(the existence of reactionary zionists would, of course, have left midcentury labor zionists totally dumbfounded)
― Infamous dickbiscuits (silby), Monday, 5 November 2012 19:30 (eleven years ago) link
david mamet makes reactionary zionist look bad
― Mordy, Monday, 5 November 2012 19:38 (eleven years ago) link
lol @ mamet. that is incredibly poorly written for a guy with so many awards:
Will you explain (as you have observed) that a large part of their incomes will be used to fund programs that they may find immoral, wasteful and/or indeed absurd? And that the bulk of their taxes go to no programs at all, but merely service the debt you entailed on them?
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 5 November 2012 19:50 (eleven years ago) link
Morbs beleives in contrarianism.
anyone who makes this accuz and isn't a mindreader needs to stfu
I find the constant "yer into feeling SUPERIOR" sneer thrown at minor-party voters weird when I am regularly told by gung-ho Dem voters that I am a CHILD for 'throwing my vote away.' (In NY, of all places.)
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Monday, 5 November 2012 19:56 (eleven years ago) link
one can be smug and foolish
― da croupier, Monday, 5 November 2012 20:02 (eleven years ago) link
constant "yer into feeling SUPERIOR" sneer thrown at you /= constant "yer into feeling SUPERIOR" sneer thrown at minor-party voters
get over yrself
― balls, Monday, 5 November 2012 20:04 (eleven years ago) link
don't feel sorry for the guy who pops into threads to throw out snide remarks about our moral failings and then plays the victim
― Gukbe, Monday, 5 November 2012 20:06 (eleven years ago) link
boo hoo, woe is me
fuck off y'all
― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Monday, 5 November 2012 20:10 (eleven years ago) link
like sand through the hourglass... so are the days of our lives
― lag∞n, Monday, 5 November 2012 20:16 (eleven years ago) link
Morbs we need to hug this out
― Gukbe, Monday, 5 November 2012 20:18 (eleven years ago) link
it's a morbius strip (djp NO!)
― sweet emoticon (Hunt3r), Monday, 5 November 2012 20:19 (eleven years ago) link
so wait, someone just told me that mittens paid no taxes for 10 years per a new Bloomberg story, and I can find neither hide nor hair of it on the internetz. is it just being ignored?
― Iago Galdston, Monday, 5 November 2012 20:29 (eleven years ago) link
It was linked yesterday but nobody really cares anymore
― Gukbe, Monday, 5 November 2012 20:30 (eleven years ago) link
“An Open Letter to Nonvoters on the Left” by Ari Feld
Dear friends,
Representative democracy is not ideal. The Electoral College is faulty. The two party system stymies political innovation. Both Republicans and Democrats cozy up with dubious sources of funding. You are right to condemn the disingenuousness of politics— the unremitting hedging and double-talk, the pandering and outright silliness of both parties. You are wrong to believe that participation in electoral democracy legitimizes a hopelessly flawed system. Despite everything, voting remains the most powerful non-violent method of effective political action.
Voters elect the president. The president appoints Supreme Court justices and a host of other judges. Voters elect state and national representatives. These people work in concert (or conflict), with or without your permission, to arbitrate legal reality. Whether you like it or not, we are all subjects to their decisions. To say otherwise is foolish. To say that Democrats and Republicans pursue comparable domestic policies is a departure from reason. To say elections don’t affect you is, at best, to delude yourself. At worst, it disavows other people’s civil rights and empowers the most reactionary and destructive forces in our society.
Which political party advances women’s and minorities’ rights, gay rights, the rights of the poor, and sounder drug and environmental policies? In general, who does more of that, Democrats or Republicans? In the broadest strokes possible, which of these parties and their judicial appointees will enact and uphold laws to improve and protect the lives of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised citizens?
Your abstention facilitates Republican victories. I understand that you abstainers have personal convictions that make it difficult for you to vote for the Democrats. You certainly have a right to your conscience. Indeed, individual rights and freedoms are a cornerstone of our democracy. However, you take these precepts too far by elevating your desire to simply express them (by not voting) over seeking their full realization for all Americans. In other words, expressing your conscience comes at the expense of women’s access to safe, effective family planning services. Your conscience gets in the way of equal marriage rights for all. Your conscience has far less to struggle with than single mothers denied vital social services by Republican policies. Your conscience is of no avail to citizens imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses. Your conscience is merely self-righteous.
Self-righteousness disguised as conscience or personal conviction is the worst kind of American individualism. There are convictions and then there is trenchant unwillingness to acknowledge any reality beyond the frontiers of your own experience or circumstance. That is solipsism, not a conviction. Citizens of a democracy have a responsibility to share struggles that are not their own. This admonishment applies equally to those of you who would “vote your conscience” by supporting unelectable independents. Until you have succeeded in implementing instant run-off voting in your community, or unless this nation becomes a parliamentary democracy, someone will be elected and it won’t be your candidate. Compromise is the reality of politics, except in totalitarian states.
Progressive and radical citizens who refuse to compromise elicit comparison with the Tea Party and their debt-limit intransigence last year. Their refusal exemplifies the most anti-intellectual strain of American politics. But to say that I am arguing for all of us on the left to fall in with a party line is to utterly miss the point: we need votes not for the sake of Obama and the Democrats but for the sake of the most vulnerable people— women, children and the elderly—who will benefit from their policies.
Voters defer to reality. We shape it. We criticize and castigate. We honor those who are maimed and killed fighting for this right. We remember that not so long ago women and African-Americans in this country struggled in this way. Nonvoters must certainly remember such history as well. Perhaps today’s struggles seem less dire. Perhaps current candidates fail to excite you.
Make no mistake, the Democrats may be nothing to get excited about this year. Who cares if you’re excited? Your excitement is of great concern to no one (except possibly to you, which in itself is a luxury). The unemployed, the marginalized and unprivileged know that reality dictates acting for reasons other than excitement. Least-worst choices are all we have for the moment. There is no time to transform America during a presidential election. To say it another way, there is no time to re-make America in your own image this year. That’s what every other year is for. Realistically, though, all I hope for is a defense and perhaps a gradual advance of progressive domestic policy. It seems that only non-voters have lower aspirations.
Indeed, what are the politics of inaction? What do you hope to rectify with your power of inertia? What is the message of civil discourse that says nothing at the national level? Before you opt out, think about what’s at stake. And remember your awesome power: nonvoters make up a greater part of the potential electorate than either Democrats or Republicans and almost as much as both of them combined. If you persist in your abstention, you persist in subservience to a ruling elite: voters.
Sincerely,
Ari Feld
― beef richards (Mr. Que), Monday, 5 November 2012 20:31 (eleven years ago) link
why does Ari Feld like killing children?
― Gukbe, Monday, 5 November 2012 20:38 (eleven years ago) link
OK, I'm feeling pretty confident that Obama has a real lead in Ohio, but this stuff is making me feel extremely nervous:
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/
― Moodles, Monday, 5 November 2012 20:53 (eleven years ago) link
y'know, I love the term "to service debt". it makes it sound like our national debt is regularly receiving blowjobs
― Force Boxman (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 5 November 2012 20:57 (eleven years ago) link
it is, didn't you know?
― Moodles, Monday, 5 November 2012 20:59 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Happy-Wen-Jiabao.jpegyou want happy ending?
― balls, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:02 (eleven years ago) link
OK, I'm feeling pretty confident that Obama has a real lead in Ohio, but this stuff is making me feel extremely nervous:http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/
Just gotta hope the vote fraud is less than a percent or two I guess, US Politics 2012
― Matt Armstrong, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:02 (eleven years ago) link
what happens if the exit polls show something completely different than the official results?
― Moodles, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:03 (eleven years ago) link
i am not swayed by Ari Feld
― dojo nixon (am0n), Monday, 5 November 2012 21:05 (eleven years ago) link
that shit makes me nervous as hell, but i'd hope that a US president is not without recourse if it even remotely looks like the outcome of his re-election was tampered with
― da croupier, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:07 (eleven years ago) link
re: ohio voting machines
response to the ohio voting software stuff
http://www.theawl.com/2012/11/the-truth-about-voting-machines
― max, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:13 (eleven years ago) link
I'm cautiously reassured
― Moodles, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:19 (eleven years ago) link
Ok we can go back to worrying about the provisional ballot thing
― Matt Armstrong, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:19 (eleven years ago) link
I'd like to think no entity has the actual power/balls to successfully tamper with election results
― crüt, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:21 (eleven years ago) link
figure that every time out there's some mercenary who dumps a couple hundred dem ballots in the trash and tbh it's probably balanced out by another mercenary doing the same to repub ballots.
― sug ones (omar little), Monday, 5 November 2012 21:24 (eleven years ago) link
big conspiracies don't usually work out so good because people are generally incompetent
― iatee, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:25 (eleven years ago) link
saw that shit happen on battlestar galactica xp
― mookieproof, Monday, 5 November 2012 21:25 (eleven years ago) link
Note that all of the big spikes on 538 are to the right of 288 = Obama most likely won't need it. Which will be handy, because it could be a long time before that state is actually settled.
― Andrew Farrell, Monday, 5 November 2012 22:39 (eleven years ago) link
This One Weird Old Trick To Get People To Vote
― am0n, Monday, 5 November 2012 22:52 (eleven years ago) link
current first GIS hit for "fancy words for drinking" http://cdn.theatlanticwire.com/img/upload/2012/10/03/rendered/54ee622a09e4f3db08324ce3a6ca8bb4_400x280.jpg
― Porto for Pyros (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Monday, 5 November 2012 23:31 (eleven years ago) link
smh at that Mamet piece. It's like he's had a head injury. It's not that he's a conservative, it's that he's such a moron about it.
― Deafening silence (DL), Tuesday, 6 November 2012 00:04 (eleven years ago) link
he has dennis miller disease
― Manchild in Beantown (stevie), Tuesday, 6 November 2012 00:07 (eleven years ago) link
hes so half ass abt it, like if youre not willing to put some effort in why bother
― lag∞n, Tuesday, 6 November 2012 00:11 (eleven years ago) link
its not like he cant think and write good if he tries
what happens if the exit polls show something completely different than the official results?― Moodles, Monday, November 5, 2012 4:03 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Then you know there were shenanigans, correct? Isn't that what happened to Kerry in '04 in Ohio?
― Iago Galdston, Tuesday, 6 November 2012 00:12 (eleven years ago) link
<3 you balls but this is bullshit, sneering condescension toward minor-party voters is pretty consistent among Democrats. Also the "you want happy ending" line a couple posts later is a li'l racist maybe don't perpetuate bogus-ass Asian stereotype "hilarious" accent bullshit? cool thanks
― Inconceivable (to the entire world) (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, 6 November 2012 00:21 (eleven years ago) link
<3 you balls, butt,
― flopson, Tuesday, 6 November 2012 00:25 (eleven years ago) link
lol
― Force Boxman (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 6 November 2012 00:26 (eleven years ago) link
this is bullshit, sneering condescension toward minor-party voters is pretty consistent among Democrats.
and annoyance with morbz is pretty consistent on ilx, outside of political threads
― da croupier, Tuesday, 6 November 2012 01:01 (eleven years ago) link
the democratic party is hardly the first thing i knew morbz felt superior to
― da croupier, Tuesday, 6 November 2012 01:03 (eleven years ago) link
There ought to be a poll.
― Sug ban (Nicole), Tuesday, 6 November 2012 01:48 (eleven years ago) link
fair enough aero though lol @ you having wen jiabao's back
― balls, Tuesday, 6 November 2012 02:34 (eleven years ago) link
I thought everyone knew aero was in the politburo
― iatee, Tuesday, 6 November 2012 02:36 (eleven years ago) link
gay silver bumped obama up to 91% tonight
― lil dirk (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, 6 November 2012 02:38 (eleven years ago) link
the politburrito stalls (xpost)
― they say they gon' mod me, see me never do shit (some dude), Tuesday, 6 November 2012 02:40 (eleven years ago) link
We vote for Obama. Technocratic neoliberalism is preferable to theocratic neoconservatism, at this early stage before True History begins.
― Banaka™ (banaka), Tuesday, 6 November 2012 03:12 (eleven years ago) link