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

Maine is really fucking awesome

savin' it for last

i've only been to like 34 states

what would win best state? colorado or vermont or something right?

Cuba.

I'd be a petty regionalist and vote for California, regardless of our disastrous state govt

Colorado is pretty great, so is California, it's close between Maine and California for me

best state = MN or ME

New York would probably win, NYC + a lotta cool stuff upstate

if Colorado won, that would be v. v. funny

(CA ranks pretty high up there for me as well)

also Brooklyn transplants would register 100+ socks to represent for Wmsbrg

how much of South Beach did you see that weekend we hung out, J0hn?

Hard to say if this discussion improves the readability of the US politics thread over the status quo ante.

how much of South Beach did you see that weekend we hung out, J0hn?

just the lobby, you'll remember it was the coldest weekend in south Florida in like a century - IIRC we took a nice walk to a restaurant the next evening but we didn't get to really see anything.

I have a lot of love for Florida, there's so much of it & lots of it is really weird & the keys are cool & have a strong literary history & plus John Berryman was a kid in Tampa & Donald Justice is from there, too. down w/Florida hate imo, you can focus on the crazy righties but there's a lot more to it than that

colorado would be fine if it weren't for the republicans and christian coalition and military guys and general assholes.

you just learn to live with the righties. they're okay; just don't talk politics/religion (or cuba).

yeah purple states are always frustrating

xp don't give a rat's about CO tbh. the "good" parts are too indigo girls/north face apparel for me i guess

Of all the states I've visited/lived in the one I'm in no hurry to get back to is Michigan.

;_;

Keeping in mind my travels there have been limited to Detroit and Ann Arbor.

People always go out their way to neg Michigan, Mystery would be proud.

xp A2 doesn't totally suck but basically that's like going to one suburb of Long Island and deciding to atomize all of New York State.

Florida – "the state with the prettiest name."

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_UNyPtINxPwU/SbV1LBNd6QI/AAAAAAAAAjE/IWImkuMiz0s/s400/flo-rida.jpg

righteous tattoo

His name makes me think of menstrual cycles and not the state, though.

Flo-Rida - "the emcee with the grossest name"

Is that man computer-generated?

just the lobby, you'll remember it was the coldest weekend in south Florida in like a century - IIRC we took a nice walk to a restaurant the next evening but we didn't get to really see anything.

ha was this this past jan?

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/photo_evidence_michelle_obama_keeps_socialist_books_in_the_white_house_libr/

max, was just coming to post this about that. Notice dude's blog post has not been updated.

In this era of blog wildfires, one fast-moving flame can be quenched before it scorches the facts: First Lady Michelle Obama did not stock the White House library with socialist books.

The controversy erupted after a conservative radio host and blogger from North Dakota took the White House tour on Wednesday and spotted two suspicious volumes on the shelves.

Rob Port, 29, who hosts a political call-in show in his home state, was surprised to come across "The American Socialist Movement, 1897-1912" and "The Socialist Party of America."

He snapped a photo and posted it on sayanythingblog.com.

Under the headline: "Photo Evidence: Michelle Obama Keeps Socialist Books in the White House Library," Port wrote that the White House tour guide said the library was stocked with books picked out by Michelle Obama. "Being a bit of a bibliophile," he wrote on the blog, "I started to peruse some of the books on the shelves...and lookie, lookie what I found."

Thus flame was ignited. The blog post quickly attracted over a hundred comments and was linked on many other sites.

"Surely this means that every time President Obama is in the midst of important policy deliberations, he goes into the library, dusts off The American Socialist Movement, 1897-1912, and uses it to help him figure out what the most socialist policy would be," mocked New York's Daily Intel blog.

Port, who was in Washington to cover the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), said in an interview it is "never fair to judge a book by its cover" and that you can't conclude Obama is a socialist just by the books in his library. "But obviously there have been question about the Obama administration's politics. You see a few socialist books sitting in the library and, well, that fits in the narrative."

The only problem is the books Port photographed have been sitting in the library since 1963.

The library came into being during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. In 1961, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy asked Yale University librarian James T. Babb to oversee a committee that would select books for the library. In 1963, 1,780 were placed on the shelves.

"The White House library is a reference and recreational library for the use of the President, his family, and official staff," wrote Babb in the forward to "The White House Library: A Short Title List," a document from the White House Historical Association.

"It is intended to contain books which best represent the history and culture of the United States, works most essential for an understanding of our national experience. The collection has to be strictly limited because the attractive library on the ground floor of the White House has shelf space for only twenty-five hundred volumes. Authors, with few exceptions, are citizens of the United States; fiction and poetry by deceased writers only have been included."

"The American Socialist Movement, 1897-1912" by Ira Kinnis and "The Socialist Party of America" by David Shannon are included on that original list of books, along with books about the two national parties, communism and still others about socialism.

Babb told The New York Times in 1963 that there was "bound to be criticism" of the choices. "There will still be people telling us what should be in this library, but we'll just have to be adamant," he said.

It is impossible to know if the White House guide misspoke, or Port misheard.

"I guess if they have been in there since the 1960s then they have been there through several presidents," Port said when asked about the discovery. "All I said was that our tour guide told us they were chosen by the First Lady. I thought the books were interesting in the larger context, but now I guess it is what it is."

clown gets clowned, film at 11

ha was this this past jan?

January '09 IIRC

Stories like this make me feel like Obama leaks dumbass information just to fuck with the wingnuts and show them up at a later date.

Too awesome:

Is there a right to secede from the Union, or did the Civil War settle that?

Certain Tea Partiers have raised the possibility .. Enter a New York personal injury lawyer, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

The lawyer, Eric Turkewitz, says his brother Dan, a screenwriter, put just such a question to all of the Supreme Court justices in 2006 -- he was working on an idea about Maine leaving the U.S.and a big showdown at the Supreme Court -- and Scalia responded. His answer was no:

"I am afraid I cannot be of much help with your problem, principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, "one Nation, indivisible.") Secondly, I find it difficult to envision who the parties to this lawsuit might be. Is the State suing the United States for a declaratory judgment? But the United States cannot be sued without its consent, and it has not consented to this sort of suit.

honestly can't decide if Scalia refers to the Pledge of Allegiance because he knows he's talking to someone with the mental capacity of a third grader, or because Scalia believes the Pledge is legally binding

yes and yes

well, he does say "hence". but yeah, ref'ing the pledge, dio mio

seems like neither because of the hence yeah xp

The lawyer, Eric Turkewitz, says his brother Dan, a screenwriter

hey man! i'm working on a new story, about maine seceding from the union! listen, i need you to do me a favor. you're a lawyer, can you talk to the supreme court for me?

somebody make some popcorn!

http://blogs.e-rockford.com/applesauce/files/2009/10/scalia.jpg

"The Pledge? Ya mean the one with Jack Nicholson?"

guys, BABY HUEY was from Indiana. seeing as how his version of "A Change is Gonna Come" is the best version of that song ever, uh... okay, Indiana sucks shit and i hate it, but there are great people from every state.

I wonder if losing their super-majority has made Congressional Dems realize that they need to stop being jackasses and pass something substantial.

― slapped by a bear (HI DERE), Thursday, February 18, 2010 8:06 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Uh. How exactly would that work? Everything gets filibustered.

"Bipartisanship" is the only way anything will get passed. It really was the only way even with the 60 vote majority, since Lieberman is essentially a Republican.

Not if the Dems use reconciliation.

ha! i got the white house library doofus to update his story

yeah the point of reconciliation is that filibuster is impossible. it's how they got the bush tax cuts for the wealthy through and look how hard it's been to get rid of those. there are 21 senators pledging support already. so maybe. I'm not sure how many definite nos there are beyond 4.

(nos on the dem side that is)

it would be refreshingly ballsy if they could get their shit together to pull this off but I'm not holding my breath.

I have learned that if I have an early feeling that something good might happen in politics, it's best to shut the fuck up and not jinx it.

Obama's suggested bill or similar will be online Monday.

obama really needed to come out with that bill months ago, I feel.

Guy was too busy trying to teach basic civics to morans, which I could get behind if morans were not wilfully doing the fingers in ears 'I'm not listening' thing, or showing themselves up as members of Congress.

Is it wrong of me to suggest that GOP only respond well to can of whupass/rub nose in own poo moves?

i don't think they even respond to that. most of them are roughly as intelligent as puppies tho.