Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

all those people *tricked* into being pro-life...by uh...money! ads! the machine! it's not like there are people in america w/ different beliefs than us, there are just people who were tricked. by money.

aero is it mistaken to think that the voters in some states are more hostile to abortion rights than those in other states?

this particular question seems moot to me, since the right to choose is hardly ever approachable at the voting level, unless you're tracking candidates and their positions w/the voters, which, again, is really complex: how you frame the question of abortion has as much to do with a voter's response as the issue iteself (same's true with a lot of social issues eg welfar). in iatee's world, the many people who've had abortions but still vote pro-life don't really exist, because the world is easily explained: there's good people (us, we live here) and scummy people (them, they live there). iatee will always believe this & there's no point engaging him on it at all but "staten island" was just too hilarious to ignore, I'm sure he's got a bunch of charts n stats that prove staten island really is the great satan or something tho

"iteself" seems to have borrowed an "e" from "welfar" but if it works for them who'm I to judge

I can look for one but I really don't think anyone needs a chart to prove that xp

some1 else reminded me of this /nostalker

ice cr?m it's a democracy. America votes in a guy, they not only get what they deserve, they get what they explicitly asked for. and it's not like there weren't plenty of voices around warning that the candidates were going to fuck shit up proper - this is a democracy, again! vote in somebody who's not a fucking sociopath, get a better deal imo, otherwise you get what you voted for & urged others to vote for

― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, October 31, 2011 10:00 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so ppl have basically homogenous views throughout the 50 states? that doesn't seem right.

lol "the electorate gets what it votes for" is what I say. "the electorate gets what it votes for, those horrible subhumans" is your uniquely batshit variant on that

lol dude Reagan got a 2nd term. sorry to "condescend" to an asshole electorate that actually gave a guy who'd been ruining the country for four years another four years to dig the whole deeper.
― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned)

hmmmm

I'm sure he's got a bunch of charts n stats that prove staten island really is the great satan or something tho

staten island does kinda suck, though.

I went to high school in Staten Island. Prince's Bay. We hung out in New Dorp. New Doooorp. The train is free there. That's pretty cool. It smells like garbage in the summer. Less cool.

so ppl have basically homogenous views throughout the 50 states? that doesn't seem right.

oh no - they shift all the time for a lot of reasons - states go from pro-labor to anti depending on the economy, how effective the unions are in their work, clever phrasing like "right to work" (who doesn't believe in the right to work?) in ballot measures, etc., for example. states get tilted pro- or anti-choice when a Republican legislature gets out its pen and starts redistricting; this is going on now in a number of states, the one I live in included. whole educational curricula go fundamentalist when the right/wrong people end up on local schoolboards. much of this has to either with long-term regional strategies of the party that take into account local economies, movement of the population imo. It's my understanding that Thomas Frank's book about Kansas talks a lot about this sort of thing but I haven't read it so I don't know for sure

no point in drawing this out I just feel obligated to holler "bullshit" when iatee finds another neighborhood to demonize

They have houses with waterfalls where the water flows over the front of the house.

by neighborhood you mean 'another old thread where you said exactly the opposite of what you're saying now', right xp

it remains the case that the voters get what they ask for, and they're assholes if they vote in assholes. for iatee, those assholes have gotta come from places he can draw a line around & point to or all the fun goes out of stuff

I do love that you've so completely conceded the question that the best you can do is "you're inconsistent with a previous position"

no I haven't conceded the question, I just agree w/ historic you

They have houses with waterfalls where the water flows over the front of the house.

man I wish I understood this reference because it is kinda cosmic-sounding to me

chillwave moderne

no I haven't conceded the question, I just agree w/ historic you

lol I'm less inclined to flee from the argt at hand than you evidently but iirc ppl's objections there were "you realize you sound like iatee here right?" and I had to go to great pains to differentiate between wholesale cynicism (me) vs. consistent classism (you)

we're all classist to some extent. not very helpful with this discussion, though it helps me to figure out my own head wr2 politics and such.

that's the thing, you fail at being a cynic which is why it's so frustrating to watch you interact w/ politics. it's just a never-ending disillusionment. it's not in your personality tbh. morbs is a cynic and he's pretty good at it and at least his political views are consistent ("hate everybody").

if you want to be a cynic forget about ~what is good and right in the world~ when you click on the politics thread and read up on game theory and interest groups

it's not ~cynical~ to blame everything on the two party system, its lazy and simplistic. or maybe it's entry-lev cynicism, idk

it's true - cynicism isn't really native to me, I feel let down again & again + that's sort of just how I'm wired to be, that's a fair cop. I know you really really wanna tether your thread dig-up to your own consistenly pathological "these people from this place are bad, ignorant people" schtick & I also know that you're convinced of yr righteousness on that front so why bother any more than I should bother trying to convince you of its woeful ignorance

yet the very failed cynicism you cite necessitates that we'll be revisiting this argument the next time you locate a city, county, state, country or region - it won't be hard! there's only the one Paris and the one NY, minus those wicked people in Staten Island! - to make sweeping generalities about

watching you descend into condescending ad-homs in these argts would be more rewarding if I were a true cynic, too, it's true - instead I just feel bad

omg scroll up and tally your condescending ad homs

chillwave moderne

buzza I want you to know that this didn't pass unappreciated btw

aero i <3 u but i think you are being unreasonably unreasonable here

ps "you're kinda bad at being cynical and that's why you'll never understand politics" is prob the single ad hommiest thing I have said to you on years of debates. there's nothing wrong w/ being a romantic, it benefits you in other aspects of life and makes you an interesting person to read on like 95% of subjects. it's just a fundamentally poor way to understand how politics - any politics, anywhere - works.

in years*

aero i <3 u but i think you are being unreasonably unreasonable here

impossible

ps "you're kinda bad at being cynical and that's why you'll never understand politics" is prob the single ad hommiest thing I have said to you on years of debates. there's nothing wrong w/ being a romantic, it benefits you in other aspects of life and makes you an interesting person to read on like 95% of subjects. it's just a fundamentally poor way to understand how politics - any politics, anywhere - works.

btw I'm sure this is all true? it's just like not germane to what I'm on about, which is your insistence on this weird bad-people deal which I oughta just type "sigh" to and be done with but the very naivete you cite coupled with our general other-spheres compatibility sort of obligates me by my nature to say "oh come on you can't actually think that way" every damn time

though I'd say 95% of subjects is a pretty generous estimate, ty

impossible

i know!

I think republicans are 'bad people' because I don't think you can really be a morally sound person because the only thing the gop sells in 2012 is morally bankrupt policy. you can be stupid or you can be bad. I don't think every single person in oklahoma is a weird-bad person, believe it or not. but a lot of them are racist, a lot of them are homophobic, a lot of them genuinely would be fine w/ a woman dying instead of getting an abortion. you can pretend those people don't exist, and america is nothing but good-hearted souls, that there is nothing crass, heartless, vain, warmongering in our culture itself. but pretending that makes american politics a lot more confusing. why would such a great place consistently elect horrible people? etc.

outside of this I think you confuse my disgust w/ poor urban planning w/ a disgust for people who live places.

er rewrite the first sentence:

I think republicans are 'bad people' because the only thing the gop sells in 2012 is morally bankrupt policy.

jeez I fall asleep listening to a baseball podcast and look what happens.

SI did vote somethin like 75% for Giuliani, but admittedly I skew closer to George Carlin's "we suck."

They have houses with waterfalls where the water flows over the front of the house.

― Mordy, Thursday, February 9, 2012 4:42 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://hellogiggles.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/twin_peaks_twin_peaks_fire_walk_with_me_1991_reference.jpeg

They have houses with waterfalls where the water flows over the front of the house.

― Mordy, Thursday, February 9, 2012 4:42 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://hellogiggles.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/twin_peaks_twin_peaks_fire_walk_with_me_1991_reference.jpeg

Can we get back to the bit where Obamacare / Iraq / Gitmo are "super left-wing" policies? Because as someone outside the US, that shit is fascinating.

Like is "nationalise" an ab-word that obliterates any word put next to it, which cannot be put into a sentence?

(writing this from NHS dentist's waiting room, feeling kind of smug)

oh shit dental death squad fghsxzzz

Can we get back to the bit where Obamacare / Iraq / Gitmo are "super left-wing" policies? Because as someone outside the US, that shit is fascinating.

― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, February 9, 2012 9:13 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

imo they aren't. Bush was close to closing gitmo in 2008 and backed off, in part, because it was so complicated to do so. Iraq drawdown is bipartisan in the extreme.

and every democrat promises broad healthcare reform. Clinton promised it and no one thought he was wildly left wing.

Obama didn't run as a liberal Democrat. Why would he?

even if he was a liberal democrat, it would be in his best interest to pretend he was a centrist.

I recall at least one 2008 appearance where he explicitly called himself "progressive."

Sorry, most libs who voted for him thought he was liberal, eyes and ears notwithstanding.

Don't make fun of the president's ears.

Republicans to issue report on Gitmo, including their outrage on this:

While the Obama administration overhauled the transfer policies, the report said the changes were inadequate to sufficiently mitigate risks. The December 2010 report said that of 66 detainees transferred under President Obama, five — including two ordered released by courts — were “suspected” of having re-engaged or “confirmed” as having done so, for a combined rate of about 7.5 percent.

Under Bush: A December 2010 intelligence report said that of the 600 detainees transferred out — mostly during the Bush administration — 13.5 percent were “confirmed” as having re-engaged in hostile activity and 11.5 percent were “suspected” of doing so; nearly half of those are now dead or back in custody. Last year, Mr. Clapper said the combined figure was 27 percent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/us/gop-report-criticizes-transfers-from-guantanamo.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha22

btw calling Obama's 2008 positions "far left" -- plz cut that shit, Cokie Roberts and "Fox & Friends" do not get to rewrite the dictionary.

"nationalise"

Americans do recognize this spelling