the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

until i see some serious "no candidate!" anarchy from that front, i'm still gonna be more impressed with a third-party candidate that got almost 20% of the vote, loon or no

Perot was one of those dudes who if people thought about him literally one second too long you started to feel more sympathetic. When he did his "to the people of America: I'm doing this because I love you" bit it really got me & then I thought "oh, yeah, that's actually the whole point of that bit"

sorry aero didn't mean to step in on your bullshit

would be nice of you to answer the question though

just bc it can't stay the worst forever or everyone dies and life is extinguished.

you are assuming this is not a possibility, when it's a certainty (in the very very long term) and a strong possibility (in a much nearer term, given global climate change).

that was your inspirational message for the day.

i can't see climate change being even considered by either party until the economy gets back in shape. personally, i believe one party's platform has a slightly slightly better chance of doing that.

but no, it's not enough and we're all fucked. just hopefully after i die.

People swear that Obama understands the gravity of climate change and simply decided it wasn't worth the political fight (and obviously the public prioritized the economy then and now.) I don't know though, I really feel like most politicians are either so innately optimistic or so venal that they can't really grasp how desperate the situation is. Deep down I think most of them are thinking "maybe it won't be so bad."

I'd agree with that, and I'd go so far as to say that the only reason Obama even gives lip service to "green initiatives" is because 1.) it pleases his base and 2.) potential new job market

still prefer to it "Climate Change isn't even real we should drill/pollute MORE and de-regulate the pitiful guidelines we already have so companies can maximise profits" ethos though

shit, there i go again. soz

you are assuming this is not a possibility, when it's a certainty (in the very very long term) and a strong possibility (in a much nearer term, given global climate change).

I am assuming it is a possibility, but once life is eradicated there will be no one around to care. Life only matters to the living.

There are a lot of intelligent, well informed liberals in rural USA, dudes. There are Democratss all over this country who share your values.

I 'm pointing this out, because while we're having our big whine-fest, paved with generalizations, there are people working really hard to swing their rural counties from 52% red to 52% blue, and enact changes locally that favor labor, civil rights, and the environment, people who are battling their reactionary neighbors. And there are a lot of Dems (pols, staff, party members) who are busting their asses to enact the laws that we favor, and to push the pols to the left on policy matters.

once we "fix" the economy, of course, what we have to do to "fix" climate change (NB: too late) is utterly change the economy and the way we do everything. GOOD LUCK USA

we are not going to stop climate change, we don't have it in us as a species. (unless the great god technology pulls another rabbit out of its hat at the last second.) after billions die though the remaining scraps may be a different and better species. so, optimism!

doesn't really have anything to do with the USA. the problem is people. nobody really expects heroin addicts to stop until they hit bottom so why anyone expects us to is beyond me.

we are like the Krell, only dumber.

An entire species behaving as a coherant, intelligent body is an idea I blame on some simple-minded sci-fi ideas.

Obviously, this idea predates and is the cause of these ideas. Probably has something to do with the impulse to create gods.

Can anyone school me on which of these Democratic PACs that supposedly help elect progressive Dems nationwide I should support ( groups like Blue America, the PCCC, DFA and PDA)

Those names are from a Firedoglake blogpost

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yED_DgX9VNE/Tm7UfaFTIcI/AAAAAAAAAy0/4qEM_gMhLzg/s1600/Am+People+Spoken+II.jpg

I only give money directly to progressive campaigns, including primaries against blue dogs. I suspect that some of these PACs are worthy, but I feel like I get more bang for my buck in smaller campaigns.

haha who said anything about coherent and intelligent. i mean it's not a hive mind we're talking about here, people both individually and in aggregate are going to continue to behave the way they behave, which is as extraction addicts unable to shake the built-in faith that there is always more, until their environment undergoes significant disruptive changes and they are forced to adapt to it. that's how species work. i honestly think it's unfair to expect any more of us; our relationship to the planet changed so abruptly. five minutes ago you couldn't ruin an ocean if you tried. xps

sorry, doom doom doom in the wrong thread. i am cheerful this morning really!

people both individually and in aggregate are going to continue to behave the way they behave, which is as extraction addicts unable to shake the built-in faith that there is always more, until their environment undergoes significant disruptive changes and they are forced to adapt to it. that's how species work. i honestly think it's unfair to expect any more of us;

agree with some of that, but people will continue to behave the way they behave until some sort of mechanism adjusts their incentives, whether that's some sort of market mechanism, taxes, regulation, etc. public policy is supposed to step in here. the ozone problem would have been much, much worse if not for the environmental regulations of the late 80s/early 90s. regulations that were based upon republican ideas, ironically.

sure. at this point though, i dunno, i doubt the ability of (democratic, heh) governments to adopt sufficiently powerful public policy to fix the problem. especially deadlocked plutocracies like ours. and it isn't just us, of course; there is also the awkward conversation the rich countries will have to have with the developing world, like lol sorry guys i know the industrial revolution looked really fun and you were all really looking forward to it but we've just discovered there's a monster at the end of this book.

oh, totally. yeah, i'm more doomy on the topic than just about anyone i know. i'm just saying, it's not an impossible problem, there are plenty of workable ideas that would go a long way toward avoiding the needless deaths of hundreds of millions of people. but the perception is that it would ruin the economy. that's wrong. but anyway, once that perception is there and embraced vocally and/or tacitly by all sides, you're stuck in a trap, because when the economy is bad it's not the right time to do something about climate change, and when the economy is doing better, why would you endanger that recovery by doing something about climate change? there's never a good time.

That conversation in full: "Psyche!"

The perception is that it will ruin the economy in the next electoral cycle - after that the incumbents will surely be dead before it really starts to bite rich white westerners.

Fast trains are the solution to both the bad economy and climate change. I love trains.

i don't even care whether they fix anything i just want them.

anyway, i'm so not looking forward to being right about all this

Blow up I-95.

sneaking suspicion that either silby or dlh or both are sock puppets for biden

the first time i rode a train it was amtrak from portland to seattle and i was all giddy getting on it w/ visions of agatha christie and THEN the conductor came on the pa and said "this train is now leaving for vancouver, kelso/longview, tacoma, vienna, belgrade, budapest, and con-STAN-tinople" and i was like !!!!. for everyone else on the train this was no doubt a kinda twee and obnoxious thing for the conductor to have done (and i've never heard a conductor do it again) but i needed it.

remember that george will article about how trains are inherently authoritarian cuz you have to follow the tracks and thus OF COURSE progressives love them? that was amazing.

The 20th Century Limited went express from New York to Chicago in 16 hours. In 1938.

In 2012, Amtrak's Lakeshore Limited takes 19 hours (albeit with intermediate stops).

O should really be taking policy cues from Biden and run on a train-construction platform.

remember that george will article about how trains are inherently authoritarian cuz you have to follow the tracks and thus OF COURSE progressives love them? that was amazing

even more amazing was the Krugman blog where Paul sees Will disembarking from an Amtrak commuter, shortly after the original column

Two weeks ago I Amtrakked from Montreal to New York...conductor (?) was likewise having a good time conveying reports of bald eagle sightings and announcing "Schenectady! Schenectady! Schenecta-necta-nectady!" but yeah, high speed it was not.

oh god Romney at the NALEO

would be nice of you to answer the question though

the question "who are you kidding"? I don't know if you're, like, 12 years old, but here's some news: my underarms sweat. Sometimes they stink! This doesn't invalidate my observation that your underarms stink when they sweat. Unless you are a fucking idiot, then maybe ok.

no, the question about who are the "believers" in this thread you were talking about?

oh! ha sorry. thought I had corrected that last night - I think you think I mean "Obama true-believers," of whom I don't think there are many. I'd say most everybody here is a believer in the system, or at least in the claim that it's the best we can hope for - aren't you? I'd characterize the ilx politics thread as mainly left-leaning dudes who're skeptical but not cynical about the process but who believe reforms are possible and that one party is more likely to help their left-leaning cause than the other. that kind of believer: and most of you.

you definitely believe the democrats are more likely to help your left-leaning cause than the other party, too, aero

this system sucks! I only "believe" in it inasmuch as it appears to be held in place by insurmountable forces (ie, droves of morons)

they may be unethical, industry-coddling, ecology-damaging war criminals who aren't doing much to soothe your soul or save the planet, but we all know that they're helping left-leaning causes more than republicans are

that is true

name these causes.

all of them?

the key phrase is "more than republicans"