US POLITICS election/post-election edition: your country will improve immediately.

Yes underage drinking busts have shut down many nice clubs around Atlanta. I'm in favor of this law. Fine the kid, fine the kid's parents, fine the alcohol companies instead!

i dunno. in my experience, it's really, really easy to keep kids out of your club if you honestly don't want them there, don't want their money. but if you DO kind of want their money, then hell yes it should be your responsibility if they get fucked up and hurt themselves, hurt one another. personally, i think it should be legal for 18-year-olds to drink - but so long as it remains illegal, it seems appropriate to insist that club and bar owners refuse service to the underage, and to punish them when they're lax about this.

^ OTM

anyway, according to avinha, 1072 didn't get approved (i guess there's steps to these things in OR) so we don't really need to beat this into the ground

― goole, Tuesday, November 2, 2010 3:05 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol I am trying to think of when asking people on this board not to beat something into the ground didn't encourage 50+ more posts on the subject just to be irritating

It's better than arguing about whether to vote D or 'punish them' again!

18-yo's should not DRIVE

but I'm glad you're all concerned about the last principled senator getting bounced by a flood of newly unleashed corporate cash

all kinds of people have been concerned, on these threads, about the end of feingold's career, for weeks now.

and talking about citizens united too

Sorry I am not rending my garments enough for you, Morbs.

i dunno if 'principled' is enough to describe him. he tried tacking right a month or so ago, even ran ads touting endorsements by some tea party group or another, which i thought was pretty gross. but all to no avail.

I'm trying not to say anything bad about corporate campaign ads because after this election the only job left in America will be working on those ads and I wanna get in while the gettin's good.

Still haven't decided how dangerous Citizens United supposedly is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tA24uF3tLM

In Florida, billionaire Rick Scott has spent almost $100 million of his own money on attack ads yet the race is a dead heat. Look at poor Mittens in 2008. I'm just not convinced that unlimited cash at one's disposal means a political office is for the taking.

In other words, Feingold isn't necessarily the victim of Citizens United -- he would have been in terrible trouble without the ads.

lol I am trying to think of when asking people on this board not to beat something into the ground didn't encourage 50+ more posts on the subject just to be irritating

otm, and yet, I resent the implication lol

IIRC, hasn't Feingold ALWAYS faced tough re-election bids?!?

Still haven't decided how dangerous Citizens United supposedly is.

― sandra lee, gimme your alcohol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, November 2, 2010 3:54 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i guess it's possible all the outside money is wasted and the results would have been just as awful anyway. bad money after good, iow

xps

1654: Ashley Wilson, in St Paul, Minnesota, writes: What we really need is people in office who will move forward. There are so many people of the baby boomer generation who are wondering why we are wasting money on public schools, healthcare programs, and taking people's money away. Have Your Say

From the BBC. Unsurprised but speechless with rage.

I have no idea if that comment is agreeing with the idea that spending money on public schools and health care is a waste or not.

Speaking of distractions, anyone pay attention to the video game case before SCOTUS today?

My reading was that it was yet another boomer, having benefited from the above, griping about having to pay for the same for current generations.

either that or its an argument for decimating the over 50s.

this was lol worthy:

But Justice Scalia said there was nothing in the tradition of American free speech that would allow the government to ban depictions of violence. The thought, he said, would have been foreign to the drafters of the First Amendment, drawing a needling comment from Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the lone dissenter in the Stevens case.

“What Justice Scalia wants to know,” Justice Alito said, “is what James Madision thought about video games.”

“No,” Justice Scalia responded, “I want to know what James Madison thought about violence.”

And:

Justice Elena Kagan, the court’s newest and youngest member, seemed to be the only justice with even a passing familiarity with the genre under review, even if it was second-hand.

“You think Mortal Kombat is prohibited by this statute?” she asked Mr. Morazzini. It is, she added, “an iconic game which I am sure half the clerks who work for us spent considerable time in their adolescence playing.”

xp there was a decent article about the case in (i think) Game Informer a month or two ago. this is basically about whether to federally mandate age restrictions on rated M video games, right?

It's better than arguing about whether to vote D or 'punish them' again!

― Telephoneface (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, November 2, 2010 8:44 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

please excuse me for turning the cynical chatter to an attempt to actually discuss why the D's are about to lose

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/today-is-the-day_b_777560.html

The final ABC/Washington Post poll shows that, among registered voters, people still say they prefer the Democrats over the Republicans by 5 percentage points. It's only when the pollsters ask "likely voters" who they want that the Republicans come out ahead by a few points.

So it's clear the majority of voters want the Dems, but the prediction is the Republicans will win because Dem voters are going to stay home.

i know this is quite sad of me to say but kagan is kind of justifying her seat right there

What article is that from, Alfred?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/us/03scotus.html?_r=1&hp

but I'm glad you're all concerned about the last principled senator getting bounced by a flood of newly unleashed corporate cash

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 2 November 2010 20:47 (29 minutes ago)

I'm confused by your reverence for Feingold above all others.

Michael Moore?!

So it's clear the majority of voters want the Dems, but the prediction is the Republicans will win because Dem voters are going to stay home.

which raises the question, how much of a "want" is it if you stay home (because your preferred party has chosen to do jackshit for you whenever possible)?

I'm confused by your reverence for Feingold above all others.

Name the senators who voted against the USA PATRIOT Act.

but Morbs that was a long time ago and besides, there was public pressure

only one to vote nay at the time, a few more voted nay on the re-up

Actually, if the Tea Party was as principled as it pretends, it would have acknowledged how independent Feingold's been his whole career.

haha nice quote from Kagan AND nice quote from Scalito

also, all of those senators are still in office

Here's a case where Scalia will vote with the liberals. Actually, this is the kind of case that screws with ideology and depends entirely on one's interpretation of the First Amendment.

Assuming Harry Reid loses (I won't miss him a bit), who will be the new majority/minority leader? Schumer? Levin?

Schumer is angling for it, alas.

Schumer vs Durbin

only one to vote nay at the time, a few more voted nay on the re-up

right but...I mean...it's not like it was a secret that the patriot act was bullshit -- the ones who voted "yea": what do you imagine motivated that bullshit vote?

yeah my money would be on schumer probably. Reid is terrible but Angle will be so much worse (albeit less powerful)

on the plus side she will be first Asian legislator in the Senate

aero did you live in this country in 2001?

all the votes for the patriot act and the iraq invasion are unforgiveable sins imho

I would like to know why Wellstone voted for it.

closet fascist

not making any defense of the act itself, but the idea that it was bullshit on its face would have been a very rare opinion in those days

xp wellstone 'put a suit on' as you'll all recall...