The General American Politics Thread

[Balding Spider]

Clint Eastwood is supporting Romney? I think I threw up a little in my mouth a bit.

I mean I know he's been an on and off conservative but Romney is not the solution.

Strange seeing as Eastwood is Pro-Choice, supports Same-Sex Marriage and the Equal Rights amendment, I find this a bit odd.

Well he is off our Christmas list, even our Conservatives don't like him! I got the impression he isn't a fan of the UK probably his mindset is still stuck in the late 18th century. I also think he doesn't like Europe full stop.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

More like the new Soviet Union. As in, not actually hostile, but so mired in corruption, misinformation, misplaced nationalism and corporate kickbacks that's it's amazing the country manages to continue to function year after year. At least, that's the public stereotype.

[Tornado]

I'm actually still sort of under the impression the Eastwood's thing might have been a stealth parody that no one at the RNC realized until it was too late.

[Conando]

My mother actually believes the same thing, and the more I actually think about the more I find it possible. Clint is no fool, and what he did was just so foolish and confusing that it makes more sense to believe he was actually pulling the GOP's leg.

Edited September 3, 2012 by Crow T. Robot

[Solkia]

Okay, so does anyone know a source to this quote since people on tumblr are too fucking stupid to put one in their OP?

I tried google, and all I'm seeing are articles about Mitt distancing himself from Todd Akin's remark.

Edited September 3, 2012 by Solkia-kun

[Autosaver]

Probably made up. As you said, Mitt Romney doesn't agree with what Todd Akin said.

[Sami]

He's a human being who built that.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-30-2012/rnc-2012---the-road-to-jeb-bush-2016---mitt-romney--a-human-who-built-that

[Rinzler]

Normally I try to stay out of political topics (hotbed etc.), but this recent article genuinely intrigued me:

G.O.P. Seizes on a Question: Are You Better Off Than You Were 4 Years Ago?

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee, slammed President Obama’s handling of the economy on Monday, seizing on hesitant responses by Mr. Obama’s top strategists when asked whether the country was better off than it was four years ago.

“The president can say a lot of things, but he can’t tell you you are better off,” Mr. Ryan said while campaigning in Greenville, N.C., ahead of the opening of the Democratic convention here on Tuesday.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. hit back quickly, telling a union audience in Detroit that the administration unequivocally believes that the country’s economy has improved since Mr. Obama took over from President Bush.

“Folks, let me make something clear,” Mr. Biden said. “I’ll say it to the press. America is better off today than they left us.”

The dueling comments from the two vice presidential rivals came as Democrats gathered in North Carolina to begin their three-day convention on Tuesday. And it came after a weekend in which several top supporters of Mr. Obama hesitated to say that the country is better off than it was.

Republicans are eager to put the Democrats on the defensive on the question at the start of the Democratic convention. Polls suggest that many people remain pessimistic about the state of the economy and their own financial future — a fact that Republicans hope will help to undermine Mr. Obama’s convention message this week.

A spokesman for Mitt Romney’s campaign criticized Democrats for seeming out of touch with the plight of everyday Americans.

“The middle class has been crushed under President Obama, but he doesn’t seem to get it,” said Amanda Hennenberg, a spokeswoman for Mr. Romney. “Americans deserve a president who understands we’re not better off and has a plan to fix it.”

The attacks come a day after Martin O’Malley, the Democratic governor of Maryland, responded to a question by saying that America was not better off than it was when Mr. Obama was elected.

“No,” he said, “but that’s not the question of this election. The question, without a doubt, we are not as well off as we were before George Bush brought us the Bush job losses, the Bush recession, the Bush deficits.”

Mr. O’Malley’s comments on CBS’s “Face the Nation” were followed by awkward responses from David Axelrod and David Plouffe, two of the top strategists for Mr. Obama’s campaign. Both men sought to dodge a direct answer to the question of whether the country was better off.

On Monday, top Democrats quickly shook off their hesitation and equivocation.

At a rally in Detroit, Vice President Joseph R. Biden said, “You want to know whether we’re better off? I’ve got a little bumper sticker for you. Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”

On CNN, Mr. O’Malley sought to clarify his comments “We are clearly better off as a country because we’re now creating jobs rather than losing them,” he said.

Brad Woodhouse, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee, said that the country was “absolutely” better off.

“The truth is that the American people know, we were literally a plane, the trajectory was towards the ground,” Mr. Woodhouse said on CNN. “He got the stick and pulled us up out of that decline.”

The question — which Ronald Reagan also memorably posed in a 1980 debate with President Jimmy Carter — is central to the argument that Mr. Obama will make over the next three days and into the fall.

But answering it requires Mr. Obama’s team to walk a careful line: Appear too optimistic about the country’s being better off, and Democrats risk being accused of not understanding the depth of the personal crisis that many people still feel. But admit that the country is not better off — as Mr. O’Malley did — and the Republicans will pounce.

Aides to Mr. Obama clearly believe that they can walk that line, in part by answering a slightly different question — is the country better off than it would have been if Republicans had been in charge for the past three and a half years.

On the “Today” show on NBC, Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for Mr. Obama, pointed to the state of the economy when the president took over in January 2009 and to the progress that she said had been made since then.

“Let me just walk you through what life was like four years ago right now,” Ms. Cutter said. “In the six months before the president was elected, we lost 3.5 million jobs, wages had been going down for a decade, auto industry on the brink of failure. Our financial system, this is just about the time you’re seeing banks go under. All over America middle-class families were feeling it.”

Ms. Cutter answered the question with no hesitation, also saying that the country was “absolutely” better off now than it was.

But strategists like Ms. Cutter know that they cannot risk having the rest of the presidential campaign center on that question. Instead, they hope that Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the rest of the major convention speakers can help shift the focus ahead of the final sprint to Election Day.

At a news conference on Monday, Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, said the convention would seek to remind people what kind of economy the president inherited from Mr. Bush and what he did to respond to the financial challenges for the middle class.

“We’re going to present our vision, and we’re also going to affirm our values,” Mr. Villaraigosa said. “We will recount the last four years and tell the story of a president who led us through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”

I think this comment is pretty much my view on it:

Does the GOP really want voters to be thinking about four years ago?

Late 2008 is when years of conservative policies - i.e., letting Wall Street run wild, providing more tax giveaways to the wealthy, launching unnecessary wars, and shipping middle class jobs overseas - finally caught up to us. The resulting Bush Recession led to the loss of 450,000 to 800,000 jobs per month in each of September 2008 through January 2009. The housing bubble burst, causing millions of Americans to lose their houses or struggle to pay their mortgages. And Wall Street melted down, causing pensioners, municipalities, non-profits, and others to lose substantial amounts of money through no fault of their own.

Over the past four years, the Obama Administration hasn't solved all of our problems. But President Obama stabilized our economy, stopped the Bush Recession from becoming the Bush Depression, has had positive private sector job growth for each of the past 30 months, and saved approximately 1 million jobs with the auto industry rescue. In addition, the Obama Administration has taken steps to try to prevent future economic meltdowns through Dodd-Frank, credit card industry reform, and the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

So, yes, Mr. Ryan, we are better off than we were four years ago. And we will be even better off if we re-elect Obama with a Democratic Congress.

What do you guys think? Are we better off than in 2008?

Edited September 4, 2012 by Megatronus

[Shan Zhu]

Late 2008 is when years of conservative policies - i.e., letting Wall Street run wild, providing more tax giveaways to the wealthy, launching unnecessary wars, and shipping middle class jobs overseas

Wouldn't really call war conservative, nor would I call giving the HUD effectively complete control of the majority holders of mortgage capital control (GSEs) "letting Wall Street run wild."

Still, since Romney's as much of a hawk and a statist as Obama in these two regards, why am I talking about conservatism anyway?

The resulting Bush Recession led to the loss of 450,000 to 800,000 jobs per month in each of September 2008 through January 2009.

Econometrics is... a malleable "science" :3c It's the field that can tell us gun-laws either save or lose between 12 and 15 lives a year in a given area depending on who's crunching the numbers in what manner. Likewise, in politics, the "jobs" involved are basically imaginary functions of political spin.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Oh goodie. Another HUD-esque bureaucracy.

I dunno. I dislike little quotes like this. They're like the sound-bytes lawyers give in their closing arguments--they make reference to facts, sure, but they're really just a lot of rhetoric designed to manipulate an audience with half-truths as grounded in the real arrangement of things as any other kind of propaganda. It's the essence of election season in one three-paragraph essay.

Edited September 4, 2012 by Shan Zhu

[Tornado]

I think that comment was written by Obama's Secretary of the Treasury rather than anyone who has any idea what they are talking about. Other than happening while Bush was President, the housing bubble bursting under his watch had very little to do with him (and the automotive industry collapsing at the same time had nothing whatsoever to do with him); and the mentality that started the slide (Everyone's gotta own a home, no matter if they can afford it or not!) dates to the late 90's and was somewhat related to the Dot Com Bubble. Glass-Steagall was also repealed in 1999 by Clinton, and that by itself was probably the main catalyst for Wall Street being able to get in a position where what happened in 2008 happened.

Furthermore:

Late 2008 is when years of conservative policies - i.e., letting Wall Street run wild, providing more tax giveaways to the wealthy, launching unnecessary wars, and shipping middle class jobs overseas - finally caught up to us.

Not only would I love to know how in hell either of those things have to do with what happened in 2008 (your home government going to war is a corporation's wet dream, and isn't a "conservative" policy in the first place), but the implication of "shipping jobs overseas" being a federal policy in government actually made me laugh for real.

Edited September 4, 2012 by Tornado

[Patticus]

Should we expect any strange happenings at the DNC this week ala Clint Eastwood's chair talk?

And on the subject of the DNC, what will the Dems need to say in their big speeches to really pull ahead of the GOP? Can they pull ahead?

[The Kid]

I'm just curious, while on the subject of that "Were you better off?" article, does the Romney campaign really think Mitt is more in touch with "Everyday Americans" than the democrats are? I would think Romney was the last person who would understand the struggles of the middle or lower class. The fact they're even taking that stance is laughable.

[Patticus]

Chuck Norris swan dives off the deep end, threatening a millennium of darkness should Obama emerge victorious on November 7th:

Super-mega-hyperbolic lunacy.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Anyone else sick of how "Socialism" is the political S-word in the US?

[Tornado]

Chuck Norris was an insane right-winger years before it was cool. Or does no one else remember when he responded to Chuck Norris facts by saying "Yeah, these are pretty funny. But you know what is really cool? Mike Huckabee."

Edited September 4, 2012 by Tornado

[Jeffhog]

...wow, okay then.

Out of curiosity though... is this how some of you guys feel about this year's elections?

[Shan Zhu]

bird picture

Honestly, it just reminds me of how much the anti-business mass has in common with folks who think the world is run by the Illuminati--as if there's a Billionaire Organization out there that colludes in its hivemind to run everything from the New Yorker to the Libertarian Party.

I mean, stuff can be fairly corrupt, democratically moronic, and money-based, but if you want a really corrupt system, go hang out in China for a while. Western institutions are pretty cool in the grand scheme of things.

Edited September 4, 2012 by Shan Zhu

[Stacy]

Anyone else sick of how "Socialism" is the political S-word in the US?

You'r not alone its been like that for years even before the Cold War or McCarthyism. Socialism doesn't equal Communism at least not instantly.

EDIT: That Bird picture is funny because its the kind of thing where the people who created that say they are against mass-paranoia yet they try to evoke mass-paranoia. Also as soon as I see the word reptilian I had to roll my eyes, though it maybe metaphorical sometimes it isn't and if it isn't I discredit it instantly.

My problem with Conspiracy Theorist is they all negative all the time, if it is so true why aren't doing anything about it their answer is I am too busy telling everybody about it, also they say NWO is neigh but they have been saying that have more than 20 years.

Edited September 4, 2012 by BW199148

[turbojet]

Honestly, it just reminds me of how much the anti-business mass has in common with folks who think the world is run by the Illuminati--as if there's a Billionaire Organization out there that colludes in its hivemind to run everything from the New Yorker to the Libertarian Party.

I mean, stuff can be fairly corrupt, democratically moronic, and money-based, but if you want a really corrupt system, go hang out in China for a while. Western institutions are pretty cool in the grand scheme of things.

Saying China is worse does not justify the corrupt of western multinational corporations.

[PSI Wind]

He's a human being who built that.

http://www.thedailys...-who-built-that

All I could hear was Xenahort in that whole Mockumentary

Or is this a different video? I'm at school, but I've seen the episode

[Shan Zhu]

Saying China is worse does not justify the corrupt of western multinational corporations.

Edited September 4, 2012 by Shan Zhu

[Stacy]

I agree, but this misses the point. I'm not saying the current arrangement is just or that no change is called for; indeed, justice is an unattainable (though intensely desirable) ideal such that there will always be a better world to (thoughtfully and carefully) strive for.

What I am saying, however, is that the institutions we so regularly decry are indeed imperfect, but they're not nearly so far from the ideal as we might be pleased to suppose, and that we would count ourselves lucky if we were not made naive by being accustomed to their relative benevolence.

If we were thus realistically optimistic, we may well be more inclined to preserve our good fortune rather than tinker haphazardly with this peculiar arrangement in the midst of so many thousands of years of brutality and insecurity.

Just because we have it "better" doesn't mean when should change the things that aren't. Years latter and people are still fighting over places like Jerusalem and people still want to be Nazi's.

As I am concern brutality and insecurity still exist even in the West.

The way UK the government is going I am inclined to be realistically optimistic.

Edited September 4, 2012 by BW199148

[The Kid]

I agree, but this misses the point. I'm not saying the current arrangement is just or that no change is called for; indeed, justice is an unattainable (though intensely desirable) ideal such that there will always be a better world to (thoughtfully and carefully) strive for.

What I am saying, however, is that the institutions we so regularly decry are indeed imperfect, but they're not nearly so far from the ideal as we might be pleased to suppose, and that we would count ourselves lucky if we were not made naive by being accustomed to their relative benevolence.

If we were thus realistically optimistic, we may well be more inclined to preserve our good fortune rather than tinker haphazardly with this peculiar arrangement in the midst of so many thousands of years of brutality and insecurity.

But you are doing what Turbojet was saying, which is claiming the current situation is rather decent in comparison, that we should rejoice with how good we actually have it. Reducing the importance of these issues by saying other places are worse doesn't help anything. There is always a worse system to compare yours to. It may not be justification, but you sure are trying to reduce the importance of the current issues.

[Tornado]

There is a difference between noting that the situation isn't nearly as hopeless as being purported in that comic and noting that it could be worse so we might as well be glad with how it is now.

Edited September 4, 2012 by Tornado

[The Kid]

The way his first post is worded it definitely sounds like the latter.

Edited September 4, 2012 by Mr. H/The Kid