightly, but these deep pockets of rage have always existed.

Last week's New Yorker boasts a profile of the Tea Party and that delightful charmer, Dick Armey.

sure, but it's all about mobilizing that rage. the usual ingredients, at least since the 1953 iranian coup, are:

- cash
- a few well-placed semi-undercover operatives
- a whole bunch of people who feel tired and powerless and disgusted

and no i don't mark all this down to some conspiracy, but i suspect there is leadership and coordination here that comes from well outside the grassroots (maybe this is mentioned in the newyorker article)

I think part of the dynamic we're seeing - and it's one of the reasons I support the President's incremental approach - is one where the right-wing populists, people who generally are puerile, incurious, emotional and self-entitled, are feeling frustrated that they've been basically proven wrong and are having difficulty swollowing that and moving on. They repudiated Bush and Cheney in 2008/2009 but now that the Republicans haven't really changed, just shifted personnel, the Teabaggers et al are trying to find reasons why they were more right to be 'conservative' than to admit that the libruls were generally right. They're going to lose generationally on gay rights. They're economically retarded wrt health care insurance reform. They're painting themselves into a sclerotically ideological corner and at some point, hopefully in 2012, a majority of the independants will prefer the sane, if ponderous approach of Obama to the loony, out-of-touch, obscurantists yipping and whining on the right. Regardless, I will either feel immense pity or downright contempt for whomever gets the Republican nomination in 2012; s/he will either be a partisan Kool-Aid drinking fool or a deeply compromised person of out-sized ambition. Just look what the combination of party lunacy and ambition has done to McCain.

McCain's facing the first real primary fight of his life. Did you see the twaddle he said at the DADT hearings yesterday?

Via Sullivan, this is McCain in 2006:

"The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to."

The guy is nothing but ego, now, if ever he was anything else.

What really worries me is that occasionally I have had vague sympathy with old school liberal Republicans and without a credible, viable opposition the Dems are going to get more bloated, more corrupt and more vain. When the major opposition party is nothing but fire-breathing flat-earthers, the Republic is in serious jeopardy.

The guy is nothing but ego, now, if ever he was anything else.

in fairness there is no politician of whom this statement is not true

any liberal Republicans left? Are Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, and Charles Percy dead?