context among people*
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 01:48 (twelve years ago) link
contest err
I was talkin bout the means-nothin-presidency
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 9 February 2012 01:49 (twelve years ago) link
well if someone super-left wing was running for president as a dem, nyc would vote for them. the problem is the rest of the country.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 01:51 (twelve years ago) link
hell you could prob run in nyc as a dem. it just really doesn't mean anything, it's a organizational tool, there's no philosophy here to hate. the things you need to hate are:a. everyone in americab. the constitution
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 01:53 (twelve years ago) link
what would be legally required to close guantanamo as a detention center? i have the sense that the bush administration created it largely by fiat? what is congress's authority over it now?
(i am not making excuses for bho, just curious)
― mookieproof, Thursday, 9 February 2012 01:55 (twelve years ago) link
don't buy this at all.
1.) obama basically ran on a "super left-wing" platform and still won by a decent margin. (no, he wasn't kucinich, but if promising to pass universal health care, end the war in iraq, and close gitmo aren't "super left-wing" policies, i don't know what is.) 2.) "super left-wing" is basically in the eye of the beholder. the fact that the political establishment has agreed, say, that closing gitmo is an extremist "left-wing" policy doesn't mean that this instantly becomes the prevailing view of most americans. 3.) it's really problematic to use polls to make sweeping statements about what "most americans" believe because ppl's answers are largely dependent on the way poll questions are worded. i.e., ppl are more likely to respond favorably when asked if the government should 'do more to help poor people' than they are if asked if the government should 'spend more on welfare programs.'
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:38 (twelve years ago) link
I wish this were its own country too so we did not have to have a political system where we compromised w/ the crazy people that live elsewhere but ultimately that is how things work
you guys elected Bloomberg, I'm not sure you're really as well-positioned to throw stones as you think dude
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 02:56 (twelve years ago) link
bloomberg's pretty left-wing, like further than the dems on a lot of stuff w/ the exception a few 'admittedly kinda important' issues. and still woulda lost two of the three elections if staten island didn't exist.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:06 (twelve years ago) link
exception of
man iatee your bizarro clubhouse version of the world has gone from offensive to fascinating for me. it's always "those bad people from this place I hate" who're the problem, whether the issue's local, national, or global. v. silly + unuseful lens thru which to view the world imo
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:09 (twelve years ago) link
what do you think of the dems aero
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:09 (twelve years ago) link
how do you like that obama dude
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:10 (twelve years ago) link
staten island is a bastion of liberalism?!?
― it might look subversive, but it's actually crap ... crap does exist (Eisbaer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:11 (twelve years ago) link
you and me, we're against the same things, I hate the cause you hate the effect
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:11 (twelve years ago) link
eis, staten island is a bastion of suburban conservativism that's just big enough to allow left-wing gop pols to swing some nyc elections
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:13 (twelve years ago) link
haha otm re: bloomberg
there is, on a day-to-day level in a major city, a lot to be said for making the trains run on time tho. (no i am not excusing his convention/ows/other behavior.)
a big problem with the gop is that they're so against the idea of government that they won't even bother administrating it.
― mookieproof, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:14 (twelve years ago) link
I don't think we're actually against the same things in the sense that I don't hate everybody who's not exactly like me
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:16 (twelve years ago) link
Bloomie isn't 'left wing' by any standard cept conventionally pro-gay/Planned Parenthood etc (plus he's one hilarious liar on rich/poor issues: "ppl on Wall Street make $45-50 G") and he would've lost last time if the Dems hadn't nominated a nobody who was in bed with him.
― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:16 (twelve years ago) link
or if he didn't get to spend like $400 per nyc voter on ads
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:17 (twelve years ago) link
but mostly, staten island
actually i think he's pissed at how close he came to losing to a nobody
― mookieproof, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:19 (twelve years ago) link
You are totally insane, you know this right
― I spend a lot of time thinking about apricots (DJP), Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:22 (twelve years ago) link
aero you've managed to abstract your hardcore leftism into this thing where , idk, the voters and people in america really have no relation to what should and can happen, and it's just those 'not hard enough left public figures' who are the cause of all our problems. that's v. convenient, it's all due to some powerful forces and some dudes in suits on tv and the good-hearted american people are just being tricked. no - it's not the fact that a very high % of people in america believe that women should not ever be able to get an abortion, ever - no, that has no effect on american policy at all. it's the mysterious forces and sell-out dems. america is actually packed w/ good-hearted pro-choice socialists, they're just all hiding under rocks, waiting for the magic third party to appear.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:22 (twelve years ago) link
bloomberg pushed for congestion pricing, very strict gun control laws, gay marriage, he's against the death penalty etc. etc.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:25 (twelve years ago) link
honestly the scenario you're spinning out of air (which neither I nor anyone else believes) is still less batshit insane than "all the dumb ppl in [town/county/state/country] are the problem" - I know you can't actually imagine that even as logically possible, because you've been drunk on "the people in [region/locality] are so stupid!" for so long so there is no point in even arguing, I'm just commenting that it's fascinating, because it's so transparently a 1) foolish and 2) losing argument but it's like your absolute go-to in every scenario. the bad people from the bad places. if only we could be rid of them. <--- never ever get anywhere with that line of thinking + it's wrong in the first place but neither of these disqualifiers offset the apparent sweetness of the argt for you. it's just weird is all!
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:52 (twelve years ago) link
whew. i was worried for a second that this clusterfuck wasn't actually going to happen.
― Mordy, Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:53 (twelve years ago) link
lol
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 03:54 (twelve years ago) link
when you call out american policy makers you are calling out the people who voted for them. you can pretend that you're not, that the senator from oklahoma really has *nothing to do* with the people and culture of oklahoma. he's just this dude, there. what an asshole, right? but you're just abstracting the issue. american politics is making a big grand compromise w/ 'the bad people in the bad places'. it sucks, we do it, that's why things are the way they are.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:03 (twelve years ago) link
I know that that's what you think! it's literally insane, tossing out the many other things about American politics that don't suit your pet notion! that is what is really interesting about yr whole deal, the amount of sheer effort you have to put into your unworking, wrong, utterly ridiculous "bad people/bad places" weird post-Marxist hangover ideology!
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:08 (twelve years ago) link
"there's no money in politics...the electorate never shifts...if it does, thank the good people from the good places...there's literally nothing else in play besides the voters, they're really running the show...these fuckin' rubble...you can admit it or not, but they're scum...their individual donations are really the engine that drives the whole machine...gotta re-wire that machine for their own good...the days grow hot, O Babylon...'tis cool beneath thy villow trees"
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:11 (twelve years ago) link
tbh I do not have to put very much effort into this ideology "on the whole, people vote for politicians who represent and enact their policy beleifs"
I have some pretty crazy beliefs, no doubt, but the 'voting has something to do w/ politics' theory has many proponents
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:11 (twelve years ago) link
yeah dude "on the whole, voting is a complex behavior with many variables in play" would be a much safer & truer assertion
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:13 (twelve years ago) link
as w/ many things, it might be on an individual level, when millions of people do it they follow fairly predictable patterns
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:14 (twelve years ago) link
the overwhelming pattern being "they vote for someone who best represents their political beliefs"
it's crazy but I'm the one not being patronizing towards millions of people atm
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:16 (twelve years ago) link
aero is it mistaken to think that the voters in some states are more hostile to abortion rights than those in other states?
― mookieproof, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:20 (twelve years ago) link
all those people *tricked* into being pro-life...by uh...money! ads! the machine! it's not like there are people in america w/ different beliefs than us, there are just people who were tricked. by money.
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:21 (twelve years ago) link
this particular question seems moot to me, since the right to choose is hardly ever approachable at the voting level, unless you're tracking candidates and their positions w/the voters, which, again, is really complex: how you frame the question of abortion has as much to do with a voter's response as the issue iteself (same's true with a lot of social issues eg welfar). in iatee's world, the many people who've had abortions but still vote pro-life don't really exist, because the world is easily explained: there's good people (us, we live here) and scummy people (them, they live there). iatee will always believe this & there's no point engaging him on it at all but "staten island" was just too hilarious to ignore, I'm sure he's got a bunch of charts n stats that prove staten island really is the great satan or something tho
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:26 (twelve years ago) link
"iteself" seems to have borrowed an "e" from "welfar" but if it works for them who'm I to judge
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:27 (twelve years ago) link
I can look for one but I really don't think anyone needs a chart to prove that xp
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:27 (twelve years ago) link
some1 else reminded me of this /nostalker
ice cr?m it's a democracy. America votes in a guy, they not only get what they deserve, they get what they explicitly asked for. and it's not like there weren't plenty of voices around warning that the candidates were going to fuck shit up proper - this is a democracy, again! vote in somebody who's not a fucking sociopath, get a better deal imo, otherwise you get what you voted for & urged others to vote for
― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, October 31, 2011 10:00 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:32 (twelve years ago) link
so ppl have basically homogenous views throughout the 50 states? that doesn't seem right.
― mookieproof, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:33 (twelve years ago) link
lol "the electorate gets what it votes for" is what I say. "the electorate gets what it votes for, those horrible subhumans" is your uniquely batshit variant on that
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:34 (twelve years ago) link
lol dude Reagan got a 2nd term. sorry to "condescend" to an asshole electorate that actually gave a guy who'd been ruining the country for four years another four years to dig the whole deeper.― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned)
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:35 (twelve years ago) link
hmmmm
I'm sure he's got a bunch of charts n stats that prove staten island really is the great satan or something tho
staten island does kinda suck, though.
― it might look subversive, but it's actually crap ... crap does exist (Eisbaer), Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:38 (twelve years ago) link
I went to high school in Staten Island. Prince's Bay. We hung out in New Dorp. New Doooorp. The train is free there. That's pretty cool. It smells like garbage in the summer. Less cool.
― Mordy, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:40 (twelve years ago) link
oh no - they shift all the time for a lot of reasons - states go from pro-labor to anti depending on the economy, how effective the unions are in their work, clever phrasing like "right to work" (who doesn't believe in the right to work?) in ballot measures, etc., for example. states get tilted pro- or anti-choice when a Republican legislature gets out its pen and starts redistricting; this is going on now in a number of states, the one I live in included. whole educational curricula go fundamentalist when the right/wrong people end up on local schoolboards. much of this has to either with long-term regional strategies of the party that take into account local economies, movement of the population imo. It's my understanding that Thomas Frank's book about Kansas talks a lot about this sort of thing but I haven't read it so I don't know for sure
no point in drawing this out I just feel obligated to holler "bullshit" when iatee finds another neighborhood to demonize
― unlistenable in philly (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:41 (twelve years ago) link
They have houses with waterfalls where the water flows over the front of the house.
― Mordy, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:42 (twelve years ago) link
by neighborhood you mean 'another old thread where you said exactly the opposite of what you're saying now', right xp
― iatee, Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:44 (twelve years ago) link