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

Look, public opinion's moving in our favor. It's been five years since Lawrence v. Texas. Watch momentum pick up when Californians vote against the ballot initiative in November.

re: public opinion, the fact that it's a public conversation = the battle has already been fought, and the good guys have won, and the rest is just playing out the string (though it may take a while)...

I should keep you guys on retainer as my lawyers.

I will donate 10k to the Obama campaign if he makes "you know, weddings are already pretty gay" the public face of his position on this issue

― J0hn D., Tuesday, June 17, 2008 2:16 PM (3 months ago)

and btw we already have a thread for this: Marriage Protection Kit

haha that reminds me some fuckhead came to my in-laws house in San Diego with his pregnant wife and young son in tow, asking if we supported the gay marriage ban initiative on the ballot. My in-law was polite in telling him "no fucking way" but it really got under his skin. Personally I was wondering who was funding the polling and why.

x-post

I am terribly sorry I missed that thread.

then I thought "man, what sort of fucked up family outing is it when you're bringing your at least 6-months preggers wife and your kid walking door-to-door in 95% heat to make sure there's no queers in your neighborhood"

x-post

er 95 DEGREE

that Democrat Party, causin problems agin

"John McCain and I are committed to drawing attention to the dangers posed by Iran's nuclear program," she said, "and we will not waver in our commitment. I will continue to call for sustained action to prevent Iranian president Ahmadinejad from getting these weapons to launch a second Holocaust."

I'm out of the loop. Is this kind of language about Iran within the Overton window in the U.S.?

Just in the last week or so it seems.

from Politico:

“The problem that Sen. McCain has got at this moment is that this is a big government intervention in the financial markets, and guess what? : At the moment, it’s working,” says former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, an Obama supporter. “His fundamental argument all along has been to keep the government out of it. But if the government hadn’t intervened, this thing could easily have spiraled out of control.”

That’s the bad news for McCain. The bad news for Obama: The economic crisis could help propel him to the presidency, but if the federal government spends $1 trillion or even $500 billion bailing out financial companies, it won’t have much left over for the plans he hopes to pursue come January.

Obama’s ambitious domestic agenda, larded with $65 billion-a-year health care reform and $15 billion green jobs program, will almost certainly be cut back in the face of a deficit swollen by hundreds of billions in bailouts. And he will face increased scrutiny over the next 47 days over whether he can accomplish his agenda – along with a major middle-class tax cut – in the current environment.

“President Obama’s going to have to stand before a Democratic Congress and say, ‘Some of the things that you and I as Democrats want to get done, we’re not going to be able to,’” Kerrey said.

Michael Ettlinger, an economist with the left-leaning Center for American Progress, says the downturn is a double-edged sword. It creates a “greater demand for Obama’s program,” but it also means that Obama’s proposals would “have to be delayed or rolled out over a longer period of time.”

same thing that happened to Clinton, too^^

On Thursday, organizers announced that they had withdrawn their invitation for Palin to attend, saying they did not want the event to be overtly political.

uh huh

since when are we on the left big states-rights fans?

since the progressive States started becoming laboratories for progressive policy that moved a lot faster on things like, yes, gay marriage than the big, slow, held-hostage-by-a-few-old-people-in-the-middle-of-nowhere federal government. or were you suggesting that we put shibboleths ahead of reality?

lol biden

or were you suggesting that we put shibboleths ahead of reality?

incomplete interrogatory sentences that sum up all ILX political threads ever, episode I

"Remember, no one decides who they’re going to vote for based on the vice president,” he said. “I mean that literally."

Oh God, what a horrible closing line.

Wait, wasn't it lots of deficit spending and huge government programs that got us out of the great depression? Or has something in the economy/politics changed such that that approach wouldn't work again?

same thing that happened to Clinton, too^^

so basically the cycle is, leave the democrats (who like government and know how to work the levers) to clean up the mess and get the economy back on track, just in time for the next republican administration to come in and skim the cream off the top and spend a gazillion dollars on shiny new weapons and a couple discretionary wars.

there are times when i think my friends who rant about the 2-party system are on solid ground. but then i look around at all the more-than-2-party systems and they look just as fucked. i guess maybe just avoiding the one-party systems is ambitious enough for me.

I've become convinced that you can either have a unicameral legislature and a multiparty system (still gets nothing done) or a bicameral and a 2-party system (u know) - examples of exceptions would be welcome.

citizens of federal democracies would be well advised to look at any period wherein all branches of national government shared the same set of goals and think hard on whether they really believe that progress is served by letting the head of state do as he or she pleases

this latest is hopefully the end of supply-side; that's another nixonland concept that can be given the merciful headshot. For those keeping score, it's 2008, and we are now at Roosevelt 20, Reagan 2.

Left leaning smartypants who are so ready to dismiss stupid bigot Amerikkka might be well served to note the lack of negro water fountains, in re: gay marriage; just because the electorate is a little slower than your brilliant selves doesn't mean they're actually backwards

(bill maher pissed me off tonight, a little)

http://www.mercuras.com/0908/Steal_300_ani.GIF

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

http://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/080727DailyUpdateGraph1_yyyytttt.gif

xpost Wow, what a fascinatingly ill-conceived bit of advertising.

http://tittysprinkles.net/images/ilx/yes-no.png

If they think the flashing question with words and ideas and such are going to negate the much simpler non-left-brain bottom 2/3 of the ad... well.

Bad word choice... not "negate"... they don't want to negate anything but Obama, obviously. That's why he shouldn't have a big green square with the word YES in it over his face.

Left leaning smartypants who are so ready to dismiss stupid bigot Amerikkka might be well served to note the lack of negro water fountains, in re: gay marriage; just because the electorate is a little slower than your brilliant selves doesn't mean they're actually backwards

Please print and distribute amongst angry liberals, thanks.

lol:

Yet Joltin’ Joe has also become a fascinating Off Broadway spectacle in his own right. He is a distinctive blend of pit bull and odd duck whose weak filters make him capable of blurting out pretty much anything — “gaffes,” out-of-nowhere comments (pivoting midspeech to say “Excuse my back!” to people seated behind him), goofy asides (tapping a reporter’s chest and telling him, “You need to work on your pecs.”)

so basically the cycle is, leave the democrats (who like government and know how to work the levers) to clean up the mess and get the economy back on track, just in time for the next republican administration to come in and skim the cream off the top and spend a gazillion dollars on shiny new weapons and a couple discretionary wars

the most depressing thing about any of this is that even if Obama wins, within 15 years someone will come along and fuck everything up again. it's just how the cycle of history works. nothing is ever going to be perfected. it's depressing

yeah, it's not like there's a chance the under-35 generation is going to be a lifelong Dem voting block or anything

Rasmussen: Obama 48-47
Research 2000: Obama 50-42

"it's just how the cycle of history works. nothing is ever going to be perfected. it's depressing"

Just because utopia is impossible doesn't mean we shouldn't work to make things better.

and by the way, to those wtf-ers about my comment re. LBJ, it's absolutely false that school desegregation led *inexorably* to full equality in law. Community organizers had immense amounts of work to do that could have easily not been done, and the civil rights movement wouldn't have happened when it did. And had the federal government not stepped in and *legislated* as they did, the states would have continued to fight against these organizers.

I point this out not to condescend (there's enough of that on this thread already) or to defend myself (because who cares) but to say that expecting states to work things out in 2008 in favor of gay marriage is unpromising. A few states, sure. Maybe in 2018 or 2028 the rest will---even out here, anti-gay bigotry is falling away among the young. But if you want the right to gay marriage (with all its legal benefits), it will take federal intervention. I know this is all obvious, but on this thread it seems like there's often too much taken for granted as obvious that is far from it.

But if you want the right to gay marriage (with all its legal benefits), it will take federal intervention.

Dude, that's what people are saying here. I think people agree with you. You're just talking about a different branch of the federal government. Federal intervention can be a landmark SCOTUS case.

Ok, cool. I think that, given the present culture war, if it were to happen soon, it would be better if it were legislated by Congress, or even (gulp) by constitutional amendment. Then it would be a more democratic decision than one that comes down from the Supreme Court.

And had the federal government not stepped in and *legislated* as they did, the states would have continued to fight against these organizers.

please print out and distribute amongst "it'll all work out in the end, vote Democratic" ppl, thx

Left leaning smartypants who are so ready to dismiss stupid bigot Amerikkka might be well served to note the lack of negro water fountains, in re: gay marriage; just because the electorate is a little slower than your brilliant selves doesn't mean they're actually backwards

I'm pretty much 100% on the fact that the opposition to gay marriage is not just wrong, but wrong for foolish, ignorant reasons. Trouble is, you can't just run out waving your arms and yelling that. I know it's not Bill Maher's job to reach across the aisle exactly, but he was doing this to Sarah Palin a couple weeks ago, too. Yeah, Bill, we get it, she's a housefrau who's not nearly smart enough to even have the job she does, much less the job she's running for, but when you gnash your teeth like that, it looks less than righteous, and -- here's the worst of it! -- it's not even funny. It's just smug. Not exactly the lord's work.

Though it was fun that every time he made another "LOL I think women are stupid anyway!" cracks, you could see Janeane Garofalo biting halfway through her tongue and burning holes through him with her eyes.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/mccain-on-banking-and-health/

lol:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWQzZmU5ZjUzNGEyZWUyZjM5NDk0NzBkOTZiNWE0OTg=

hey guys, we've managed to tie together the economic problems with our newfound dislike of 'community organizers'! nice eureka moment for this dude here, u can see the lightbulb going off

and by the way, to those wtf-ers about my comment re. LBJ, it's absolutely false that school desegregation led *inexorably* to full equality in law. Community organizers had immense amounts of work to do that could have easily not been done, and the civil rights movement wouldn't have happened when it did. And had the federal government not stepped in and *legislated* as they did, the states would have continued to fight against these organizers.

I point this out not to condescend (there's enough of that on this thread already) or to defend myself (because who cares) but to say that expecting states to work things out in 2008 in favor of gay marriage is unpromising. A few states, sure. Maybe in 2018 or 2028 the rest will---even out here, anti-gay bigotry is falling away among the young. But if you want the right to gay marriage (with all its legal benefits), it will take federal intervention. I know this is all obvious, but on this thread it seems like there's often too much taken for granted as obvious that is far from it.

― it's a great breakup balllad sung by Bill Champlin (Euler), Saturday, September 20, 2008 9:08 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i was 'wtf'-ing bcuz you said that LBJ had more to do with it than the courts which is blatantly false. who's talking about community organizers? Im talking about the actual heavy lifting of the civil rights movement done w/in govt that went beyond legislation and executive decision making.

ok. "heavy lifting of the civil rights movement" can mean a lot of things. I recently read the three-volume bio of MLK by Taylor Branch, and was struck by how large a role LBJ played in getting the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. You're definitely right that the courts had work to do after that, to interpret and to punish violators, but it was the Congress and the president who passed the laws.

I bring up community organizers because without MLK etc. I don't think anything like the Voting Rights Act or Civil Rights Act would have been on SCOTUS' plate any time soon.

we can both agree 'heavy lifting' is a subjective call but yr definitely downplaying the role that attorneys played in the coordination of the civil rights movement when you say You're definitely right that the courts had work to do after that, to interpret and to punish violators, but it was the Congress and the president who passed the laws.

brown vs board of ed was the 11th case to challenge that particular law re: segregation

The NAACP had a legal brain trust involved in numerous cases, and they used the judiciary to accomplish certain goals on the path to civil rights. brown v board of ed was not the only key decision, and theses werent simply a matter of judges deciding how to interpret - you had these attorneys working in conjunction with legislators to insure genuine equality.

Davis et al v. the St. Louis Housing Authority ended legal racial discrimination in public housing, for ex. It was no coincidence that 'the good guys' won this fight - the naacp had sent particular attorneys to take on cases that they thought would help to overturn inequities in the system, and worked on arguments that would accomplish those goals. much of the change really did come through the judiciary. robert witherspoon, frankie muse freeman, thurgood marshall etc all did serious legwork behind the scenes through casework to set the stage for legislators to be able to pass laws that couldnt be easily overturned by the judiciary, or easily circumvented.

Ok, that's really interesting. However, my understanding of Davis et al v. the St. Louis Housing Authority is that it made illegal discrimination for public housing on the grounds of race *in St. Louis*. But it wasn't until the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (signed by LBJ and given urgency to the Congress by MLK's assassination) that the federal government gained the power to enforce laws barring discrimination for public housing on the grounds of race. But I am no scholar of these things, so I could be getting this wrong.

http://cdn-www.dailypuppy.com/media/dogs/anonymous/bentley_basset_hound_01.jpg_w450.jpg

aww, look at his lil spotted snout

Ok, that's really interesting. However, my understanding of Davis et al v. the St. Louis Housing Authority is that it made illegal discrimination for public housing on the grounds of race *in St. Louis*. But it wasn't until the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (signed by LBJ and given urgency to the Congress by MLK's assassination) that the federal government gained the power to enforce laws barring discrimination for public housing on the grounds of race. But I am no scholar of these things, so I could be getting this wrong.

― the only real micaroni (Euler), Saturday, September 20, 2008 2:56 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

right, but that legislation was relying on the groundwork laid out in states and by certain judicial guidelines/precedents (obv im not a legal historian, i just studied history, so im having trouble arguing this in the correct language but i think the point im trying to make is still pretty cogent)

yeah I feel you, the courts have been way important, no doubt

we're gonna go out canvassing for Obama tomorrow, here in the middle of a very red state; if anything lolworthy happens I will post