2008 USP(G)ET pt. II: counting the days to 2012 primary thread 1

I'm worried about Afghanistan, too, but I do see the pursuit of Bin Laden as a more defensible reason for going into a country than anything that was concocted to go into Iraq (and, while it wouldn't have been a picnic, I can't help but feel that part of the reason Afghanistan has also become a quagmire is because we shifted focus off of it).

this is my phone

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/images/2008/09/16/mccain_phone_2.jpg

http://thepalintruthsquad.com/PTSbanner.jpg

dan perry, what is yr objection to his position on the drug war? Being any more progressive than that is pretty much politically unfeasible if u want to be elected and not be dukakis'd. most of the country still thinks drugs are bad mmkay

Maybe becoming as humane as the UK, even?

HOOS, you do know that the current "Afghan democracy" that we built is totally corrupted by the opium trade? Even the NY Times found out.

I don't play the "what wd you do" jazz; I haven't been elected to anything. "All deliberate speed" withdrawal sounds like a worthy goal, but let's face it, not-gonna-happen. (As Madame Albright asked, "What's the point of having this superb military if we can't use it?") I do think the War on Terror is a crock, and will continue no matter what happens in November.

everytime i read an o.nate post about what barack's doing wrong i get strong eeyore vibes and i have to do a 538.com-style weighting adjustment to figure out how bad things actually look at the moment.

ok i hope this hasnt been posted elsewhere but for the maximum number of readers im posting it here
http://www.linktv.org/embed/change_placeholder_rnc/change_placeholder_rnc20080910

then

GOP delegate's hotel tryst goes bad when he wakes up with $120,000 missing

He met her in the bar of the swank hotel and invited her to his room. Once there, the woman fixed the drinks and told him to get undressed.
And that, the delegate to the Republican National Convention told police, was the last thing he remembered.

When he awoke, the woman was gone, as was more than $120,000 in money, jewelry and other belongings.
The thief's take stunned cops.
"It's very, very, very rare," Minneapolis Police Sgt. William Palmer said. "I can think of a couple of burglaries where we had that much stolen, but it's the first time I've heard of this kind of deal."
In a statement released today, Gabriel Nathan Schwartz, 29, of Denver, put the figure at much less.
"It's embarrassing to admit that I was a target of a crime. I was drugged and had about $50,000 of personal items stolen, not the inflated number that the media is reporting from an inaccurate police report," he said.

"As a single man, I was flattered by the attention of a beautiful woman who introduced herself to me. I used poor judgment."
Contacted by the Denver Post Monday, Schwartz declined to speak on the record. In the statement released today, Schwartz said he would decline further interview requests.
The haul included a $30,000 watch, a $20,000 ring, a necklace valued at $5,000, earrings priced at $4,000 and a Prada belt valued at $1,000, police said.
Schwartz is a single attorney and a fixture in Colorado Republican politics. He was one of the state's delegates to the convention this month in St. Paul.
Reached by phone at his law office Monday, Schwartz said that because the case still was under investigation, "I think at this point, I don't want to make a comment on it."

make sure to watch the video first, it makes the article more lmao

it's in the RNC thread

Being any more progressive than that is pretty much politically unfeasible

deej, this kind of defensive Republican Lite crap has made the Dems the losers they are.

dr morbius you sound SOFT ON CRIME

im not saying we should do nothing, im saying some things require a more delicate touch, esp during election season

drug war is fucked no question but that's not an issue you can run and win on in 2008. that's just reality.

I guess we've reached our quarterly pragmatics vs ideologues pseudo-debate.

xp: that's what they said about integration before 1964.

(all cavils about Obama's FISA vote and chicken hawk belligerence still apply; and if he hasn't said much about torture and int'l law, I expect that a smart lad like him wants to "keep his options open" as commander in chief.

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/images/thecandidate3.jpg

dan perry, what is yr objection to his position on the drug war?

I feel like he's replacing one type of prison with another. Without drastically revamping and upping the staffing levels of the programs he wants to funnel drug convictions into, you're basically playing a shell game with the existing situation.

Basically, his position isn't baked enough. I would have less of a problem with it if he also explicitly included funding for treatment programs even though I think using the courts to force people to get help they may or may not need is a waste of money.

"What do we do now?"

(emph changed from McKay to Obama)

Maybe in three or four generations Americans will realize the folly of the drug war, as they did with homosexuals = deviants and perverts.

I went to the local Dem office yesterday to volunteer, for the first time in my post-college life. I read something (on 538?) recently about how the Republican grassroots ground game is pretty much always in place, ready to mobilize, whereas the Dem one has tended to rely on paid workers more than grassroots workers. And it got me thinking that even if we lose this one, we'll have done some work to build a progressive grassroots system, and that's terrific. When I hear someone saying "no, McCain will fuck this country so bad that the next one won't matter", I remember that fundamentalists don't have a lock on apocalyptic thinking. Despair easily becomes an excuse for laziness.

xp: that's what they said about integration before 1964.

― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, September 16, 2008 4:29 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wait, did lbj 'run on' integration?

i think you're giving way too much credit to the prez for dismantling segregation here. the legwork was done at the grassroots, in the judiciary, in the courts, and finally legislative-ly. lbj just signed the thing while lamenting about losing the south

I'm not crediting LBJ with dismantling segregation! I'm saying Stevenson & Kennedy wouldn't run on it.

Johnson had already signed the Civil Rights Act by the '64 election.

To the point: Obama does not have to say "Wheee-hoo, let's smoke rock" to have a progressive drug policy.

he doesnt have to say viva la taliban to get called a muslim radical either

yes. so why cater to idiots who arent going to vote for you, no how?

they're the majority Morbz

Euler - I just emailed the local Dem HQ to tell 'em I'm ready to dial for dollars. Used to be pretty good at it, when I was doing it for the University. Texas is about as Red-locked as any state can be, so I sort of feel like extra efforts here aren't even going to divert GOP resources from other states. But fuck it - if even a couple of ground races turn competitive it'll be worth it. In particular I'd love to twist a knife in Mike McCaul.

Shakey, the majority think he's a Muslim? DEFINITELY I'm going w/ McKinney, then.

no I mean the majority is idiots who aren't inclined to vote for him

the majority are very much idiots about public drug policy, you doofus
i dont see why that would make you want to vote for someone who isn't going to be elected in any future world

I support Obama because, of the candidates who have a credible shot of getting into The White House, he best represents my political wishes. If he gets in and screws up, I won't vote for him a second time.

I recognize that the Republicans have a built-in ground game advantage because of churches that provide an informal physical meeting place each week to solidify community and mobilize for politics. The fact that Obama and his team want to try to build a progressive community, starting at the community level, is the main reason I supported him over Clinton in the primaries. She was going to rely on the old paid operatives. But real long term change happens from the ground up: mock that if you like, but the Republicans learned after Goldwater and it's paid off. So I really want to encourage progressives here to do this. I don't know what the new progressive communities will look like, but it's not likely to be as physical-based as churches among the right.

oh god plz don't say blogs

it used to be union halls.

pta organizations are also longstanding sources of conservative community-based organizing

xp lol it might be too late u_u

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2008/09/romney_on_mccain.cfm

lol at correction

might be worth noting that Obama has waaaaaaaaaaaaay outspent McCain when it comes to the "ground operation", and that the grassroots organizing for Obama has been building since the primaries. Not so for McCain, who hasn't spent anything on the ground operation and hasn't had the benefit of the usual Repub grassroots activists until fairly recently.

Carly Fiorina bringin teh lolz today

I guess I take Obama seriously when he says "this is about us", and that means, let's organize, not around this one flawed guy, but around our ideas. I know this is Kos stuff, but the promise of making this real, for the longer term, is what's so electrifying for me about this campaign.

right, Shakey, but that Republican grassroots is ready to go on day 1, whereas we (maybe outside of a few enclaves that are in no risk of turning red) have to build this up from scratch.

that Republican grassroots is ready to go on day 1

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

I hope you're right! But I doubt it.

Don't look at polls, gents. George Will is right: if only half the people that the Obama campaign have registered vote in November, the White House is his.

Meanwhile: Laura Ingraham vs David Brooks. Ingraham's column is the funniest I've read in weeks:

Brooks's main argument against Palin is that she lacks the type of experience and historical understanding that led President Bush to a 26 percent approval rating in his final months in office. Yet the notion that the Bush Administration got into trouble because it didn't have enough "experience" is absurd. George W. Bush was governor of Texas for six years. His father was president. His primary advisors on matters of foreign policy were Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell. In 2000, it could hardly have been possible to find a more experienced team to head up a GOP administration. Brooks's notion that the Bush Administration was "the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice" is simply ludicrous. Does anyone believe that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld count as "anti-establishment"?

Of course, we could also consider the Nixon Administration. Who had more experience than Richard Nixon? How'd that work out? What about George H.W. Bush? How did his administration do? What about Herbert Hoover — who had vast experience both in terms of dealing with foreign countries during World War I and in terms of dealing with the U.S. economy as secretary of Commerce? How did he do? The truth is that Brooks's basic claim — that experienced leaders are necessarily better than inexperienced leaders — simply doesn't hold water.

Now let's look at the broader issue of elitism versus populism. For Brooks to be right, his elites have to make better policy judgments than average Americans. But he overlooks the fact that in America we have a particularly bad elite, an elite that holds most Americans in contempt and has no sympathy for the history and traditions that make us great. And that elite has been wrong on issue after issue for most of the last 40 years. Who was more right about the Soviet Union, the elites or the people? Who was more right about the need to cut taxes in the 1970s, the elites or the people? Who was more right about the need to get tough on crime, the elites in black robes with life tenure, or the folks cheering for Dirty Harry? Who would Brooks trust to decide critical issues regarding the War on Terror today, the voters or the inside-the-Beltway types who lose sleep over tough interrogation tactics? Elites — particularly our American elite — are much more likely to go for the latest fad, for seek to apply whatever notion is currently trendy in the salons of Europe. To find true Burkean conservatism in this country — to find citizens who are both respectful of our country's traditions and anxious to see our country remain a world leader — you have to turn to the voters.

First NYer Shouts & Murmurs I've laughed at in years:
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2008/09/22/080922sh_shouts_saunders?currentPage=all

lolz "salons of Europe"

those Europeans, always comin up with silly fads like universal healthcare and renewable technologies

Shakey, how often do you send your Black Robe of Elitism to the cleaners?

that Republican grassroots is ready to go on day 1

what day 1 is this? was this the day 1 when 1500 alaskan women appeared out of nowhere to tell the republican ticket to go fuck itself?