US POLITICS: underrated supreme court decisions that i have read

not further codifying into public discourse the twin evils of "the two-party system" as some posited public good

As I have pointed out before, taking stability for granted is something you can do in the US more than, say, Italy or Israel or Belgium and while the two parties may change more in some countries than they have here, there generally are only two parties really in contention for power in most countries where an opposition party is tolerated.

how much would it cost to mail a X thousand ballots to all the registered green party voters in california? I mean it would cost a bit more than that, and yes it would be a drain of third party resources. I'm just talking theoretically, I wonder if it would be legally possible.

(for the gop and dems too)

the parties opposed this proposition ffs!

Yes, but only because it partly disenfranchises the party bases and complicates the brand, not because it matters to them whether they're more or less powerful wrt 3rd parties.

I know - this isn't a death blow or anything. but it's ridiculous to act like this is "solidifying" the two party system.

dude, iatee, di I not say in answering your first q that I didn't wanna get into it with you? my opinion is that this shuts out 3rd party candidates in the short term & probably in the longer term. I participated directly in 3rd party CA politics from the time I was 12 until I was 20-ish, and saw an enriched political landscape as a consequence of third party participation that wasn't restricted to the most moneyed candidates. third parties busted ass to be represented on the ballot & to be heard in debates, and this was good for everybody. this prop ends the era of third parties having to bother anybody after June, unless they are extremely well-funded. can we stop now, instead of you just saying "no no no!" every time I express my God damned opinion on the politics thread. I have stopped replying to opinions of yours that I consider toadying to a system that disenfranchises everybody who's not already on board; please don't goad me into arguments with you about how you think I'm just overlooking the eventual good that reducing the number of options available to people might conceivably do. thank you.

keep the condescending scarequotes coming two-party stan!

The potential upside is that we have no more Herschensohns...

Upthread, I alluded to voting for Republicans in the primaries, but would I vote for the better candidate or the on most likely to lose in the GE?

I don't think I've been particularly belligerent in this discussion, but yes, it's clear by now that we see these things from such fundamentally different perspectives that there really isn't any use even going into it.

(still curious if anyone knows if parties could fund their own primaries in this system? I'm looking at the text and still not sure.)

Judging by his remarks on the suburbs thread, I'm not sure I'd want iatee as the leader of any sociopolitical revolution I'd want to be part of.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/06/09/2010-06-09_prescott_city_councilman_steve_blair_loses_radio_host_job_over_bashing_minoritie.html

Prescott City Councilman Steve Blair loses radio host job over bashing minorities in school mural

...

Miller Valley Elementary School Principal Jeff Lane apologized for directing artists to lighten the skin color of the children.

"They [the artists] are going back to the way this was originally," Lane said.

oh man i read some insane stuff on that this morning

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott’s Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town’s most prominent intersections.

“We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars,” Wall said. “We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics).”

http://wonkette.com/415809/arizona-school-demands-black-latino-students-faces-on-mural-be-changed-to-white

Roger Ebert did a good post on that fiasco:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/06/how_would_i_feel_if.html

http://www2.counton2.com/cbd/news/local/article/student_alleges_candidate_showed_pornography/145494/

When something like this happens, you know that the Democrat party isn't even bothering to vet candidates in South Carolina. I guess they figure they don't stand a chance, so why waste time finding someone at least half-way electable.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/06/this_is_real_fishy.php

Back in March he walked into the state Democratic headquarters with a personal check for $10,400. That's the filing fee. The party people said they weren't allowed to take a personal check. It had to come from a campaign account. So a few hours later he came back with a check from a campaign account. And he signed up to run.

And that was it. He held no events. He never campaigned. He didn't go to the convention. He never filed any money filings. He never raised any money. He didn't even have a website. In other words, by every conceivable measure he never actually mounted a campaign. When Mother Jones called him shortly after his victory and asked him what was up, he seemed hard pressed to explain why he had run or really anything about what was going on other than to insist that the ten grand was his money.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/06/more_weirdness_1.php

But there is one point I thought I'd mention. In the video the interviewer is walking around the house with Greene. And Greene is showing him different memorabilia and pictures of himself as a kid. And the interviewer presses Greene, who says he's a veteran, about whether he can show him any pictures of himself in uniform.

Greene sort of dodges the question and hems and haws. And it's pretty clear that the implication of the editing is that maybe the whole military service part of Greene's bio is made up. At this point, there's not much I won't believe with this story. But here's the thing, as long as you're keeping score at home: our Justin Elliott spent the afternoon trying to figure out what the hell was going on with this guy. And one thing Justin was able to confirm is that Greene did serve in the Air Force for three years.

On the consequences of Blanche Lincoln's primary win.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/putney%20swope/The_Playlist/more/swope.gif

man what in the hell

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/clyburn_alvin_greene_not_only_suspicious_candidate.php

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn has called for a U.S. Attorney investigation into the mysterious candidacy of Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene because he thinks the mischief goes far beyond one wacky race.

...

This morning Clyburn told radio host Bill Press he considers Greene a "plant" and he called for the U.S. Attorney to look into potential charges as to how an unemployed man paid $10,000 to be placed on the ballot and then came out of nowhere to win.

"All the Democrats I know were pushing for Victor Rawl," Clyburn said in our interview. "No Democrat I know ever heard of Alvin Greene."

x-post Man, it's a shame that when Ebert gets his second Pulitzer people will think it's a sympathy award when, damn, does the dude truly deserve it.

Oh sweet jesus i somehow had no idea how bad things got for him til now arrrrgh!

i don't find that greenwald piece very persuasive

he goes the whole length w/o mentioning derivatives = he's missed the point entirely

The outliers are the progressives. The reason the Obama White House did nothing when Lincoln sabotaged the public option isn't because they had no leverage to punish her if she was doing things they disliked. It was because she was doing exactly what the White House and the Party wanted.

I mean,

I read Greenwald every day, but seriously there are like a half dozen writers I'd rather read analyze the relationship between Blanche Lincoln and the White House than him (Nate Silver, George Packer, Tim Dickerson, even Matt Taibbi all come to mind). Like, I don't want him to dilute shit cause I love his fury (tho he's not as funny furiful as Taibbi), but whenever I read his 'policy' type pieces, I always feel like he's missing a ton of nuance + insight.

Greenwald has become so shrill that only dogs can hear him.

I don't even understand who his audience is. The people who still think Obama is a super progressive president? They are either a) Not paying enough attention to anything to pay attention to him, b) Actually believe he's as liberal as they think because they agree with his policies and that's as liberal as they want it, or c) Are right-wing and will believe Obama is super progressive no matter what Greenwald says.

here's how i break it down to an extent

1. i haven't seen much to show me that bill halter is really worth shit, just that he's better than blanche lincoln, who is really isn't worth shit. so it is somewhat relative, and we ought to treat it as such. in any other context greenwald would not be singing the praises of a bill halter.

2. halter's primary run did have the effect of making lincoln swerve to the left with a tough derivatives proposal, which is a good thing (or a good baseline for negotiations anyway) no matter who proposes it. so, out of the primary we got better leftier material, even though halter lost

3. (this is arguable of course, but) as a reward for a move to the left, the WH supports lincoln.

4. the outcome of the primary really is moot -- all signs point to boozman cleaning lincoln's clock just as surely as he would have cleaned halter's. so the legislation we got out of the mess is the only thing worth thinking too hard about imo.

5. leverage isn't always there to be had. nobody is running against ben nelson (plus his election isn't until '12). the president has absolutely no leverage over the GOP breakaway's, how does he stick them with a primary?

but greenwald doesn't talk about the work lincoln had do to in the senate to fight halter off, nor does he talk about who arkansas is going to elect.

he's addressing dem apologists. "the insufferable excuse we've been hearing for the last 18 months from countless Obama defenders". four links given.

it's remarkable what the change in prez has done for his rep among dems.

"shrill"

i don't mind shrill, i just think his analysis is too focused on one thing

He's not focused on anything except winning an argument (which is exactly what you'd expect given his legal background.)

half the time i think legal thinking is a kind of learned sociopathy

Only half?

the other half i think it's a necessity! rule of law = rule by lawyers. :/

shrill is as shrill does, man. i generally feel where he's coming from but decaf might help him vary the dynamics a bit.

of all greenwald pieces for people to have a problem with - is he not saying the exact same stuff aerosmith and others say every day in this thread?

i mean it's not particularly insightful because what he's saying is so painfully self-evident

maybe he could also write some pieces about how abe foxman + alan dershowitz are knee-jerk supporters of israel

I mean sometimes "shrill" is the same kinda dogwhistle as "hysterical" was for women ("this person is coo coo due to their political/biological ~tendencies~" ie lefties/ladies be crazy) but I think actually sometimes gg does actually get a little too worked up

full throated opinionating is fine on a forum or w/e, but maybe columnists should try to effect some rhetorical composure since reactionary, fence sitting readers might miss the content for the hairpulling

Shrill is also a very toxic word when used on female-driven commentary. TRUST ME ON THIS ONE.

i would probably agree with greenwald if i read him more of the time but he's usually so tl;dr, shrill doesn't bother me

Shrill is also a very toxic word when used on female-driven commentary. TRUST ME ON THIS ONE.

I know! that's sorta why "hysterical" came to mind tbh

However my personal favourite is 'strident' - total ad feminem attack implied with that one, too.

On CSPAN today Gibbs took a question about Obama's birth certificate. I didn't notice who asked it, but I imagine it was the WorldNetDaily guy. You don't even have to be particularly cynical to figure the only reason someone would ever choose WND to ask a question of is because they don't want to answer more substantive questions. :/

http://www2.counton2.com/cbd/news/local/article/student_alleges_candidate_showed_pornography/145494/

When something like this happens, you know that the Democrat party isn't even bothering to vet candidates in South Carolina. I guess they figure they don't stand a chance, so why waste time finding someone at least half-way electable.

― Mordy, Thursday, 10 June 2010 13:49 (9 hours ago)

why would they "vet" some kook who wasn't their chosen candidate?

Greene is obviously mentally ill, and plant or not the whole thing is very sad.

I assumed you needed more than that to run in the Democrat primary. Like the approval of the party or something -- I mean, they have some say over letting you run in their primaries, don't they?

Nope, just a $10,000 check to cover the filing fee.

at least in SC

orly taitz managed to get on the ballot for secretary of state in California (as a Republican).

I think if you can manage the filing fees you can get on a primary ballot.

this alvin greene stuff is - how do you say - insane

his interview on olbermann a few minutes ago was like watching a hostage video, he seemed dazed and frightened and there was a guy off camera audibly feeding answers to him

what in the fucking fuck is going on in south carolina