The Election Thread

[Callie Del Noire]

That correlations between unrelated things can be found if you look hard enough.  Like Redskin home games and presidential elections.

It's apples and oranges.

And fyi.. I'm tired of being told because I'm southern, white, protestant that I'm automatically a bigot.

[Oniya]

It's apples and oranges.

Perzactly.  *nods*

[gaggedLouise]

I thought Lincoln was a republican and the democrats used to dominate the south..ahem...

[Bayushi]

I thought Lincoln was a republican and the democrats used to dominate the south..ahem...

If and when you bring this up, all you get is drones droning on about some bullshit "Southern Strategy".

No, the racist fucks just moved north and infested the New England area. Notice how it's solid blue now? It didn't use to be that way.

PS: Stattick, if you can't refrain from ad hominem and strawmen, you really should stop posting. It would help preserve what little validity you appear to have.

[Bayushi]

Actually, if you look at how Massachusetts voted, I think we just dodged a big bullet.  Those people had the man for governor, and only what, 38% wanted him as President?  That's... sad...  I guess enough people felt like I did and didn't appreciate being  thrown under a bus for political gain, because that's what happened.  The Republicans did everything they could to keep it so President Obama couldn't get anything done, then gleefully pointed out how little he got accomplished during the campaign.  Real people suffered because of that, and I'm really glad it didn't pay off for them.

Bull shit.

The Republicans didn't try and block Obama.

The one time Obama presented a budget for Congress to vote on, it was UNANIMOUSLY rejected. Even by the Democrats.

As for nothing getting done, you can blame that on Senator Reid and the Senate. There are dozens of economy-related bills being stalled by Mr Reid.

[Stattick]

And what pray tell is that supposed to show us?

That the Republican Party is the party for racists. I'm certainly not saying that all Republicans are racists. Nor that all (white) Southerners are racists. Simply that there are a high proportion of racists in the South, and that the politics of race are more important to the South. Outside of the South, there certainly isn't a lack of racism, but I think that it's less prevalent, and that it tends to play out in politics less often.

Sorry, I know it's a sore subject for you, but it's how I see it. I've been to many places in this country, and have lived in quite a few as well, and the racism was always far more flagrant in the places I've been in the South. The worst I've ever seen was when I lived in Vicksburg. *shudders*

If and when you bring this up, all you get is drones droning on about some bullshit "Southern Strategy".

No, the racist fucks just moved north and infested the New England area. Notice how it's solid blue now? It didn't use to be that way.

PS: Stattick, if you can't refrain from ad hominem and strawmen, you really should stop posting. It would help preserve what little validity you appear to have.

Sorry, it's the Republicans that are the party of racism. See the Southern Strategy.

Oh, and your idea that the "Republicans didn't try and block Obama," is laughably and demonstrably wrong. Senate Republicans ramped up their use of the filibuster to historic and unprecedented levels to block legislation and appointments. No other administration has ever had to deal this level of obstruction, lying from the other side of the isle, and goalpost moving.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/16/1132504/-Why-is-the-Republican-Record-Breaking-use-of-the-Filibuster-Not-a-topic-of-the-News

[Bayushi]

Oh, and your idea that the "Republicans didn't try and block Obama," is laughably and demonstrably wrong. Senate Republicans ramped up their use of the filibuster to historic and unprecedented levels to block legislation and appointments. No other administration has ever had to deal this level of obstruction, lying from the other side of the isle, and goalpost moving.

Really?

Kind of hard to filibuster bills that never come to the floor.

Oh, are we conveniently forgetting that the Dems had a super-majority in the Senate in 09 and 10? Yet no budgets?

The House passes bills and sends them to the Senate, where they linger and die in purgatory.

You Dems own this shit. Accept the responsibility for your fuck ups. "The Buck Stops Here", unless you're Barack "Blames Bush for Everything" Obama.

You brain-dead faux-Liberals with your Bush Derangement Syndrome. So cute.

[ShadowFox89]

Akiko, stop with the insults ans straw republican act. It doesn't help whatever credibility you night have.

[Tsenta]

"You brain-dead faux-Liberals with your Bush Derangement Syndrome. So cute."

If the guy didn't look like a chimp...and have the IQ of one...perhaps people would stop blaming him.  Anywho.  Children! Children! Civility please! 'Lest staffers lock the thread.

[ShadowFox89]

Oh, and I'd like to point out this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/01/gop-filibuster-record-rep_n_480722.html

And just so you can't claim "liberal media bullshit" let me try and find something from Fox News (obviously, the only news media worth listening to next to Rush Limbaugh!) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/22/democratic-jobs-advances-despite-gop-filibuster/

Woops, looks like the Repubs actually were filibustering Obama and trying to block him from doing anything since day one. You don't need to be the majority of the Senate or the House to filibuster. Every Senator and House Representative is allowed as much time as they want to speak on the floor. Taking a horrendously long time to talk and talk and talk, to the point that no one can get anything done, is called filibustering.

And I'd like to give you a quote from Abrahm Lincoln (you know, the first president of the Repubs?) -
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

... Wrong one

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

[LunarSage]

It's apples and oranges.

And fyi.. I'm tired of being told because I'm southern, white, protestant that I'm automatically a bigot.

Don't forget that if you're a straight, white male you apparently have it made in the world.   

[Callie Del Noire]

Don't forget that if you're a straight, white male you apparently have it made in the world.   

Oh yeah, despite the fact I can't get a job in my field for THREE years now.

[Serephino]

Oh, and I'd like to point out this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/01/gop-filibuster-record-rep_n_480722.html

And just so you can't claim "liberal media bullshit" let me try and find something from Fox News (obviously, the only news media worth listening to next to Rush Limbaugh!) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/22/democratic-jobs-advances-despite-gop-filibuster/

Woops, looks like the Repubs actually were filibustering Obama and trying to block him from doing anything since day one. You don't need to be the majority of the Senate or the House to filibuster. Every Senator and House Representative is allowed as much time as they want to speak on the floor. Taking a horrendously long time to talk and talk and talk, to the point that no one can get anything done, is called filibustering.

And I'd like to give you a quote from Abrahm Lincoln (you know, the first president of the Repubs?) -
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?

... Wrong one

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Let's not forget that in 2010 lots of Republican candidates openly said that if elected their #1 priority would be to make Obama a one term president.  Oh, and the Senate did introduce budgets.

I get this thing in my email called Megavote.  You can sign up for it at congress.org.  It's a nice little summery of what bills have been introduced to the floor by who, the vote count on it, how my representative/senator voted, and if it passed it projects how well the bill will do in the house.  Every time I opened that email I saw first hand from an unbiased source how the Republicans were blocking everything that wasn't their idea.  The only things that ever got passed in the House were introduced by a Republican.  Everything, and I'm not exaggerating on this one, that was introduced by a Democrat was shot down.  The things that were passed had to have a Republican co sponsor, which means they worked together somewhere. 

Since I could also read the bills, I can tell you that whatever did pass with a Republican co sponsor was heavily influenced by what the Republicans wanted, with a few small concessions to get it past the Senate.  It was all completely one sided.  And I know all this because I opened those emails, took the time to read them, and became informed so I would know what I was talking about instead of believing everything the press tells me.

Like, a month or so ago the Democrats introduced a bill that would allow veterans to count their military training toward getting a civilian job in that field.  This would actually save the government money.  I mean, what would you rather do; let someone go straight from the military to a good job (keeping in mind that in some areas the military has stricter requirements), or, spend money to send them to school to learn shit they already know through the GI bill?  The Republicans are all about smaller government and saving money, but because it was a Democrat idea, they voted against it. 

[Callie Del Noire]

Let's not forget that in 2010 lots of Republican candidates openly said that if elected their #1 priority would be to make Obama a one term president.  Oh, and the Senate did introduce budgets.

I get this thing in my email called Megavote.  You can sign up for it at congress.org.  It's a nice little summery of what bills have been introduced to the floor by who, the vote count on it, how my representative/senator voted, and if it passed it projects how well the bill will do in the house.  Every time I opened that email I saw first hand from an unbiased source how the Republicans were blocking everything that wasn't their idea.  The only things that ever got passed in the House were introduced by a Republican.  Everything, and I'm not exaggerating on this one, that was introduced by a Democrat was shot down.  The things that were passed had to have a Republican co sponsor, which means they worked together somewhere. 

Since I could also read the bills, I can tell you that whatever did pass with a Republican co sponsor was heavily influenced by what the Republicans wanted, with a few small concessions to get it past the Senate.  It was all completely one sided.  And I know all this because I opened those emails, took the time to read them, and became informed so I would know what I was talking about instead of believing everything the press tells me.

Like, a month or so ago the Democrats introduced a bill that would allow veterans to count their military training toward getting a civilian job in that field.  This would actually save the government money.  I mean, what would you rather do; let someone go straight from the military to a good job (keeping in mind that in some areas the military has stricter requirements), or, spend money to send them to school to learn shit they already know through the GI bill?  The Republicans are all about smaller government and saving money, but because it was a Democrat idea, they voted against it. 

And those were the reason I STOPPED following the bills for a while. Too depressing to see that sort of pettiness.

[Caehlim]

I find the idea of partisan politics preventing groups from co-operating when it's in everyone's best interests a horrible perversion of the representative democratic process. Whoever is elected as president, has been trusted by an approximate majority of the country to run things and the other people in the system shouldn't try to deliberately block them. At the same time, whoever is the president also needs to acknowledge that the other politicians have also been elected because people want them to have a say in the process as well.

Compromise seems inherent in the mandate of power within the american system. Letting party-politics interfere with that seems to me to be a betrayal of the system and the voters who elected them.

As an outside observer, it seems to me that lately a lot of that has been happening during the Obama administration with various republican politicians attempting to prevent anything from being done. I'm Australian so I can only offer the view we're seeing here from the other side of the planet, but it looks really bad from over here. I hope that now the election is over and Obama can't take another term after this one, that attempts at deliberate sabotage will cease.

Note: (it's quite possible that I'm wrong, since I'm in a foreign country and only going with limited knowledge of the american system and current events. I readily admit this).

[ReijiTabibito]

That reminds me of the whole thing that went down end of 2010, with two bills in Congress - a bill to extend the Bush tax cuts, and a bill to grant health benefits to the 9/11 first responders.

In their infinite wisdom, what did the Publicans do?

Chose extending the tax cuts over giving aid to the first responders.

And the awesome thing is, is that at least one person at Fox News (Shepard Smith, he of Studio B) called them on in and went on record saying that billionaires don't need those tax cuts.

Oh, BTW, has anyone seen Rachel Maddow's positively brutal takedown of the party of Fantasyland?

[Vekseid]

Note: (it's quite possible that I'm wrong, since I'm in a foreign country and only going with limited knowledge of the american system and current events. I readily admit this).

Because 2010 was a Republican wave year, the house is intensely gerrymandered. Even though most Americans voted for democratic house seats, republicans still hold the majority. They call this their 'mandate' to stonewall everything they can.

If Obama really wants to play for 2016, he's going to double or even triple down on immigration reform, and if the Republicans don't cave, I'm really curious as to what their plans past 2020 are.

[ReijiTabibito]

Compromise seems inherent in the mandate of power within the american system. Letting party-politics interfere with that seems to me to be a betrayal of the system and the voters who elected them.

Compromise is inherent within the system.  The idea is that both sides come up with solutions to problems, they debate, they negotiate, they work, and whatever comes out the end is the best idea.

And partisan politics interfering with that system is a betrayal of the voters who put them in office.  Well, the sane ones, anyway.  I might get called on a logic argument on this one, but most real, sane Americans don't care if the person that fixes their problems is a Democrat or a Republican.  What they care about is that their problems are being fixed.  Ergo, the people they're likely to vote for are the people they believe will help fix their problems.

The core of this problem is that at least one side of our two-party system has decided that it is more important to stay in power, and wait for the American Slot Machine to spit out the triple 7 - President, House, and Senate, all dominated by that party - so that whatever it wants to do can be done largely unopposed.  To them it's more important to hold on to what they have rather than actually try and work within the system.

I'm a fan of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.  Stephen had a guest on in the last couple of months, Ed Rendell, who was a former governor of Pennsylvania.  He'd written a book, and one of the chapters he highlighted was called "Stand And Defend: There Are Some Things Worth Losing Your Job For."

Rendell went on to say that if you do not have some issue that you would say of, "I will go to the wall for this one," then you shouldn't be getting involved in politics.  Period.  Because, Red or Blue, this country needs people of integrity to run its government.  And someone who's willing to change their minds every eight days because it might be the more popular thing should not be allowed near the halls of power at all.

As an outside observer, it seems to me that lately a lot of that has been happening during the Obama administration with various republican politicians attempting to prevent anything from being done. I'm Australian so I can only offer the view we're seeing here from the other side of the planet, but it looks really bad from over here. I hope that now the election is over and Obama can't take another term after this one, that attempts at deliberate sabotage will cease.

Time will tell.  Romney called for ending partisan shenanigans in his concession speech, and it looks like, for the moment, that's the direction that's being gone in.  Whether or not that will stay...there's a part of me that doubts that, the part that says that until 2014 comes around, it's going to be more of the same by the Rs so that they can try and destroy the next candidate.

...despite the fact that it didn't work this time.  But then again, they're all a bunch of anti-intellectuals, so I don't suppose they're familiar with Einstein's Principle of Insantiy.

[Caehlim]

Oh, BTW, has anyone seen Rachel Maddow's positively brutal takedown of the party of Fantasyland?

I saw a report Rachel Maddow did on Paul Ryan. I don't know if that's the same one but it was positively brutal.

Edit: Well, let's just say it was definitely brutal. I'm not sure I would categorize it as 'positive'.

[Serephino]

Yep, the Tea Party is insane.  All the people we send to represent us are supposed to work together, they just aren't.  It's very depressing to see what the Republicans in office voted no on just because it was introduced by a Democrat.  I'm hoping the madness will stop, but I won't hold my breath. 

[LunarSage]

What gets me is the -venom- that I see of Republicans toward Democrats and Democrats toward Republicans.  Your party (if you even have one) just means you have certain opinions.  Why that's grounds for hating another human being is beyond me.

It's stupid.

We don't need a Democrat or a Republican.  We need a statesman. 

[Oniya]

What gets me is the -venom- that I see of Republicans toward Democrats and Democrats toward Republicans.  Your party (if you even have one) just means you have certain opinions.  Why that's grounds for hating another human being is beyond me.

It's stupid.

We don't need a Democrat or a Republican.  We need a statesman.

'With malice towards none, with charity towards all...'  *nods*

[ReijiTabibito]

Like, a month or so ago the Democrats introduced a bill that would allow veterans to count their military training toward getting a civilian job in that field.  This would actually save the government money.  I mean, what would you rather do; let someone go straight from the military to a good job (keeping in mind that in some areas the military has stricter requirements), or, spend money to send them to school to learn shit they already know through the GI bill?  The Republicans are all about smaller government and saving money, but because it was a Democrat idea, they voted against it. 

Ah, but Sereph, you're forgetting!  Education is not a priority, no, they want their army volunteers to come home not to take jobs away from 'real', hard working Americans, they want their volunteers to come home in pine boxes to fuel the war machine!

I kid, of course, but from where I stand, the Republicans voting this down was pure insanity.  For God's sake, if nothing else, the money that they're spending on education could have been spent to add to the pocket change of the Romneys and Adelsons and Roves of this world, and we all know that what they want is more money.

Because somehow, if you acquire enough money, then you gain magical powers over the minds of men!

[Callie Del Noire]

What gets me is the -venom- that I see of Republicans toward Democrats and Democrats toward Republicans.  Your party (if you even have one) just means you have certain opinions.  Why that's grounds for hating another human being is beyond me.

It's stupid.

We don't need a Democrat or a Republican.  We need a statesman.

We need LEADERS.. not partisans in congress. Not just a Leader in the White House.. but men like (god help me) Ted Kennedy, Jessie Helms and such.. yeah.. they could be dicks BUT they looked for their constituents whereas .. folks like my lovely Rep (who got re-elected) hasn't done one thing that GOP leadership hasn't told him to.

[Valerian]

Shockingly, here's a Republican saying that Obama won because U.S. voters are ignorant:

[Wisconsin Senator Ron] Johnson attributed Obama's win on the heels of those Republican gains in Wisconsin to an uninformed electorate who voted in this election but not in the [Scott] Walker recall.

"If you aren't properly informed, if you don't understand the problems facing this nation, you are that much more prone to falling prey to demagoguing solutions. And the problem with demagoguing solutions is they don't work," Johnson said. "I am concerned about people who don't fully understand the very ugly math we are facing in this country."

In fact, voters had more access to information in this election cycle than in any other in the past. Republicans and Democrats spent a record amount of money getting their messages out -- especially through TV ads -- to voters who, if anything, seemed to be over saturated with news about the candidates. On the Republican side, Karl Rove's Crossroads groups alone spent more than $300 million.

Rove's millions, of course, got them almost exactly nowhere, I'm happy to say.   

This is the kicker from Johnson, though, who will now be forced to work with the Democratic Senator from Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin:

"Hopefully I can sit down and lay out for her my best understanding of the federal budget because they're simply the facts," he said. "Hopefully she'll agree with what the facts are and work toward common sense solutions."

Baldwin has served in Congress since 1999; Johnson took office in 2011. Presumably, Baldwin is already familiar with how the federal budget works. She also double-majored in college in government and mathematics.

As for leaders, those who actively try to work with the 'other side', well, the sad fact is that they can't catch a break.  Republicans who try that are actively attacked, and even Democrats sometimes feel the heat from fellow party members if they seem like they're giving in too much.  Let's hope some fraction of the current spirit of cooperation lingers for a while.