the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

2006 was a year when Democrats were still willing to ask that question.

2012 is still a year when Democrats are willing to ask that question! Had Gore taken office, he'd have wiretapped to his heart's content and explained how the reality on the ground called for extraordinary measures, etc. Yr gettin' soft if you think Gore wasn't also an evil villain!

no youre getting it ll wrong he lost and grew a beard

Tipper was around for years before that

oh, the way Gore acted whenever he was holding office doesn't guarantee to me an obvious deviation from W's path, to answer the Nader Fallacy's eternal obsessives.

but he could talk a great game from the outside, kinda like a community organizer I remember.

reminds me of someone else, who could it be...

dunno

i wonder what happened in the parallel universe where nader won the election

let's stick to Our Masters, shall we, not messageboard dickholders like you & me. xp

I wonsder what happened to your sister.

he took big donations from the anti-seat belt lobby and outlawed them in all new vehicles xp

heh

yeah all of us who voted Green thought he was gonna win! Eat the peanuts outta my shit.

cool it morbz, i voted for him too!

Dr Civet

but i do kinda wonder wtf a principled, conscientious person would do as pres in the aftermath of 9/11

Dr. Poo-Poo Mouth

didn't you go away?

Dr Civet

― PITILESS LIVE SHOW (DJP), Tuesday, July 17, 2012 2:43 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

loll

lol @ describing Nader as a "principled, conscientious person", lots of principled, conscientious people throw racial comments at people

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ibsP6XN2dIo

yeah all of us who voted Green thought he was gonna win! Eat the peanuts outta my shit.

― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, July 17, 2012 7:41 PM (5 minutes ago)

this is the best post

only possible bcz I recently rewatched Full Metal Jacket

oh god, I remembered being O_O and rolling my eyes at that video DJP just linked

But a guy's 50-year career is not nec represented by one of his worst public moments.

i really dislike nader for reasons having nothing to do with him stealing the election from gore and fellating GWB

Nader would have personally stabbed Osama Bin Laden in the face iirc

nader would've invited bin laden to have beers with him in white house

only a real man like GWB SUPERBAMA could personally* strangle the life out of OBL's neck

*yeah, i said it

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/06/ralph-nader-tal.html

There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American. Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We'll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.

I forgot that the 2000 election was Gore's personal property.

fellating GWB

I'd ask for clarification but I so don't fucking want it.

it was america's property, and nader stole it from america bc he's a bastard

Damn him for flying in all those Latvians to vote for him

who you hate doesn't interest me; you like Cole Hamels.

i'm glad you've come around on nader. fuck him.

“The president’s looking around for someone to blame, and recently, I became the reason for all the problems,” Romney said. “I was surprised, my family and me, but he’s always looking for someone out there: ATM machines, tsunamis, China, Europe. It’s always something.”

is this some winger code I am not aware of? atm machines?

I often look to blame things on automated teller machine machines

AIN'T NOTHIN WRONG WITH TSUNAMIS OBAMA

shit did romney invest in tsunamis?

barack obama: half african, but not black enough for ralph nader

Tsunamis? Is he talking about the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/Fukushima catastrophe? Someone thought that Obama was blaming things on the tsunami?

what?

someone needs a reboot

I'm gonna give Romneybot the robodoubt and assume he's conflating Obama's recent attacks on Romneybot's business practices with Obama's other "excuses" for why the economy has not improved faster.

except for the ATM machines thing, that must be a disc-read-error.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/Abort_Retry_Fail.PNG

i'm glad you've come around on nader. fuck him.

oh, I get it. "Middle East policy," koff koff

ATM machines, tsunamis, China, Europe. It’s always something.

the last three are all things that are all universally regarded as a drag on american growth

the "ATM machines" comes from an interview Obama gave where he made an essentially conservative point that much of unemployment is not cyclical but systemic -- there used to be lots of bank tellers but now there are ATMS so we don't have the same kinds of entry-level jobs in that role. (this may not be strictly true in the case of the ATM & banks but the point is exactly the one conservative economists have arguing)

conservatives of course did their thing and now "ATMs" is another punchline for obama being a crybaby, a dolt, shiftless, etc etc.

you don't hear romney complaining about technology replacing jobs, natural disasters and dramatic shifts in the world economy

It's a difficult line to walk and I think both sides are doing a mediocre job, although Romney more so. There is a set of manufacturing jobs that does need to be in the US, but at the same time, there's a certain amount of systemic job loss. Somehow the republicans think restructuring companies to pull the maximum profit out Bain-style is cool, but the government funding education or job training is bad because ??

On the flip side, I heard two separate coal miner news items in the same week -- one about the incidence rate of black lung disease going up because mines are supposed to self-monitor dust and they're gaming the system. On the other hand, a coal miner interviewed later in the week insisted that Obama is to blame for lessened demand in the coal industry.

Black lung and employment for all!

"...he’s always looking for someone out there: ATM machines, tsunamis, China, Europe. It’s always something.”

Uh, maybe a craven, beholden do-nothing Congress that prefers unemployment to real nationalism? I mean, I understand the Romneybot's point and perhaps jobs are better outsourced and Americans should be doing things in a global economy that they're more economically competetive at but there was a time when business and the Republican party thought the country should be financed by tariffs, ffs.

On the other hand, a coal miner interviewed later in the week insisted that Obama is to blame for lessened demand in the coal industry.

I was listening to this same story, and I turned to my wife and said, "Watch, that statement will go completely unchallenged." It sort of did and sort of didn't.

yup, west virginia is deeply hostile territory to obama right now, they blame his EPA for strangling coal. some new regs have gone into effect but not nearly enough to make a dent.

xp really? the story i heard (on NPR) was pretty clear about it -- funny enough the culprit is fracking. natural gas used to be twice as expensive as coal, now it's half as expensive. plants are switching over like crazy. it's a huge change. we're living in a very different country almost overnight when it comes to energy, it's wild.

there are lots of questions about fracking obviously, but i'm kinda agnostic right now tbh. burning gas is cleaner than burning coal; getting it out of the ground might still be cleaner too.

there are better ways to get natural gas out of the ground than fracking, they're just slower/more expensive