^that’s a newly released Herman Cain video, forgot to mention
i’m watching it on mute listening to gabba
I had no idea until yesterday that Bam was calling “game over” in Iraq this week, probably bcz no one thinks anything is over, including him.
lol Morbs
if there’s one soldier left it’s still a “war” amirite
are you also angry about WWII and the Korean War still going on
speaking of war, here’s Turley’s column about Obama’s chilling civil liberties record. Glad it appeared in Obamaland’s newspaper of record too.
And, no surprise, Obama will sign the Levin-McCain indefinite detention bill.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantanamo-detention-obama?CMP=twt_gu
sad that that column is totally hystrionic, obscures the legitimate points.
xp
The key paragraphs:
The Senate is expected to give final approval to the bill before the end of the week. It will then go to the president, who previously said he would block the legislation not on moral grounds but because it would “cause confusion” in the intelligence community and encroached on his own powers.
But on Wednesday the White House said Obama had lifted the threat of a veto after changes to the law giving the president greater discretion to prevent individuals from being handed to the military.
The veto threat wasn’t to torpedo the bill — it was to preserve executive control over incarceration.
And, no surprise, Obama will sign the Levin-McCain indefinite detention bill.
ugh this is really fucked up
the Korean War is, technically, still going on.
No Mo, the Iraq fuckup will just proceed with our diminishing presence a la Vietnam 1973–75.
Glad it appeared in Obamaland’s newspaper of record too.
since when is the LA times Obamaland’s paper
No Mo, the Iraq fuckup will just proceed with our diminishing presence a la Vietnam 1973–75.
dude this is bad how...? that’s like best-case scenario! Vietnam is a now a functional state fyi. kinda doubt that’s in the cards for Iraq.
Man I forgot he won the Nobel
that was so ridiculous
I was not making the analogy all the way, Shakes
I read about the Nobel in Obamaland’s paper of record.
eternal and permanent lols for anybody who suggests voting Democrat in the next election after this fuckin Levin-McCain bill, like every last “oh but the alternative & real human costs of Republican rule” argument is a total joke now. indefinite detention without charge enshrined into law. eat shit for breakfast if you even try to persuade one person to reelect the guy who signed this into law. vote for him yourself if you must but be ashamed of that vote imo.
want my gf to get health insurance, sorry bro.
Sure, but find a Republican (other than Lol Paul) who would reverse it.
want my gf to get health insurance, sorry bro.
Do you live in a red district?
^key question^
If you live in a blue district, consider your last vote for Obama the encouragement – the gratitude – for endorsing affordable health care.
the omnibus spending bill that averts government shutdown also puts to rest an administration rule on energy efficiency lightbulbs
GRRRRRRR
i live in Tenn, so I won’t be voting for this asshole.
but it’s pretty clear every single viable GOP candidate would do/ be worse. it’s really not even debatable. so if i lived in a swing state, i would probably vote for the asshole.
i feel like if you are concerned with effecting change on this issue w/ the least amount of on the ground work your best bet is to vote for obama and donate a lot of money to the ACLU
if you are more concerned w/ being able to remain rigid consistency btw yr beliefs and actions, i encourage you to not vote for obama and then “go off the grid” in some kind of cottage
If you want a single issue to turn you against Obama, I don’t know why you would pick the one that affects a small handful of individuals who in all likelihood are “combatants,” rather than one that affects millions like the various political choices being made about legislative priorities and the regulatory pipeline. Precedent and perhaps principle are certainly problems with things like this, but the biggest one under Bush was simply the all-around obtuse stupidity in application. While that certainly may not have been eliminated in less visible corners of the government, things have undeniably changed.
Yes, Obama is governing as far too much of a “moderate” (and in many respects at least temperamentally a “conservative,” which he sort of warned us about with “no drama”) from a policy standpoint. That may be suited to the country’s desires, as well as the administration’s desire to do more in a second term, but not exactly what the other side sought and sometimes did with far less of a mandate. But I see a health care bill and renewable energy standard and some financial reform efforts, and no welfare reform or don’t ask don’t tell or major troop presence in Iraq, so by some measures things are better than they’ve been in quite a long time.
The Return of Nü-Gabbnebism
as well as the administration’s desire to do more in a second term
this candle is still burnin i see
i think “just wait for the progressive second term!” is about as credible as “just wait for him to whip out martial law & strip us of our guns in the second term”
“rigid consistency”? having humane principles?
srsly, off to prison w/ Bam now. Impeach.
A nominal “police state” is apparently considered the price you pay to avoid a fifth Roberts on the court, an end to social security, and a “carbon bomb” of a trans-American pipeline. I prefer to avoid those things.
deck chairs
peanut gallery
you know the real C.K. Dexter was a lot more fun after Katherine Hepburn divorced him.
i was going to say something about how the universe/history/brahman/whatev never gives you what you really want, ever, but then this argument happened and i’m not so sure
and a “carbon bomb” of a trans-American pipeline
http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-global-warming-may-be-irreversible-by-2006,26808/
(from last week)
you (and the onion) are correct that it’s almost certainly too late to avoid a century full of climate change-related calamities, morbs, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t degrees of misery. exploiting every last drop of fossil fuels like an addict will put us into deeper circles of hell, so it’s still very much worth fighting things like the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
degrees of misery
US politics in a nutshell
i should be an inspirational speaker for 7th graders:
“hey kids, it’s true that you’re in for decades of suffering! but only YOU can make the decisions that might slightly reduce the amount of suffering!”
now let’s get out there and barely mitigate!!
If you want a single issue to turn you against Obama, I don’t know why you would pick the one that affects a small handful of individuals who in all likelihood are “combatants,”
ha. rope and chains ’12
yo, we should just start a who will you vote for poll and let ppl run wild talking about whether they will/should/can vote for obama or not
When they came for the declared-to-be-combatants-by-the-president, I said nothing.
Sure, but honestly? That’s the (third-to) last war. It’s pretty far from the scariest threat around right now, if you’re looking at the big picture.
“global-warming-may-be-irreversible-by-2006”
As Z S (who sounds like he’s doing good work in the area) said, there are degrees involved, and a good bit of scientific uncertainty, synergistic with our present emissions, about what to expect over a certain baseline of unavoidable climate change (global warming of at least 2 degrees celsius and perhaps closer to 3). Also as he said, it’s pretty important to do what’s possible to mitigate that change to avoid what may be potentially catastrophic results (perhaps in the 4 degree neighborhood, almost certainly above that), which will affect a great many more people (no comparison, really), and probably far more severely, than our detention policy. Ignoring the issue is not only potentially suicidal in the long run, but privileges present (and, to an extent, American) people over future (and primarily non-American) ones.
Not that it’s right, necessarily, to present it as an either-or, but I think that is in fact the case if this is your single issue on whether to vote for Obama, and one issue is unquestionably more important than the other imo.
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/reinventing-debtors-prisons-for-the-21st-century/
In many jurisdictions, bail posted to get out of being jailed for contempt of the discovery process is used to pay creditors. Besides being a great deal for creditors — as noted above, people often pay a huge economic penalty to get out of jail — it functions as a de facto debtors’ prison. As law professor Alan White described this process, “If, in effect, people are being incarcerated until they pay bail, and bail is being used to pay their debts, then they’re being incarcerated to pay their debts.” As the FTC noted, debtors being jailed for nonappearance “may be willing to pay the bail (and indirectly the judgement) using assets (such as Social Security payments) the law prohibits creditors from garnishing or otherwise obtaining to satisfy a judgement.”
this payroll tax cut thing is so amazingly stupid. seems bizarre that Boehner wants to make such a big deal out of killing the Keystone pipeline—which is what will happen if his stupid amendment passes.
Not that it’s right, necessarily, to present it as an either-or, but I think that is in fact the case if this is your single issue on whether to vote for Obama, and one issue is unquestionably more important than the other imo.
I think it’s def the more important issue—otoh Obama’s been totally shitty w/regard to addressing energy policy and climate change too so uh, what’s yr point
and don’t get me wrong I have no doubt the GOP crowd would be exponentially worse on this issue
i’ve given up hope of any u.s. president doing the right thing on energy/climate policy. at this point i think only civil disobedience in the u.s. on a large scale will accomplish anything.
i think you’d have to see an american city seriously threatened by rising waters. i think even venice could disappear (let alone dhaka) and it would mean little here.
otoh if that happened, we’d be in a place where global crop yields would be haywire. if the food system gets threatened i think americans would definitely respond.
though again, as with all things in US governance, we would have had waxman’s carbon bill be the law of the land if not for the current internal rules and practices of the US senate
you’d have to see an american city seriously threatened by rising waters
too bad New Orleans wasn’t really an American city. never calvinist enough for that.
otoh if that happened, we’d be in a place where global crop yields would be haywire.
this is pretty much guaranteed to happen. of course, the right wing denialists will insist on some other unscientific explanation (END TIMES! probably lol)
i think in that case it will turn into something like the memory of the civil rights movement — conservatives will completely forget they were on the wrong side at the time. liberals will turn out to be the “real anti-conservationists” or something, by 2040
Libertards, conservaturds, they’re all sheep!
don’t you mean to say “sheeple”?
btw as much as i was trying to troll upthread i promise i do not agree w/ c.k. dexter holland
wow. no payroll tax agreement unless we agree to destroy our future
Regarding that legislation, Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell emails me with the following statement: “The Leader will not support any bill without the Keystone XL language as part of the agreement.”
it boggles the mind
a REPUBLICAN is refusing to lower taxes for people, that’s crazy enough
unless we address our oil addiction by exploiting disgusting, last resort veins. fuck.
the weird thing that I don’t get is that, paradoxically, if that amendment is approved it will essentially kill the project altogether—all the agencies involved have said they can’t approve it in so short a timeframe, which means they will just reject it outright.
Boehner & McConnell must be aware of this, which would seem to indicate this is just a deeply cynical PR maneuver (ie “you can’t make it look like we’re against tax cuts unless we get to make it look like you are destroying jobs”)
I guess I do get it, really
that being the case I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama retracts his veto threat and lets the bill go through as soon as he can receive guarantees that the pipeline project will be killed anyway
Boehner & McConnell must be aware of this, which would seem to indicate this is just a deeply cynical PR maneuver
HAI DERE
my mom, who voted for palin (decidedly not for mccain) in 08, just overheard me say i wasn’t gonna vote for O in ’12. response: GOOD! IT’S ABOUT TIME YOU WOKE UP!
my condolences
the ongoing agony of being multifacted in a binary world
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3645&utm_campaign=CBPPTwitter
Dem Ron Wyden teams up with Paul Ryan for Medicare plan. Why????
Wyden really likes to cut bipartisan deals. It is part of his modus operandi as a senator. Wyden also has built his career on good constituent service for the aged, so I expect that his staff’s analysis of the proposal’s effects differed from that provided in the linked article.
If you want a single issue to turn you against Obama, I don’t know why you would pick the one that affects a small handful of individuals who in all likelihood are “combatants,”
sorry, i got off the Obama boat the second he started to seriously talk about “reforming” Social Security. everything since then has been noise, and i will only vote for Obama again in the increasingly unlikely scenario of Gingrich winning the GOP nomination (in which case it would really be a vote AGAINST Gingrich and yes if Romney or [God forbid} Ron Paul win i’m not voting for Obama again).
sorry, i got off the Obama boat the second he started to seriously talk about “reforming” Social Security.
lol don’t even remember this. SS has been basically untouched in his presidency, this seems like weird thing to get het up about.
it was during the debt ceiling fiasco this summer.
and it isn’t so weird a thing to get het up about if (like me) you see fighting for SS (and Medicare and Medicaid) to be quintessentially progressive issues.
well I think both programs are worth fighting for but a) neither party wants to fuck with either, and to-date neither has been able to and b) actual legislation/policy that Obama has implemented have been much worse
(in which case it would really be a vote AGAINST Gingrich
i guess the only reason why this seems unusual—voting as voting against, isn’t there a lincoln quote about that?—is that it did kinda seem like you could be voting for the right guy last time
Obama is def preferable to McCain come on now
McCain is senile AND bonkers
what would be different?
we would MAYBE be at war with russia tbf
would’ve bombed Iran by now
Libya would have been an even bigger clusterfuck
don’t ask/don’t tell still in place
social security/medicare/medicaid totally gutted
7–3 majority of conservative assholes on the supreme court
no stimulus, no ARRA funding = even higher unemployment
probably would’ve fucked up the handling of the BP oil spill in the gulf somehow
EPA abolished
Bush tax cuts made permanent
Policy driven by intermittent rage.
war in Iraq still going on, probably even heavier presence in Afghanistan
Bin Laden still alive/Al Qaeda still functional
People everywhere prefacing everything they say with, “My friend...”
Sarah Palin in national office
osama bin laden somehow a member of GOP administration
We would never have really gotten to know Herman Cain.
planes do a 180 after take off & before landing, fly upside down in sky, you spend the whole flight only held in your seat by the seatbelt, can’t go to bathroom, no peanuts &c
haha, questions not to ask liberals Part 567