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

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 these are the kinds of expansions of power that are never rescinded, a la Caesar making himself dictator-for-life.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.

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

― geeks, dweebs, nerds & lames (D-40), Tuesday, April 19, 2011 6:16 PM (28 minutes ago)

haaaaaa u mad, how cute

meanwhile here you are...doing the opposite...on a messageboard...oh the irony

no one on this board does anything except for...post on this board, i always forget

I'm president of a club

I don't know why that gave me a huge lol but it did, ty Shakey

LOL: http://current.com/news/93163691_obama-scolds-dallas-reporter-let-me-finish-my-answers.htm

mortgage fraud conviction

small potatoes compared to what else is out there, I assume but still

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.

i don't know why, but i feel like there is an opportunity here to finally & completely discredit capitalism in the eyes of the public...

Farkas = the Bernie Madoff of mortgage fraud.

when they're sharing jail cells with Angelo Mozilo and Lloyd Blankfein -- and Henry Paulson is cowering in a French Riviera hotel a la Baby Doc Duvalier -- then i'll be convinced that the feds mean business.

'hey you've decided to live a lifestyle dependent on a single limited resource that's inevitably going to get more expensive over time, I guess capitalism doesn't work after all'

i don't know why, but i feel like there is an opportunity here to finally & completely discredit capitalism in the eyes of the public...

they blew their chance with Enron manipulating the energy markets in 2001 (and thereby causing California's problems that summer) ... what makes you think that the media has gotten any smarter (or bolder) since then?

(TBF, commodities manipulation -- not to mention that petroleum is becoming more depleted (and therefore more expensive anyway -- isn't that easy to prove or understand, much less make comprehensible to the general public.)

capitalism will be discredited when it reaches a level of failure so widespread that you can't move away from it. this isn't something to be ardently hoped for, because if that happens, it'll be hard times, but anything short of disaster everywhere is spinnable.

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

Most of them AREN'T wusses. They're just fine with serving the plutocracy instead of the 'middle class' (eg Chuckie Schumer).

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

It does, for people who were then liberal Dems and are now called leftist crackpots, who have no one to vote for.

ie Greenwald's column last week: The results Obama is 'settling for' are the results he wants!

capitalism will be discredited when it reaches a level of failure so widespread that you can't move away from it. this isn't something to be ardently hoped for, because if that happens, it'll be hard times, but anything short of disaster everywhere is spinnable.

I kind of feel that if you replace 'capitalism' with 'the Democratic party' then you p much have the perfect rebuttal to yr argument for a third party

I'm listening to PiL's "Poptones," which makes this thread redundant.

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

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, April 19, 2011 10:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

why is this a joke to you?

perhaps this relates to it not being a joke to the GOP & then they get shit accomplished that they want

meanwhile here you are...doing the opposite...on a messageboard...oh the irony

― k3vin k., Tuesday, April 19, 2011 10:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im responding to u dudes, not waiting every couple minutes to reiterate how much smarter i am than ppl trying to make a difference

why is this a joke to you?

we've been over this dude - it's a total joke. I don't imagine trying to explain it will convince you otherwise & I'm glad that you think working from within the party will effect change. I would no more try to dissuade you from doing so than I would spend time trying to tell somebody not to pray.

but like you have your way of coping (the fairy tale of change from within) & people who bitch on ilx have theirs (bitching on ilx) - don't hate, you do yours & leave the disillusioned to theirs

glad youve decided grass roots change is a fairytale

would love to hear a legit reason why it works for the GOP but not for the D's