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

well, we had the reductive analysis of that speech, now we have the interpretative one

I'm pretty sure this line of reasoning from Elizabeth Warren and Obama is why tax rates were as high as 90% for rich folks back in the day. 'We hooked you up, now give back'

not sure what's being debated here. does anyone really doubt that obama is unimpressed and cynical about aspects of America? occasionally he's going to hit a tone that suggests he thinks he's smarter than half the country, because he is and most of us think we are too. like the "guns and religion" bit in '08 this is just a reminder to check for that, esp if you want to be a "uniter".

yup, esp esp as missteps like this go a long way towards "proving" that obama really is the success-hostile pocket-picker the right so desperately wants paint him as

in the end i don't think it will be an issue. Nobody who voted for Obama in 08 didn't know he was a smug liberal who smoked weed as a kid, and he's not going to do a press blitz friday saying "yes, america, you should credit your success to big brother."

last night he was going on about Obama's mentor back in Hawaii, Frank Marshall Davis.

According to this article about conservative author/commentator Jack Cashill, Davis also figures heavily into Cashill's various conspiracy theories about Obama. (Cashill, incidentally, is a friend of my dad's from grad school and apparently wasn't always a crackpot.)

ha cashill is the guy who 'proved' ayers wrote obama's books. because both their memoirs used really unique words like "gleamed" or something.

"Baleful"! A word Cashill had never heard of!

Romney campaign going ham on Obama's "youthful transgressions"/conspiratorial associations will endear him to the base and alienate everyone else. I say go for it dude, I need more lolz this summer.

From Hannity's website:

The Untold Story Of Obama's Mentor

Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College joined Sean in the show's second hour to discuss his new book, "The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor." In his memoir, Barack Obama omits the full name of his mentor, simply calling him "Frank." Now, the truth is out. Obama was referring to Frank Marshall Davis. Never has a figure as deeply troubling and controversial as Frank Marshall Davis had such an impact on the development of an American president. Although other radical influences on Obama, from Jeremiah Wright to Bill Ayers, have been scrutinized, the public knows little about Davis, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA, cited by the Associated Press as an "important influence" on Obama, one whom he "looked to" not merely for "advice on living" but as a "father" figure.

If Obama is lucky, he'll get a lot of that and less of this.

"Now, the truth is out."

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5c4_DrMg0BI/TYobAGsxXTI/AAAAAAAAAyQ/n9v7xSTO2Vg/s400/X-Files.jpg

Quoth Obama in 'Dreams of my father', "It made me smile, thinking back on Frank and his old Black Power, dashiki self. In some ways he was as incurable as my mother, as certain in his faith, living in the same sixties time warp that Hawaii had created."

I'm pretty sure this line of reasoning from Elizabeth Warren and Obama is why tax rates were as high as 90% for rich folks back in the day. 'We hooked you up, now give back'

― johnathan lee riche$ (mayor jingleberries), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 9:50 AM (7 minutes ago)

yeah, one of the strangest things about american politics, to me, is how little public attention we devote to this. over the last 30 years, there's been this radical shift in our sense of the obligations of the wealthy to the nation in general, and no one talks about it (when it happened, why and how it happened, whether or not it's a good thing, etc). at least not in public...

discounting the brief and inevitable drop that accompanied the great depression, the max rate was at least 50% for 7/10ths of the 20th century! the bold, wealthy, strong, "free", future-making and world-dominating america that conservatives lionize was built on extremely high tax rates for the rich, and no one seems willing to admit it.

Yeah nobody talks about it because poor people don't own the media, rich people do.

yeah not so worried about the latter Clemenza, average voter stops processing info at this phrase: explaining the global perspective of the ultra-rich business elite to the struggling U.S. worker

Adam OTM it's pretty obvious why that doesn't get traction

i suppose that's so, but rich people have always owned the media, even during the era when contemporary income taxation came into being (1913) and the maximum rate rose from 67% (1917) to 92% (1953).

re: Phil's link

Ambassador Trentino: Now will you tell me what happened on Saturday?
Chicolini: I'm glad you ask me. We follow this man down to a roadhouse, and at this roadhouse he meet a married lady.
Ambassador Trentino: A married lady?
Chicolini: Yeah, I think it was his wife.

But the media has never been so consolidated as it is now.

media has never mattered less than it does now

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Paul-won-t-get-speaking-slot-at-GOP-confab-3711298.php

sayonara

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nl23nB5w90

What's today? Can't imagine whom ads will be invoking by October.

I like that Romney is allegedly trying to attack Obama as a teenage drug user. What percentage of americans were teenage drug users, even adult drug users? gotta be like 50%

prob all democrats too, lol

But the media has never been so consolidated as it is now.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, July 18, 2012 11:05 AM (10 minutes ago)

is this really true? in the teens and 20s, the big radio and newspaper chains were owned by just a few ultra wealthy men, right?

I want the Obama campaign to respond to the drug thing w/ lots of talk about how Romney can't drink wine or beer

even john kerry could *in theory* have a beer w/ you

"Which candidate would you have a beer with? DON'T ANSWER YET BECAUSE CHECK THIS OUT."

recently got into a discussion with a "conservative" about how my effective rate was considerably higher than Romney's 13.9%. he was incredulous and assured me that it was highly unlikely i was paying a higher percentage than Mittens. he was very much wrong. i'm single, self-employed, and due to the reimbursable nature of my work expenses, i'm not able to claim a lot of deductions. so yes, i pay a decidedly higher effective rate than a guy who pulled like 20 mil in 2010. even so, my rate isn't *that* bad.

then you figure that the top "nonpayer" threshold for a married couple with two kids is $51,400 (increased by Obama and the Dem majority congress in 2009, thank you very much). add a mortgage deduction and some tithing to that and that nonpayer threshold could be even higher. we're talking about a lot of solidly middle class families, particularly in Red states, NOT PAYING ANY INCOME TAX. (http://keithhennessey.com/2010/04/15/off-the-rolls/).

but the funniest thing about our exchange was that it drove home the point that *effective* federal income tax rates in this country are, by and large, pretty damned agreeable. obviously they're much more 'agreeable' for guys like Romney. and, quite franky, for middle class families who are effectively paying no income tax at all. yet all these clowns can do is complain about some of the lowest rates in the history of the US income tax. seriously, it's like trying to reason with children. and our "liberal" media says nada.

The more pertinent question is, Which candidate would you rather have a beer summit with? That's a non-starter for Romney.

"Tricky Mitt" is kinda sad. "It's like Tricky Dick, remember - Nixon, Richard Nixon. Dick. Just like that! Both words are one syllable with short 'i' sound! C'mon, it's hilarious! 'Tricky Mitt'! Fuck yeah we're going with 'Tricky Mitt,' fuck you guys, you'll see, this is the best idea I've had yet"

now, obviously all of these middle class families have "skin in the game" via state income, state and local sales, payroll, gasoline taxes etc. so i'm not on some FOX news "47% of Americans are shiftless nogoodniks who aren't paying taxes OMG!!"

(it's funny how that talking point is spat out there like half of America is literally on welfare though, when the reality probably hits much closer to home for the avg talk radio/ FOX devotee.)

xxposts to self

"Which candidate would you have a beer with? DON'T ANSWER YET BECAUSE CHECK THIS OUT."

lol

The Tricky Mitt ad is pretty egregious. It's not Obama's--wink-wink, nudge-nudge--so he'll be able to do the "Who, me?"

the bank would call me Tricky Mitt
I used to put my bonds in it
my interest rates feel to their knees
so I moved it all overseas

God will reboot us
Got me like Judas

The media still matters, iatee. They have an influence over what's seen and read on the internet. And I think it's still fair to call media companies on the internet "the media."

The media is of overwhelming importance.

I said matters less than ever not doesn't matter xp

but people really overrate how many Americans care enough about politics to watch fox news

is "the media" just 24 hour news channels in this scenario?

fox news sucks. msnbc sucks. cnn sucks. pbs news sucks. npr news sucks. local news sucks but is hilarious. evening news sucks. local newspapers are mostly owned by a few different companies, which suck.

http://mediamatters.org/static/images/item/broadcastclimate.jpg
http://mediamatters.org/static/images/item/trumpchart2.jpg
http://mediamatters.org/static/images/item/sundayguests.jpg
http://mediamatters.org/static/images/item/totalcoverage.jpg

fox news is merely the vanguard of a broader movement of wretched suck

climate change isn't v. entertaining for most people and most people just want to be entertained

somewhat hit Romney with a football in the groin already

yeah, i mean that's not news or anything, no pun intended

for some reason, though, people in other countries seem to be much better informed than in the U.S., and i can't help but wonder if that's due to their news coverage not being a total joke. maybe i'm wrong. for what it's worth, al jazeera just ran an EXCELLENT 25 minute segment on the connection between this summer's extreme weather and the broader trends of climate change. they had 3 guests - 2 climate scientists and a researcher/author. all three of those would fit into the "other" category in the chart above.

i realize part of that has to do with the decades long disinformation campaign from big oil and captains of industry who benefit from using the cheapest sources of energy rather than the kind that result in millions of deaths, but media plays an undeniably important role in providing the loudhorn for these assholes.

should have aimed more carefully

(xpost)

xp: well also keep in mind that the one thing Americans don't want to hear is that they have to compromise something about their lifestyles

yup

lol iatee, knew I was going to get a cosign from you on that

or that there are other lifestyles, or that some are probably better in many ways than others