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

I think Pierce at Esquire is competing with Taibbi:

think it was when he went to tears, one dab at each eye, while talking about his mother, that it became extraordinarily clear to me that there's a lot of old Dick Nixon in young Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Janesville, Wisconsin

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-convention-speech-12188956

nah.... taibbi is still way over the top -- both are amazing tho. pierce is so great on politics.

I might be willing to view the racist bile heaped on Obama as the prism though which to look at American racism if I thought Obama intended, on balance, to improve the lives of Americans. I don't.

this manages to both a) brush aside racism towards obama beccause you don't believe obama intends to improve lives and b) pretend the only racism going on in an election riddled with voter id laws and lies about welfare is directed towards obama.

though i guess if you're self-involved enough to think it doesn't make a difference which party wins, you're probably self-involved enough not to care about which voters are being disenfranchised and which party is doing the disenfranchising.

pretend the only racism going on in an election riddled with voter id laws and lies about welfare is directed towards obama.

never said that.

Dems seem "self-involved enough" not to factor in the presidential racism of incinerating brown kids at funerals then joking about it to the Jonas Brothers, but ain't that America, you and me?

there's such an irony in you clinging to the fact that every president is a war criminal to explain why you don't care about crimes against americans

the way i see it, the only reason to vote at the national level is because of social issues. the two parties claiming differences on foreign policy is pretty laughable at this point. and despite all the talk of apocalypse from both sides, imho there's not much light between them on entitlements and taxes, either (dems will probably 'manage the decay' a little better. maybe).

but reproductive rights and equality for taxpaying American citizens who happen to be gay are pretty important to me so

croup you can sorta see how your read here might come across a little "under no circumstances must one criticize the president, because he can help people," right?

i could if i've ever suggested one can't criticize the preisdent, but all i've mocked is the claim that it doesn't matter who wins.

I do care about crimes against americans, incl the ones Obama has committed.

pierce is so great on politics.

totally. I discovered him a couple weeks ago

There IS a lesser-evil argument to voting for the prez, Greenwald worked one up in the spring that's about 900 words long. It doesn't get past my gag reflex.

just saying, you're one lucky duck if you can back away from an election because you find everyone distasteful, safe in the knowledge that your time on the couch won't be affected either way.

could there be a more privileged perspective on politics than "well, they both gross me out" and leaving it at that.

the way i see it, the only reason to vote at the national level is because of social issues. the two parties claiming differences on foreign policy is pretty laughable at this point. and despite all the talk of apocalypse from both sides, imho there's not much light between them on entitlements and taxes, either (dems will probably 'manage the decay' a little better. maybe).

for the first time since 2000 I'm leaning towards voting for prez. I long ago assumed the Dems would consolidate Bush's executive power grab, so it's come down to which person is least likely to disregard our long term economic health. I'm leaning towards thinking "Better Obama do nothing for the next four years than Romney policies affect the reproductive health of women. But I don't know yet.

(the White House's reluctance to make inroads in the federal judiciary is another problem that makes me so fucking angry)

it's more privileged than _____ing both conventions, true.

your BS is not new, grow some morals. maybe religion wd help. xp

p. sure Morbius is economically in the same class most adversely affected by Republican policies? idk man I'm voting for the Democrat like everybody else but wholesale dismissal of even the possibility of a principled stance (or junking the principles completely on the grounds that people will be affected, therefore the principle is worthless & bankrupt I guess?) seems & will always seem like aggro tactical maneuvering whose main purpose is to get people to stfu about how ~the two parties, on issues that also affect real people's lives but these people sometimes live abroad, have the same substantial //effect// on stuff that ///also matters///~

"He bombs other countries just like his opposition."
"Yes, but he will help people here more than the other guy."

^^^ this is true - it doesn't invalidate the claim that to the people who lived in the houses that got bombed, they're the same candidate

your BS is not new, grow some morals. maybe religion wd help. xp

― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Thursday, August 30, 2012 11:25 AM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark

your BS is so ancient there's a tree growing out of it, ty for saving the environment

"well, they both gross me out"

2016: zombie Stalin vs zombie Mao

libs vote for whoever has the "D"

if you don't think i've got a moral argument for why one should take part in suggesting a liberal mandate in the voting booth, you don't realize that the reason this pov pisses me off is because i've indulged in it and i'm not proud of that.

xpost if morbz house was bombed i'm sorry i thought he was just another american who thought both were gross and neither would stop an environmental or economic apocalypse from taking away his couch

to the ppl living in bombed houses, the principled stand to not vote for either candidate is of exact value to the non-principled stand to vote for the lesser of two evils.

i don't even see how "he does good as well as bad" even enters into croup's posts tbh. he's just pointing out that morbs seems to hate everyone in the world and only gets all bleeding heart THINK OF THE CHILDREN when it helps his argument against those he hates the most.

where I'm at presently politically, I vote for whoever has the D, too. What can I say, I love the D

believe me i'd be far more respectful of someone who was like "i'm not voting because i'm fucked either way" and i actually believed they were fucked either way.

to the ppl living in bombed houses, the principled stand to not vote for either candidate is of exact value to the non-principled stand to vote for the lesser of two evils.

well yeah but that is because they're dead. prior to their deaths, the people in the bombed houses might have said "you guys need to have a revolution because all your dudes are fixing to bomb our house"

i also would be totally more respectful to people who were like "i'm not voting because i'm bringing the fucking revolution" and you know, they were actually working towards that.

I have a different, more parochial reason for voting -- I'm in a totally red state that will not even be close to being in contention, but I live in a city that tends to narrowly vote Democratic, and there's symbolic significance in that to me. It means something to be able to say, yes, this state and this county are hardcore Bible-belt conservative, but we're not all like that. It's easy for those of us in voting minorities in these states to just be totally ignored, like we don't even exist, so being able to say that the city-limits vote has gone for the Democrat the last five elections in a row is worth something to me. I might feel differently if I still lived in NYC, but here casting that vote, however flawed the candidate, feels like a kind of civic self-assertion.

If the two evils get you to the EXACT same place in 40 years or less -- ie, Eternal Fuckitude -- how does this change the moral equation?

can we talk some more about how hilariously weaselly Paul Ryan's speech was

you call your couch Eternal Fuckitude?

I mean I know MORBZBOT and everything but how many time have we had this argument

hey he tsked talking about the infomercials so why not

so many times xp

xposts

Also btw when you actually live surrounded by and engulfed in Bible-belt conservatism, the real, visceral differences between the major-party worldviews becomes a lot more stark and obvious.

I don't have a couch, dude, I have the same not-really-convertible bed I've been sleeping on for 10 years bcz I'm too rent-poor to get a new one.

ironically, the apocalyptic history POV has so much cultural currency bc the current political parties invest so much energy in convincing the electorate that the world will end if their opponent is elected. morbz is really just turning that against the ppl pushing that idea hard. the correct position tho is abandoning this asinine 'end of the world' shit altogether.

truth bomb

the world is always ending

hv you heard abt the ice caps, Mordy?

the only way not voting is a "moral" choice is that you believe voting makes you implicit in the crimes of the person you're voting for in a way that simply living in america and enjoying its privileges doesn't. which is really, really stupid.

no plz tell me about these ice caps do u put them on soda bottles?

yeah Shakey, it's really fucking ending now

voting doesn't matter, don't think too hard about it

yeah Shakey, it's really fucking ending now

so troll 'em if you got 'em

croup, we are all guilty, but what can I tell ya, suicide hurts.

kinda can't believe morbz wasn't the one kicking dead neil armstrong on the r.i.p. thread. but he does like nostalgia.

also I had an Apollo scrapbook

i also would be totally more respectful to people who were like "i'm not voting because i'm bringing the fucking revolution" and you know, they were actually working towards that.

"working toward the revolution" does not involve going to the polls.

i honestly don't know what you think i said that stands in opposition to what you're saying