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

sicker waves too

Atlantic has a better class of lobsters

Are we giving the Atlantic credit for the Mediterranean?

oh why not

If you were over the age of, say, fifteen the Clinton criticism was drip drip drip nonstop for eight years. If there was a break it happened in late '99 and 2000 -- when the right wing said fuck it and concentrated on electing Bush -- so maybe that's what contenderizer means.

http://blogs.todayonline.com/forartssake/2012/04/19/we-rat-on-tsai-ming-liang-and-his-muses/#more-5057

nice interview, about a new film, living next door to Lee Kang-sheng & his theatre work, in case anyone's been wondering what he's been upto. he had another film, The Diary of a Young Boy in development for a while that I think's disappeared.

I saw What Time Is It There? again recently. so wonderful.

If there was a break it happened in late '99 and 2000 -- when the right wing said fuck it and concentrated on electing Bush -- so maybe that's what contenderizer means.

i was talking more about tone than amount or consistency of criticism, but i think we understand each other pretty well at this point, and just happen to disagree

They bayed at some of his last-minute pardons, though, and rightfully so.

yep

Fred Clark's written about the hyperbolic rightwing Satanazi paranoia on the rise. If you're personally lacking something in your life and need a Great Evil to thrash against and thus prove your persecuted righteousness to your self, you amp up the forces you imagine are aligned against you.

That way, you don't actually have to _do_ anything; you don't have to go out into the world and try to help people or expend any effort at all. Because your enemies are the Forces of Darkness, you're a hero just by taking a moral stand and posting on the internet which is your action against them. You can prove to yourself that you're a good person in the most facile, slack-assed way possible.

Much like so much American rightwing bullshit in the last twenty years, this shit comes from internal psychodrama, not from political belief. Side effect is that mere rational argument and basic facts ain't going to change these people's minds. You can't reason a fellow out of a position Reason never led him into.

also, from here:
Rick Santorum and the Anti Kitten-Burning Coalition

I am, unambiguously and without qualification, opposed to burning kittens. I am also confident that you are opposed to this too. And that latter point is why I cannot join the Anti Kitten-Burning Coalition.

The AKBC, again, is on the correct side of this issue. Its members, quite rightly, are vehemently opposed to something to which they ought to be vehemently opposed. But that isn’t what motivates them. What drives them, their central organizing principle, is the notion that they represent a beleaguered and controversial minority view. They imagine that their stance against burning kittens — sweet, adorable, innocent kittens — is something that separates and distinguishes them from most other people. They imagine that their opposition to burning kittens is a brave and exceptional stance that elevates them above most other people.

In other words, the central concern of the Anti Kitten-Burning Coalition is not a defense of kittens, but an accusation against most other people. They are not driven by their opposition to kitten-burning, but by their opposition to a make-believe faction of other people whom they imagine favor kitten-burning. That this vast bloc of pro kitten-burning people cannot be found and does not exist does nothing to dampen their enthusiastic campaign against these supposed monstrously cruel others. It is a delusion, but the AKBC enjoys this delusion.

This delusion gives their lives meaning and purpose. It makes their lives more exciting. And it enables them to bask in the idea that they are good and righteous people — or at least the possibility that they are better than some imagined faction of monstrously cruel other people.

This delusion has become a central defining trait of American politics. Imaginary monsters — other people who are imagined to favor kitten-burning or other monstrous cruelties — are a greater focus of American politics than jobs, taxes, highways and bridges, or environmental protection. Millions of votes are mobilized and cast based on the imaginary fear of an imaginary faction of kitten-burning monsters.

That link is great b/c he goes into four reasons why people(e.g. Santorum & his voters) deliberately choose to believe such horrible things about the real world:

1. It’s exciting to believe in imaginary monsters.

2. A fiendish foil for self-righteousness.

3. If the monsters don’t exist, the theory isn’t true.

4. Imaginary monsters give our fears a face.

And he's written a lot about this kinda thing

It's all great stuff and I heavily recommend checking it out, if only to lower the compulsion I sometimes feel to bulk-quote it all here as a response to folks wondering why american idiots loudly choose their idiotic stances.

It just now occurred to me who Mitt reminds me of on the surface.

Son of a governor became a governor himself. has run for president twice.

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/4971/screenshot20120420at239.pnghttp://rkovach.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/govjerrybrown.jpg?w=500

It's the silver sideburns mostly.

Governor Mittbeam

Romney-Lady Gaga romance imminent.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/always-remember-were-not-normal/2012/04/20/gIQAXxEkVT_blog.html

I found out about “Cookiegate” this morning. I was about eight hours late on the dog stuff and, when I asked someone who tweeted about it to explain what they were talking about, they literally didn’t believe that I could possibly be ignorant of such a consequential topic. After I learned the story, I felt a little worse about myself for being in any way involved in the tornado of idiocy that is American politics.

http://i41.tinypic.com/2vmvd42.jpg

never realized plato's cave had a roadway...learn something every day

plato's increasingly fucke-up cave

Was faffing about on Kickstarter tonight and found this:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1339254269/ron-paul-road-to-revolution

what the living fuck: some dude is making an NES-style platformer Ron Paul game, and got $8K+ from Kickstarter to make it.

http://ronpaulswag.com/media/ron_poster.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ydrfs8bpBY

It looks like it might be an interesting game, but if there is a revolution, then anyone who says "*WINK*" then follows that up with an actual wink will be first against the wall.

Accurate assessment, I think:

http://politics.salon.com/2012/04/20/mitt%E2%80%99s_one_undeniable_advantage/singleton/

yeah, sadly

Isn't there thousands of people that Obama can wheel out to say "I'd have a job now, if it wasn't for Mitt Romney"? Or have they all been used up by the GOP candidates' brief foray into socialism?

I'm sure there are plenty of such people, but somebody in a (paid) TV ad saying "I'd have a job now, if it wasn't for Mitt Romney" won't likely do much to offset the dissatisfaction of people feeling the pinch who see Obama as having failed them.

Sure, but you're not voting for a time machine, you're voting for one guy vs another.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO84_lpMfsE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fW8PoC3-5s

expect to see a lot, lot, lot more of this

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/04/dog_soldiers_ri.php

what the

Jesus, why are Republicans _so bad_ at jokes?

Obama's mother "was not only a Communist fellow-traveler," he wrote, "but the sort of 1960s woman who (as we used to say) 'put her body on the line,' first by marrying two Third World men, and then by spending her career in the Third World."

"as we used to say"

so apparently if you say J1m Tr34ch3r's name three times he'll appear (or so i've learnt from the Village Voice comments thread). anyone feel like summoning him?

ah, spengler.

got to love the reasoning that goes from obama praising the social arrangements of poor indonesia as being at least more stable than those of poor chicago, to spengler using it as proof of preferring traditional pre-capitalism to "creative destruction." like, are you really going to argue that a '70s american ghetto is the best billboard for capital?

yes, Jim Treacher should come here. he seems a treat

Jim Treacher

jim treacher wears a diaper

also the comments on that voice article - in particular at jim treacher the diaper wearer's expense - are a traet

lol

The story of eating dog food in an impoverished third world country vs. tying your pet to the roof of your car. Yes, they both have dogs in them, but they really have nothing to do with each other. As much as I love dogs, the issue of their attitudes towards dogs aren't really important to me and secondary to these narratives. To me, Obama's is about someone who came from poverty and Romney's is about a robot dangerously out of touch with human behavior.

um, it's not dog food, guy

dog as food, more like

it's ok to eat pussy but not dog?

I went to the National Association of Broadcasters convention last week in Vegas -- had never been before -- mainly a tech and gear festival for all things broadcasted, even though the definiton of 'broadcasting' keeps shifting. But this article published in the wednesday daily really leapt out at me. Basically a cheerleading conversation about how great Twitter & Facebook has been for political news because there is now no shortage of content or stories; the 24 hour news cycle is no longer starving, there's always something to write about, so hooray. Then, in the last few paragraphs, a few tiny mentions about how accuracy is still important, and the challenge of making sure that unvetted twitter commentary can be verified before broadcast. The tiny stuff, you know.

The Las Vegas airport with a view of the main strip's skyline = perfect place to have my mind blown by this article

http://www.nabshowdaily.com/2012/Article/128458

Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, would you listen to yourself.

http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/cole123rf/cole123rf1007/cole123rf100700035/7404640-short-haired-kitten-playing-with-ball-of-yellow-yarn-with-reflection-on-white-background.jpg

l/r: Jim Treacher, ILX

i see no diaper. jim wears a diaper.

hey guys sorry I haven't been around but I hear that guy who wears diapers might stop by so I thought I'd say hey. You guys know about this guy? Big diaper dude, Jim something. Trecher maybe - Treacher? think so. Really into the whole diaper scene, if you see him give him my best

aero i think you mean jim treacher. i know he wears a diaper anyway.

And at Pajamas Media, David P. Goldman went for historical perspective: Obama's mother "was not only a Communist fellow-traveler," he wrote, "but the sort of 1960s woman who (as we used to say) 'put her body on the line,' first by marrying two Third World men, and then by spending her career in the Third World."