U.S. Politics

[The Hitch]

Sometimes Obama is a ruthless dictator bent on imposing his views on America, sometimes he's a weak and ineffectual leader who can't cut it. How he's portrayed by the right simply depends on the context of what the issue or topic is and how they need him to appear. I wish they'd make up their minds, though.

It could be that some on the right see Obama as the weak ineffectual leader, and others as the evil dictator.

They don't have to all have the same opinion.

 

[The Hitch]

Romney seems to have had a slight boost in the polls

Rasmussen daily tracking which last election has had a bias of + 3 GOP, has Romney at +4, whereas its been between Obama +2 and Romney +2 for months.

Fox News which last time had Obama + 4 now has Romney +2.

In North Carolina, which GOP obviously need, Romney has +2 according to Rassmussen reports which is an improvement on the polls that have been showing him down there. Lots of voters undecided though, which in a state like NC is probably good for Romney.

Time will tell if this is GOP voters coming home, or a temporary boost that wont last.

 

[VeloCity]

Santorum, Gingrich - do you suppose it now occurs to Republicans that they came this close to nominating someone who is completely insane?

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/04/13/464445/gingrich-extend-right-to-gun-ownership-to-every-person-on-the-planet/

Conservative Republicans, the biggest embarrassment this country has to offer.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Except I don't consider this current lot to be "conservative". Or perhaps what they are is a very warped definition of that rubber term. So in that regard, maybe you're right.

Under the same token, there are very few liberals left in politics, and virtually no moderate Republicans. The "conservatives" have pushed the anti-government movement so hard, it's shoved everyone quite far to the right. And those that aren't at the extreme right, run the risk of being labelled a "liberal". I enter into the court, exhibit A: Every Republican supporting the Ryan Plan. And Exhibit B: Mitt Romney.

The Democrats on the other hand are like a big steamy plate of stale noodles.

 

[rhubroma]

Yes and its encouraging to know that Romney has asked for a permit for a six-story! garage for his new home in California. Certainly one who can be in touch with the plight of the working class.

On Gingrich and guns: repugnant and ludicrous at once. As if everyone around the globe has to live in the Far West, which makes his position also arogantly presumptuous. But this is not surprising.

 

[Amsterhammer]

On Gingrich and guns: repugnant and ludicrous at once. As if everyone around the globe has to live in the Far West, which makes his position also arogantly presumptuous. But this is not surprising.

Repugnant and ludicrous works for me, and no doubt, for anyone with a semblance of a brain.

I'm starting to wonder if I hallucinated yesterday. I was channel hopping and came across Wolf Blitzer with a 'breaking story', which I cannot find anywhere today.

It was about a black Rep. congressman from Florida (can't remember the name) who came out with a statement accusing 60 or more members of the Progessive Dem congressional caucus of being......yes, flashback to the 50's....communists!

There followed an hysterical interview between Blitzer and another black Dem. congressman, where Blitzer 'played McCarthy' and sarcastically asked if the congressman was now, or had ever been, a card carrying member of the Communist party! Did anyone else catch this or was I dreaming?

 

[Anonymous]

Santorum, Gingrich - do you suppose it now occurs to Republicans that they came this close to nominating someone who is completely insane?

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/04/13/464445/gingrich-extend-right-to-gun-ownership-to-every-person-on-the-planet/

Conservative Republicans, the biggest embarrassment this country has to offer.

We all have our thresholds, don't we?

I find the unlimited willingness to confiscate the labor of others exceptionally embarrassing... Second only perhaps to the insidious leftist designs to create a dependency class large enough to ensure perpetual power, or maybe the intentional pitting of American citizens against one another.

And remember, as embarrassing as Gingrich is, he's not in power.

 

[ChrisE]

Yes and its encouraging to know that Romney has asked for a permit for a six-story! garage for his new home in California. Certainly one who can be in touch with the plight of the working class.
.

No way will the Dems point that fact out...if one of them does they will scramble to apologize right on up to Obama.

This is why the weak spineless Dems lose elections when more times than not they are on the majority side of an issue. They are political cowards, triangulating cowards pandering to knuckle dragging mouth breathers that will not vote for them anyway.

Yes, Ann Romney. Hero to the working class women of America.

The only work she has done in her life is screening nannies and running up bills at Nieman Marcus. She has no idea what it is like to live check to check, or not know how things will work out if one of her children get sick.

Instead of doubling down on this BS, the dems all the way to the triangulator in chief apologize and the w*ore "liberal" media has it front page on the internet for 2 days. This country gets what it deserves.

 

[aphronesis]

I find the unlimited willingness to confiscate the labor of others exceptionally embarrassing...
[/B]

Must be hell even leaving the house then.

 

[Bala Verde]

You were looking for the leader in the GC of GOP MoCs who say stupid sh$t:

Allan West (also dishonorably discharged for erm violating the laws of war). He's like Wilders, looking for attention, which he'll the. Use to raise cash for his reelection.

Closely followed by people like Poe, Gohmert and Rohrabacher ("I never pass up an opportunity to mention I was a speech writer for Reagan").

These last 3 guys grew up during the cold war and seemingly can't let it go. It's the only world view they have and through that lense they frame each and every issue.

Rohrabacher personally armed the Afghani insurgents in the 80s, because in his world view an enemy of my enemy is my friend.

And wolf blitzer is an idiot.

Repugnant and ludicrous works for me, and no doubt, for anyone with a semblance of a brain.

I'm starting to wonder if I hallucinated yesterday. I was channel hopping and came across Wolf Blitzer with a 'breaking story', which I cannot find anywhere today.

It was about a black Rep. congressman from Florida (can't remember the name) who came out with a statement accusing 60 or more members of the Progessive Dem congressional caucus of being......yes, flashback to the 50's....communists!

There followed an hysterical interview between Blitzer and another black Dem. congressman, where Blitzer 'played McCarthy' and sarcastically asked if the congressman was now, or had ever been, a card carrying member of the Communist party! Did anyone else catch this or was I dreaming?

 

[blutto]

I find the unlimited willingness to confiscate the labor of others exceptionally embarrassing...

.[/B]

...but that is how capitalism, your heaven on earth, works...so what is your point?...that you have had an epiphany, and now see capitalism for what it is...or is this proof positive you don't have a real clue about how things actually work and that you don't know what you talking about (apart, of course, from the faux insight that comes with recycling pre-packaged right wing talking points, packed as they usually are, with nothing but vacuous truthiness )....

...btw...welcome back...I really missed you....honest...

Cheers

blutto

 

[rhubroma]

We all have our thresholds, don't we?

I find the unlimited willingness to confiscate the labor of others exceptionally embarrassing... Second only perhaps to the insidious leftist designs to create a dependency class large enough to ensure perpetual power, or maybe the intentional pitting of American citizens against one another.

And remember, as embarrassing as Gingrich is, he's not in power.

Ah, that's right, dependency on the State is what the left wants; while the right yearns to bring all those jobs back home, which the capitalists took to foreign shores, where the labor market was more convenient!?!?!

Brilliant analysis!

As if the right hasn't fanatically pushed for the globalization we have gotten following the neoliberal ideology they have always most purely incarnated! As if the right hasn't made an expedient out of just about every source of unscrupulousness, falsehood, mendacity, baseness and bigotry among the financial-industrial-military-religious establishments to hold a perpetual power over the State, to the point at which anyone with a true leftist agenda in America has only the guarantee of either dismal failure or assassination! Other than instigating class war: the right has verily been the fabricators of class. A class machine that unremittingly grinds out an ever growing class of working slobs with sh!tty pay, relentless hours, no pensions, no vacations, no healthcare, no higher education they can afford to send their children to without having them incurring colossal debt, a second rate infrastructure of roads and bridges to use, polluted waterways, a befouled and ruined landscape, cities infested with every type of criminal, cut-throat and lowlife, public schools often beyond all hope and so forth; and a class of uber-wealthy who spend their time at tasteless golf courses making their appalling business deals to see how they can continue to screw everyone else!

Just how many billions does one need?

 

[rhubroma]

No way will the Dems point that fact out...if one of them does they will scramble to apologize right on up to Obama.

This is why the weak spineless Dems lose elections when more times than not they are on the majority side of an issue. They are political cowards, triangulating cowards pandering to knuckle dragging mouth breathers that will not vote for them anyway.

Yes, Ann Romney. Hero to the working class women of America.

The only work she has done in her life is screening nannies and running up bills at Nieman Marcus. She has no idea what it is like to live check to check, or not know how things will work out if one of her children get sick.

Instead of doubling down on this BS, the dems all the way to the triangulator in chief apologize and the w*ore "liberal" media has it front page on the internet for 2 days. This country gets what it deserves.

That's because the so-called left is affraid to send the so-called moderates to the right. This only prooves, naturally, that the country is firmly established on the right, that the left in America is dead and has been for quite some time.

On the other hand it would be wise of Obama to relentlessly drive home without mercy the cut-throat that Romney in fact is: from his days back at Bain Private Capital (or however it's called).

 

[Anonymous]

Ah, that's right, dependency on the State is what the left wants; while the right yearns to bring all those jobs back home, which the capitalists took to foreign shores, where the labor market was more convenient!?!?!

Brilliant analysis!

As if the right hasn't fanatically pushed for the globalization we have gotten following the neoliberal ideology they have always most purely incarnated! As if the right hasn't made an expedient out of just about every source of unscrupulousness, falsehood, mendacity, baseness and bigotry among the financial-industrial-military-religious establishments to hold a perpetual power over the State, to the point at which anyone with a true leftist agenda in America has only the guarantee of either dismal failure or assassination! Other than instigating class war: the right has verily been the fabricators of class. A class machine that unremittingly grinds out an ever growing class of working slobs with sh!tty pay, relentless hours, no pensions, no vacations, no healthcare, no higher education they can afford to send their children to without having them incurring colossal debt, a second rate infrastructure of roads and bridges to use, polluted waterways, a befouled and ruined landscape, cities infested with every type of criminal, cut-throat and lowlife, public schools often beyond all hope and so forth; and a class of uber-wealthy who spend their time at tasteless golf courses making their appalling business deals to see how they can continue to screw everyone else!

Just how many billions does one need?

As many as one wishes to earn. What's it to you?

BTW, you were able to work mulitudes of talking points in the paragraph above while actually saying very little. Many words, multiple cliches. Well done.

 

[aphronesis]

As many as one wishes to earn. What's it to you?

BTW, you were able to work mulitudes of talking points in the paragraph above while actually saying very little. Many words, multiple cliches. Well done.

Being able to earn that many billions entails a social contract (and typically stems from some instance of privatization), which in turn--both the contract and the privatization; the latter more extreme--implies some "confiscation" of labor.

(Which as you know is the basic definition of capital.) Otherwise, to stick with your Palinesque rhetoric, one can shovel ice all day in Alaska and not worry one bit about the yields of their labor being confiscated. So where do you locate a reasonable adjustment of those differences?

 

[blutto]

As many as one wishes to earn. What's it to you?

...your cluelessness is absolutely breathtaking...

Cheers

blutto

 

[Anonymous]

...but that is how capitalism, your heaven on earth, works...so what is your point?...that you have had an epiphany, and now see capitalism for what it is...or is this proof positive you don't have a real clue about how things actually work and that you don't know what you talking about (apart, of course, from the faux insight that comes with recycling pre-packaged right wing talking points, packed as they usually are, with nothing but vacuous truthiness )....

...btw...welcome back...I really missed you....honest...

Cheers

blutto

Lessons in real life Capitalism from the resident collectivist/stateist is mildly amusing.

 

[Anonymous]

...your cluelessness is absolutely breathtaking...

Cheers

blutto

Thanks. I work hard at my cluelessness.

If you buckle down, you might also become clueless... Maybe by lunchtime if you really apply yourself.

Best of luck.

 

[blutto]

Thanks. I work hard at my cluelessness.

...yep...gotta whole-heartedly agree with you on that one...

Cheers

blutto

 

[rhubroma]

Being able to earn that many billions entails a social contract (and typically stems from some instance of privatization), which in turn--both the contract and the privatization; the latter more extreme--implies some "confiscation" of labor.

(Which as you know is the basic definition of capital.) Otherwise, to stick with your Palinesque rhetoric, one can shovel ice all day in Alaska and not worry one bit about the yields of their labor being confiscated. So where do you locate a reasonable adjustment of those differences?

He perceives no such social contract, which, to him, would negate one's liberty to boundless appetite that thus has neither proportion nor measure. The individual lives in a vacuum, and as such, is extraneous to society, which is invisible to him. He believes that the money I make is thus nobody’s business because it was magically made out of thin air.

That some are literally chocking on the billions they have earned, while billions of others are starving is of absolutely no consequence. Period.

 

[rhubroma]

As many as one wishes to earn. What's it to you?

BTW, you were able to work mulitudes of talking points in the paragraph above while actually saying very little. Many words, multiple cliches. Well done.

The tragic truth is that none of those things I said were cliches. Neither were those about the left I said another post.

That you see them as such, only evidences how out of touch the cliches of your worldview has distorted your perception of reality. This is not only ironic, but a cause for concern about the state of your mental health.

 

[aphronesis]

He perceives no such social contract, which, to him, would negate one's liberty to boundless appetite that thus has neither proportion nor measure. The individual lives in a vacuum, and as such, is extraneous to society, which is invisible to him. He believes that the money I make is thus nobody’s business because it was magically made out of thin air.

That some are literally chocking on the billions they have earned, while billions of others are starving is of absolutely no consequence. Period.

That would be one's general impression. Until it's convincingly demonstrated otherwise though, I prefer to believe that there's a basic disconnect between the various socio/cultural/economic and political implantations that he's accumulated over the years. Plus the basic element of put upon provocation.

Lived reality would suggest one thing and a very real set of limits and constraints for most of the population.

The low-watt media sources he chooses to share generally reinforce that fragmentation while suggesting that there's a still a reality of infinite means just slightly out of everyone's reach. All they need to do is try a little harder and elect a government whose members share their values (while shopping at Tiffanys).

 

[Anonymous]

The tragic truth is that none of those things I said were cliches. Neither were those about the left I said another post.

That you see them as such, only evidences how out of touch the cliches of your worldview has distorted your perception of reality. This is not only ironic, but a cause for concern about the state of your mental health.

The real tragedy here is your assumptions of those that disagree with you politically. And your total lack of curiosity. And your presumption of superiority.

But then know-it-alls tend to be this way, don't they?

Btw, I will take your concern for my mental health and raise you with my concern for your complete lack of humor and happiness.

 

[Anonymous]

That would be one's general impression. Until it's convincingly demonstrated otherwise though, I prefer to believe that there's a basic disconnect between the various socio/cultural/economic and political implantations that he's accumulated over the years. Plus the basic element of put upon provocation.

Lived reality would suggest one thing and a very real set of limits and constraints for most of the population.

The low-watt media sources he chooses to share generally reinforce that fragmentation while suggesting that there's a still a reality of infinite means just slightly out of everyone's reach. All they need to do is try a little harder and elect a government whose members share their values (while shopping at Tiffanys).

Well, unlike you I think that most are capable of all sorts of achievements, successes and excellence when allowed to pursue whatever one deems important.

Be it bike racing, business, education or basket weaving. I do realize I am in a distinct minority around here that think this way. Thankfully, in the real world, there are many who still are pursuing their passions whatever they may be.

I do get the feeling that some of you guys really resent those that don't want or need much help from central govt. Maybe it is just my perception. Being clueless does have some drawbacks.

 

[blutto]

The real tragedy here is your assumptions of those that disagree with you politically. And your total lack of curiosity. And your presumption of superiority.

But then know-it-alls tend to be this way, don't they?

...the real tragic thing is you don't realize that the very thing that got us out of the trees and onto the path to humanity is the very thing you and your ilk try at every opportunity to tear down...its not all just a political issue, a oft trivial difference of opinion...

...hint...we moved along the path to humanity powered by syntax and not as you would believe, semantics...

...and that presumption of superiority of which you speak...well in some cases it is unfortunately not a presumption but merely a given...one of the drawbacks of being seen as clueless (and self admitted I may add)...

Cheers

blutto