Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2

science rules

yeah, there's this black guy who hangs out at the same bar as me and we have the usual political discussions. he's a lawyer and a self-described 'Rockefeller republican'. didn't vote for BO the first time but is pretty impressed with his liberal republican policies. he had quite a conversation that i ease dropped on with another republican trying to convince her that Obama isn't a wild eyed socialist. it went nowhere. cutting taxes, bailing out the banks yeah real Lenninist we have as prez.

do people in ireland like this guy? we need more fightin' irish taking on the tea party people:

http://www.upworthy.com/a-tea-partier-decided-to-pick-a-fight-with-a-foreign-president-it-didnt-go-so-we?g=4&c=ufb1

Well we elected him President after that, but I think he had his time on the last thread.

oh okay didn't see it!

I don't think conspiracy nuts are helped by the internet either. First off, you can find so many more conspiracies and fellow nuts. Secondly, there's the know-it-all culture that makes people write things like "The moon landing was faked!" in response to Neil Armstrong obituaries. Not that anyone hasn't heard of the moon landing hoax, but there's a certain one-upsmanship that is probably 90% responsible for those posts. It doesn't quite mean the poster literally thinks the moon landing was faked any more than he thinks he's smarter than all the other posters.

i really want my brother-in-law to run for office. some office. he's so righteous. maria's older brother. not that i usually wish politics on anyone. some people are just obvious leaders. he takes on stupid talk in this speech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl6Y3MsxPL0

i mean he's inspiring to me. i don't know what he inspires me to do, but he's just generally inspiring. i could help him with his speeches. maybe he could run for mayor of seattle.

Just saw something on one of the newscasts that I didn't see last night (maybe I'd walked away from the computer to post): reaction shots of Ann Romney and the Ryans as Eastwood rambled. The Ryans shift impatiently in their seats, and PR seemed to do that thing where you puff out your cheeks and exhale slowly when you know things aren't going well.

i generally explain how obama is really a republican

^^79% of my political discussions irl and online are basically a variation of this

i find it pretty useful to point out to ppl that o's basically more like eisenhower than he is any recent democratic pres -- fiscal conservatism, ruthless but low-cost and efficient foreign policy, at war with right-wing lunatics (except that they're in the other party, not his own).

pretty sure there's a separate thread for this stuff

Yeah, I think we go into it in the anti-vaxxer/Jenny McCarthy thread. I've posted about it some, and Plasmon and Grady have too, and I'll happily go into why people desperately want conspiracy theory to be true, but this ain't the thread for that.

Plus my usual style is to lapse into lecture mode and do walls-o-textdumps and heavy linkage because I read so much about this stuff and don't trust my abilities to summarize and present it as well as the authors I've read or certain succinct ex-ilxors who now collect salaries for their online otm-ness.

Will post run-on paragraphs 4 beer

He's a good speaker, scott! Maybe it's good he's not running for office. Leave politics to the politicians. Sounds like he's making a difference in a more real way.

^ this!

and all these people are racist. every conspiracy person. all of them.

well, tbf there are probabably many who are okay with black people and only hate jews

in my experience the JFK conspiracy ppl are just cranky old liberals

sure, that's what they want you to believe

"He's a good speaker, scott! Maybe it's good he's not running for office"

yeah, i've thought this too. probably does better work from the outside. plus, he went to harvard and his biological father was nigerian. and maria's mom is a radical feminist/lesbian. wouldn't want to see him go through the obama-hater gauntlet. though in seattle maybe none of that would matter. they are rad there, right?

The problem with "really a Republican" arguments is that they sort of imply a fixed identity for either party that neither has ever had. Like, OK, Obama's sort of like an Eisenhower or Rockefeller Republican, except that he and the current Democratic Party are way more liberal on a lot of social and cultural issues than any party in the country's history has ever been. And the Democratic Party in Ike's day still had all those Dixiecrats in it. I just don't really like those kinds of simplifications.

Right, there's no black JFK conspiracy people....let's give it up for Dick Gregory.

the troll is designed to demonstrate that obama has enacted numerous policies (some of my favorite examples are foreign affairs, war on terror, preservation of capitalism thru bailouts, HCR being originated by Heritage/Romney) that the listener agrees w/. not to make some bold claim about the true essence of the republican party.

Didn't anybody else notice some of the OTHER weird things that happened during the Eastwood speech like....the Republican audience cheering the idea that it was stupid to go to war in Afghanistan? The Republican audience cheering the idea of "bringing them (the troops) home tomorrow?"

can someone explain to me why the conspiracy/ron paul/fake moon landing people believe EVERYTHING that is made up and crazy? like, they don't just believe one or two things that are obviously made up they believe every single crazy theory.

― scott seward, Friday, August 31, 2012 5:57 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wood, Michael and Douglas, K.M. and Sutton, R.M. (2012) Dead and alive: Belief in contradictory conspiracy theories. Social Psychology and Personality Science . ISSN 1948-5506. (In press):

Conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system: a self-sustaining worldview comprised of a network of mutually supportive beliefs. The present research shows that even endorsement of mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated. In Study 1 (n = 137), the more participants believed that Princess Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered. In Study 2 (n = 102), the more participants believed that Osama Bin Laden was already dead when U.S. special forces raided his compound in Pakistan, the more they believed he is still alive.

http://i390.photobucket.com/albums/oo346/HadrianVIII/clint-eastwood.jpg

(full text)

like....the Republican audience cheering the idea that it was stupid to go to war in Afghanistan?

yes that was very very wtf and made me wonder if the delegates were even paying much attention to what was actually being said or if they were just automatically cheering during any pauses

Read and heard very little about the speach. I'm guessing u were all impressed w/ how Mittens DEFINED HIMSELF.

Hope you have fun parsing the (occasionally) more subtle, artful lies on display next week.

it was v impressive, the definition

finally morbs reveals that he doesn't read other people's posts

finally

hey I didn't pay attention to this thing that happened, but I gotta stop by to say you guys were wrong about it

^^^ good ILE board description tbh

MA still w/ the non sequiturs

Friend of mine just posted this photo to FB with the caption, "Dinner in the sunroom with the last four Presidents. I'm so excited!!"

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/854/photoaug31213745.jpg

http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/3382/photoaug31213745.jpg

ABC world news program ran a spot tonight on Romney's mystery bundlers at the convention. They had a reporter going up to these guys as they were coming out of some event and they were refusing to identify themselves or answer any questions. They also tried to talk to one of the Koch brothers and he wouldn't say a word - just got in a car and closed the door.

"Conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system"

yes! this is what i was thinking today. its like church. and faith. (faith in your lack of faith in reality...)

so Eastwood appearance was Romney's own idea, was unscripted and unrehearsed, chair was a last minute addition by Clint's request = wow

ABC world news program ran a spot tonight on Romney's mystery bundlers at the convention. They had a reporter going up to these guys as they were coming out of some event and they were refusing to identify themselves or answer any questions. They also tried to talk to one of the Koch brothers and he wouldn't say a word - just got in a car and closed the door.

― timellison, Friday, August 31, 2012 9:55 PM (21 minutes ago)

mysterious!

This evening the terrific running journalist, Scott Douglas, figured out that Ryan had actually run a 4:01 in Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1991, when he was a college student. This is not quite so fast. A 2:55 would have put Ryan 130th out of 3277 men in that race. A 4:01 put him 1990th. It’s the difference between racing and running.

I contacted the campaign this evening about the discrepancy. Ryan, through a spokesman, responded that he'd just mixed things up. “The race was more than 20 years ago, but my brother Tobin—who ran Boston last year—reminds me that he is the owner of the fastest marathon in the family and has never himself ran a sub-three. If I were to do any rounding, it would certainly be to four hours, not three. He gave me a good ribbing over this at dinner tonight."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/08/paul-ryan-marathon.html

ya sure two fifty something v four oh one honest screw up easy enough to do

mustve killed him not to break 4

"they were automatically cheering during any pauses" ---- that's what I was thinking too.

The Clint Eastwood thing reminds me of the scene in The Electic Kool Aid Acid Test where the anti-war rally gets Ken Kesey to do an anti-war speech and instead he produces this bizarre deflating spectacle complete with harmonica.

"Didn't you have enough speakers?" says Krassner? "You need all the big names you can get, to get the crowd out." "Well, that's what you get for being celebrity fuckers" says Krassner. (p. 234)

a Dem VP candidate would get slaughtered for this marathon thing

new yorker rlly h8s marathon cheaters

war criminals the lot

it's funny that of all his lies, this is the one he is forced to respond to. runners are intense, yo.

ABC world news program ran a spot tonight on Romney's mystery bundlers at the convention. They had a reporter going up to these guys as they were coming out of some event and they were refusing to identify themselves or answer any questions. They also tried to talk to one of the Koch brothers and he wouldn't say a word - just got in a car and closed the door.

― timellison, Friday, August 31, 2012 9:55 PM (21 minutes ago)

mysterious!

― k3vin k., Friday, August 31, 2012 7:18 PM (1 hour ago)

I don't know if you're being snarky - I was just bringing it up because it was a pretty unflattering piece to be running a day after their convention to whatever ABC World News' audience demographic is.

I mean, it was kind of like a 60 Minutes piece where they're pursuing some hustler.

olds I'd assume xp

The swooning over Bam this week by FB-friend Dems who were "so disappointed" 6 months ago is as predictable as the sunrise.