Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

lol u believe campaign "promises."

(sorry, don't mean to be snarky ... but i've seen enough of Change We Can Believe In in action to know better than to believe much of what he says on the campaign trail.)

i can't wait until other countries develop their own fleet of drones and then we can just have drone battles in the sky!

yaaaaay 21st century!

I know Obama is a centrist, and I know he's failed to get anything legislatively across along the lines of increasing taxes on the rich - and I'd argue that on that issue he just can't get shit through congress, not that he doesn't believe in the idea - but if you think he and Romney have the same ideological view and, by extension, hopeful legislative agenda on the economy then i don't know what you're seeing. He ignored Simpson-Bowles, after all, and he's getting a lot of shit for it.

I'm not sure which will happen sooner, the end of the Bush tax cuts or those 'mandatory' reductions in the Pentagon budget.

i believe that the Congressional Dems have become even more useless on increasing taxes on the rich than Obama, esp. after citizens united -- after all, they were the ones who punted the issue to Obama in 2010. and House members need to get elected every 2 years (as opposed to any President, who only needs to shake the money tree once every 4 years.)

idk man, as i understand it every single elected pol spends about 75% of life shaking the money tree constantly

lol the House on that mandatory reductions btw.

GG connects more dots...

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/obama_the_warrior/singleton/

and links to this Foreign Policy piece: "Ignore what the candidates say they'll do differently on foreign policy. They're basically the same man."

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/23/barack_oromney

"Terror Tuesdays" in the Oval Office, w/ Axelrod slicing the baloney

I have no idea how anyone has endured Maher's puerile dismissals of red states, malls, and suburbia all these years.

he's a good moderator and there are no commercials

as for the rest, i mean, i can stay inside and hear it from bill maher or i can go outside and hear it from every single person i know

their timing's worse

i'm lying of course i can't afford hbo

only talk show i've ever actively wanted to watch, tho

"Ignore what the candidates say they'll do differently on foreign policy. They're basically the same man."

lol

I have no idea how anyone has endured Maher's puerile dismissals of red states, malls, and suburbia all these years.

this is being too kind, don't forget the sexism and the racism!

yeah but Krugman was on

guys guys

http://www.motherjones.com/files/images/screen_shot_2012-05-29_at_12.38.52_pm.png

I live three blocks from the former Jose Canseco Boulevard!

what is it now, West Anabolia?

smaller scale than all this stuff, but wtf North Carolina: http://io9.com/5914378/north-carolina-considers-outlawing-accurate-predictions-of-sea-level-rise?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

*facepalm*

i mean, irl facepalm.

Meanwhile in Florida:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/florida-gop-takes-voter-supression-to-a-brazen-new-extreme-20120530

We're aware of it. God bless Rick Scott.

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/05/58-percent-of-voters-targeted-in-noncitizen-hunt-are-hispanic-whites-gop-least-likely-to-face-purge.html

So if George Will's claims are to be believed, the Citizen's United decision has mostly helped really rich people use their free speech (not corporations use theirs), and thus, libs should quit complaining.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/montana-attempts-to-buck-the-supreme-court-on-citizens-united/2012/05/30/gJQA4DCi2U_story.html

Through March 31, the eight leading super PACs supporting Republican presidential candidates received contributions totaling $96,410,614. Of this, $83,220,167 (86.32 percent) came from individuals, only $13,190,447 (13.68 percent) from corporations, and only 0.81 percent from public companies. McConnell says, “Not a single one of the Fortune 100 companies has contributed a cent” to any of the eight super PACS. These facts refute such prophesied nightmares as The Post’s fear that corporate money “may now overwhelm” individuals’ contributions.

Citizens United ...grammar correction

rule by ludicrously rich owners of corporations is preferable to rule by corporations dontchaknow

yeah, that's a distinction slight enough as to be entirely meaningless, isn't it?

corporations are people, my friend

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/05/the-presidents-kill-list.html

reposting this short piece schlump posted in the sociopath thread, so everyone gets a chance to read it. davidson's really great; her judgements somehow don't feel like moralizing, which is difficult to do with an issue like this

yeah she writes so well. & so openly, like she's giving you something to think over rather than telling you what to think. have gotta read the full times piece. i don't have fully formed thoughts on this yet & i'm kinda hesitant to jump in before that, but i do find it so hard to think about this stuff. there's a great piece in the new harper's, which is extracts from oral testimony given by the families of victims of a drone strike, i think in pakistan maybe a year ago, thirty or so people having been killed while attending a ceremonial community meeting. & you read it & it's horrifying, but also part of what's horrifying about it would be horrifying of any account of ""collateral damage"", whatever the means of attack - the issue of automation, & of removing killing from human consequences, is another strand of it. there is a weirdly mathematical take on afghanistan in a sebastian junger interview that stuck in my head since i read it:

Will history judge Afghanistan a worthwhile war?

For me, the criterion is whether it increases or decreases human suffering. We killed bin Laden and dismantled al-Qaida, which are two good things, and we brought civilian casualties down from 400,000 in the 90s to around 10,000 in the decade that Nato's been there. If we pull out of Afghanistan in a way that doesn't precipitate a slide back into civil war – not that it would be perfect – then history should judge it a success.

& so it follows, according to this metric (obviously with like a zillion caveats, like that deaths were projected to continue at the same rate), that fewer overall deaths would make for it a reduction in total suffering & so a success. "success" &c. but do you get to make that choice? davidson's point about envisaging the power in the hands of a functionary or someone we don't have such an imaginary-friend hard-on for is great. the drift away from oversight & public discussion is so scary.

oh man i'm so behind on harper's

the article's the bomb

more than anything this shit reminds me of Nixon/Kissinger's expanded bombing campaigns, only made even creepier/more disturbing by the element of specificity involved

it's not like the Afghans didn't get their hair mussed!

oh man i'm so behind on harper's

― twittering spinster (k3vin k.), Friday, 1 June 2012 16:51 (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i don't even read harper's really but i've found i feel better about being able to check it if i don't try for the long eight page articles about inner-city [something]/histories of american attitudes/w/e, but if i just read, is it findings? it's so interesting. this month there's this great, paragraph-long excerpt from a police report on that whole escaped-zoo-animals thing, which happened in ohio sometime. or a couple months back there was this haunting precis of a school trip to a morgue.

gonna go wiki expanded bombings, is this cambodia or am i confused

yes I was referring to Cambodia

ty. good (albeit weirdly redolent of BABEL) article: http://gawker.com/5913960/lets-stop-killing-people-for-probably-being-up-to-no-good

that is a deeply dope piece, max

colbert too: http://gawker.com/5914785/stephen-colbert-tries-to-stay-off-obamas-kill-list

max gets points for reasonably engaging with commenters

Cornel West to TNC re Obama and the killings:

"You have Martin Luther King's statue in your office, but you are sending these unmanned drones out, and bombs are dropping on innocent people. That's not a small thing. That's not a small thing. We know from historic examples that if you engage in a certain kind of foreign policy it eats at your soul on the domestic front."

I kind of hate Cornel West but he is OTM kinda good to see someone from the lefty black community going after O on this

hey some of max's readers think the GWOT is still going on; set em straight, Shakey!

I don't do comments

Rehashing the recent past

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_06/the_choice_questionable_someth037704.php

link to tnr article with claim that the current jobs mess is at least partially Obama’s responsibility because he decided against prioritizing more and bigger stimulus when such a bill still had a chance to make it to his desk

However some commenters say the weak Dem Congress even then might not have gone for a bigger stimulus

Rehashing the very recent past, right before the election:

Of course, It's incredibly important that Barrett defeat Scott Walker in Wisconsin, and the DNC's decision-making in refusing to help is baffling. I'm sure the President and his team feel that throwing their weight into this arena only to lose would be seen as a rejection of the President himself. This is typical shortsightedness: Republicans will spin it as a defeat for Obama whether the DNC is involved or not, even as Republicans across the country rub their hands in glee at the prospect of ending collective bargaining rights across the country.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/06/demographic-tidbits-from-wisconsin-by.html

the DNC has handled the Walker recount with its usual mix of cowardice and anxiety. As usual the GOP understands what a victory represents.

The First Bomber (another funeral attack this weekend) has quite an array of righty shits approving of his tactics:

http://www.salon.com/2012/06/04/obama_again_bombs_mourners/singleton/

oh you sillies, New Dems don't like labor unions any more than Republicans. at best, they tolerate them b/c they get out the vote (just like the non-Teabag GOP tolerates but doesn't really like the Jesus Freaks).