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

I mean, what specifics do you have in mind here?

I mean more generally. It occurs to me when talking to Club for Growth type ppl, the ppl who have convinced the old populists of the South that free-trade is good for their less than stellar economies because they need to be competetive to get any jobs at all, that this was once true of almost any state you can name. That said, NY was already a commercial powerhouse in the 18th century and their extraction industries are nothing near Texas'. Texas has emerged as not only an extraction economy but also a financial hub after many years of being a hard-scrabble agricultural state. The fed interest rate, the trade policies (remember the cross of Gold?), the kinds and rates of taxation coming out of DC cover 50 different states, some w/populations as low as 500K and some upwards of 20 million or more.

The Civil War wasn't just about an industrial North vs an aggy South (based largely on slavery) but also about the future of the West and as the West has taken on its own identity and power, it has also fragmented. What do Washington and Oregon really have in common w/NM or Arizona?

The growth of a third party, if history tells us anything, will come about less through pure ideology (Northern opposition to slavery was as much a gripe about depressing labor prices as about human dignity or Xtian morality) then through evolved interests which is why it's interesting to see CA, OR, WA in mnay ways become allied w/the other coast creating the so called fly-over states in between. It's not that they're not purple, but they're looking more and more violet maybe even solidly so for awhile. The South looks quite set. The midwest intrigues me - mostly 'cause I just don't know enough about it, but also because I tend to gloss over it since it's not highly populated. It's Pennsylvania and Ohio and Michigan that intrigue me the most; their state interests have changed the most over the last 40 years and I don't know which direction socially and economically they're going but I feel that these disparate interests are what will determine the national viability of a new party or its potential role as a national arbiter.

The ante-bellum States' rights position, if purged of the slavery issue, would be a laboratory of states conducting their democracy under the loose umbrella of the Federal govmt; this one's dry, that one has no income tax, this one has progressive social policies, etc...

Interestingly, the anti-abortionists have effectively got us back to pre Roe v Wade in that sense. Whereas Roe makes it impossible for States to make abortion illegal, there are several states (i.e. ND) where it's really, really hard to obtain.

Also regarding my last post regarding different interests. This is not a one way street. Texas might want looser regulation to have a more vibrant (and unstable if history is a guide) growth rate, but that doesn't mean that NY and CA shouldn't look askance at all the red states sucking more off of the Federal teat than they put in.

It's going on now with gay marriage too.

The concept of using states as "laboratories" for sociocultural experimenting is okeedokee with me as long as the Fourteenth Amendment isn't overlooked by zealous legislators and their legal henchmen in state attorneys general's offices.

i don't think the solutions he is gravitating towards match the scale of the problem.

otm! if there is "rot in the wood" its not in the democratic party. its in the constitution!

Yeah, alfred, but we have become enough of unum that it kind of bends us out of shape when we find out that any State isn't doing it all like us. Chicago doesn't want guns but Montana doesn't see a problem and all of a sudden Chicago is the new font of tyranny. I'm sure there are conservatives out there who not only loathe me for thinking gay rights and marriage are cool but that I'm some kind of Nazi for supporting a Court that forced their States to legally allow abortions. Or for supporting preventing them from cutting down trees on their proprty that they paid for because of some stupid bird. The limitations of limited and federal govmt in the 21st century are turning out to be not only national but global, though. No free market or experimantation will replace the EPA or Dept of Education no matter how wistfully you look back on the 19th or 18th centuries.

Well, sure, but the quiet unnoticed success of gay marriage in Iowa, Massachusetts, etc has done much to get skeptics accustomed to it. These labs work.

its in the constitution!

Kind of a cop out. It's our constitution and we've tinkered with it many times. They're isn't a consensus on changing it enough to get the money out - it behooves neither party right now - and making it more representative.

well... right

if there is "rot in the wood" its not in the democratic party. its in the constitution!

ummm, no. As flawed and full of crooks as it has always been, the party achieved progressive goals on behalf of the Great Unwashed from the '30s through the mid '70s -- haltingly, but undeniably. The post-Carter/Reagan Dems have retreated from that in spectacular fashion, and James Madison diidn't make them do it.

ie M White, correct

thought yall radicals would be down w/ scrapping the constitution!

it must be easy to discuss politics when everything comes back to calling democrats wusses

geeks, dweebs, nerds & lames

Before we scrap the Constitution, I'd like the party of which I was once a member to grow a pair and really fight the GOP. If they lose, I'll call for a new convention.

Not as easy as entering threads to say the expected thing, deej.

special guest appearance from the ILX blu dog cru

ummm, no. As flawed and full of crooks as it has always been, the party achieved progressive goals on behalf of the Great Unwashed from the '30s through the mid '70s -- haltingly, but undeniably. The post-Carter/Reagan Dems have retreated from that in spectacular fashion, and James Madison diidn't make them do it.

I thought we were talking about the two-party dominance of the system, not policy.

i don't think the solutions he is gravitating towards match the scale of the problem.

otm! if there is "rot in the wood" its not in the democratic party. its in the constitution!

― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Tuesday, April 19, 2011 4:37 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

this isn't exactly what i meant. we kind of moved from the torture issue to party structures, AGAIN, right along w/ greenwald but i think these are not even related.

there is plenty of "rot" is in the democratic party voting base, to a smaller degree than the right but still significant, when it comes to torture and secrecy. which is what i meant, right there. the american people are basically fine with the fourth and fifth amendments and long-standing treaty obligations being basically ignored at will when it comes to 'enemy combatants', this goes across parties. it's everyone. i think greenwald/aclu style "fundamentalism" on this issue is basically fringe now, and i have no idea what to do about it -- greenwald tacking toward marginal, dissident GOP and dem figures or a wealthy outsider third way is just... fanciful. i can't believe he thinks that's even worth making as a suggestion.

even the symbolic moves to push against this tide (trying [uh whatsisname] in nyc for example) were met with real fury and panic. perhaps there is a "silent majority" on this stuff that's quietly aggrived about geneva, and dems are being cowardly, but i think the nyc blue pols have to know their people pretty well and knew what not to step in front of -- but that's a second order problem. it's the people, not the pols. we wanted torture and we got it.

like if you want to talk about why the Dems have sucked post-70s, it doesn't really have anything to do with the two-party system

xp

Interesting how that has occurred while indutry and unions have dwindled, huh, morbz? Right wingers might say that it's the fault of regulation and uppity unions that we don't have the industry anymore or you could say that was factor amongst many, including the decision of both parties to just hang w/Wall street. Also Civil Rights especially in the bussing 70's and abortion/feminism at the same time, split off working men from the Democratic bloc, i.e. Reagan Democrats. The culture wars have worked very well for the moneyed interests in this country.

we wanted torture and we got it.

OTM. the vast majority of the American voting public is a-okay with it. which is disgusting, but what can you do. people are stupid. we've been over this.

xp

The real wusses are the ppl who decided that an attack by some disgruntled nutjob fanatics was a war (down with wars on intangibles by the way) and then decided that we would obligingly fuck our Constitution thereby proving that terrorism not only does work but it can also give you almost the status of real soldier instead of the modern version of the Assassins. We had 400,000 mfking German POWs here in the mid-40's, ffs!

I make this argument very angrily all the time to the dipshits who thought 24 wasn't anything else than disgusting torture porn.

It's not that people are stupid, Shakey! I HATE this argument. How have Obama and the Dems convinced the people to care? Not a whit, because Obama doesn't.

and it's impossible to convince The People to care about torture when gasoline is $5 a gallon in some states. Where's the Tea Party march on Wall Street, I wonder?

people in power saw this as a means to an end (ie concentrating executive power and enabling police-state policies) and just went with it. it wasn't hard to sell a fearful public on it, it helped that the general public was so ignorant and gullible and paranoid.

to revise myself a little, i think there is some broad uneasiness with torture, but not enough disgust and disapproval to really force a cleaning of house. if not outright in support of torture, people are basically ok with obama's apparent position -- just quietly make it go away, after a good long while, without really doing anything more...

i can't quite think if he's really taken a hit or gotten a boost from the public on this stuff, whatever he's done.

I mean really the jig was up the minute the Patriot Act passed and Dubya got the go-ahead to create Gitmo. these are the kinds of expansions of power that are never rescinded, a la Caesar making himself dictator-for-life. everyone who came after was like "oh yeah sure I'll be dictator for life too! sounds good"

xp

I said in 2008: why on earth would an incoming president eschew the supercool superpowers created by the Bush administration? It defies logic!

and it's impossible to convince The People to care about torture when gasoline is $5 a gallon in some states. Where's the Tea Party march on Wall Street, I wonder?

or rather the tea party drive to wall street? why is this wall street's fault btw?

How have Obama and the Dems convinced the people to care? Not a whit, because Obama doesn't.

^^^

Republicans persuade people who get tax refunds to protest the tax code - good strategy begins with actually having convictions

Wow.

There are several points worth noting about all this. First, imagine how the brain functions in a person who spends years and years flattering people and trolling for money in order to get to the Senate, then arrives and, after surveying all of America's problems, decides they're going to focus on stopping adults from viewing pornography and playing poker online. What does it say about the character and judgment of someone who has those priorities and wants the U.S. Government to adopt them?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/19/priorities?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+salon%2Fgreenwald+%28Glenn+Greenwald%29

ABC News and a couple of other outlets have posited (in a well-sourced manner) that it's our old friends the speculators in oil commodities at work.

lol @ dude calling me a blu dog, wtf? my candidate is durbin u clown

Not as easy as entering threads to say the expected thing, deej.

― My mom is all about capital gains tax butthurtedness (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, April 19, 2011 9:48 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wait, how is this not what morbs is doing / im accusing him of

deej isn't a blue dog ... he's an Obama stan. some days it's a distinction that means something.

this is kind of on a lighter note, but have y'all been following james inhofe's bullshit this week? took to the floor of the senate to cry about laurent gbagbo, and damn near killed a bunch of people at an airport when he landed his own plane on a closed airport.

but not enough disgust and disapproval to really force a cleaning of house

I have also forcefully argued that it's counter-productive, not only wrt to potential terrorists but also when you're trying to give Iran/China/Syria/Belarus shit.

took to the floor of the senate to cry about laurent gbagbo

Wha?!

yeah no shit. gbagbo is tight with DC xtians apparently!

wait, how is this not what morbs is doing / im accusing him of

does this strategy have a name like "the Montana Sidestep" or something? just curious

hey im fully willing to admit we're saying the same shit over & over at least but im reactive

anyway, the rot w/n the Democratic Party comes from the fact that since the 1980s they've become the complete tools of "liberal capitalists" (for lack of a better way of saying it). this was apparent under Clinton, and only a dolt could fail to see it since Obama's set foot in the White House. folks like that USED to have a name and political home -- they used to be called Rockefeller Republicans. but the ignoramuses chased them outta the GOP and they had to find a new place to roost.

did u guys know that the democrats are spineless???? not that im going to do anything about it but bleat on a message board

oh don't knock bleating now

wait, how is this not what morbs is doing / im accusing him of

Morbs explains himself?

d-40 what would you suggest people who think Democrats are spineless turds do other than just vent? aside from the total joke "work from w/in to change" idea I mean

I mean I am 100% not going to ever try to do anything to change the Democratic party or the way it operates or its policies. Why do I wanna roll that rock up that hill? I donate $ to pro-choice orgs & to places that are giving direct aid to the displaced/disenfranchised etc., that might help -- "doing something" about the Democratic party = having enuf money to buy a politician's votes, short of some of you guys organizing an Everybody Buys 1000 Aerosmith Albums A Month club that ain't gonna happen for me so I help people who deserve it, bitch about Democrats on the internet, enjoy life and smoke weed every day, I don't really see what the problem is tbh

lost my thread there I think

"work from w/in to change"

it's funny how this seems to work so well for the GOP, but not so much for the Dems

I think the subconscious of the American voting public wants to see news stories about torture and hear about water-boarding, and if we really did something about it then maybe they would go away. It gives them a taste of the same kind of thrill they get from watching Saw movies.