The General American Politics Thread

[PSI Wind]

So, I worked at my precinct in Englewood, Florida on the Election Day ($150, holla!) and here's the weird part. Romney won our precinct but they voted No on Amendment 6, or the Abortion one. What.

[Patticus]

I'm pretty sure 100% of Floridian votes have been counted by now, so why hasn't it formally been called for Obama, who leads there 50% to Romney's 49%?

This is a great read.

David Simon - Barack Obama And The Death Of Normal

"Obama has been re-elected by women, by people of color, by homosexuals, by people of varying religions or no religion whatsoever. Behold the New Jerusalem. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a white man, of course. There’s nothing wrong with being anything. That’s the point."

Damn right.

[turbojet]

Republicans tried to impeach Clinton for the heinous crime of getting a piece of 'dat ass, so you be the judge.

Serious answer to come when I get home from school. Unless turbojet beats me to it.

Okay, this will probably be my last post in this thread.

You think you're out, but they just keep pulling you back.

1. Russia is a resurgent power, its economy has been retooled around the oil industry and its influence its growing, expanding back out into its former sphere of influence, and undoubtedly this is a worry for America - especially given how contrarian they are regarding sanctions and such. And I would also argue that it is more of a Mafia State than a Fascist one; the oligarchs are very much in control now. However, its birth rate is declining, and its population is expected to contract significantly this side of 2040 (by, what, 40 million? 30?). What this means is that the size of its military will necessarily have to decline with its population, meaning that Russia's ability to pose the same kind of threat it did in the Cold War era will become a thing of the past before too long. Its ability to project its power will diminish markedly over time, and while it might get a bit scary and Cold War-y for a short time in the coming years, I can't help but see Russia as more of a transient threat; it's very much a power on the wane thanks to its chronic demography problems. It would be wise to keep a close eye on it, perhaps bolstering states like Poland with resources and expertise to build a 'firewall' to keep it at bay, but we're not heading back to the 1960s by any means.

Oh, Russia will never gain their Cold War power back. That is dead and gone. However, as a member of the UN, they can be a huge pain in the ass so Obama should not be willing to appease them with measures such as START 3, in which it was unnecessary to disarm.

2. The administration wasn't duplicitous regarding Libya, and I don't understand why you'd think it was. Around the time of the attack, there were dozens, even hundreds of eyewitness reports about what exactly took place, and many of those were contradictory and highly confusing. The administration relayed to the public what it knew, what it was being told by the intelligence community, as it was learned (which is what a good administration does), and given the fluid and constantly changing nature of the story emanating from the mass confusion surrounding the attack, that story was always going to change every so often to reflect the ongoing investigations into the event. There being a general election campaign ongoing at the same time meant that everyone wanted all the answers immediately, and that wasn't possible.

This would be an explanation reasonable enough to give. The one they gave instead was completely full of holes.

3. The country is sharply divided, that is true, and congress is at risk of becoming more partisan and gridlocked than ever before, but, I think there are a lot of GOP and Democratic congressmen and women who recognize that everyone just wants them to pull their fingers out now that their schemes for unseating Obama have failed comprehensively, put their differences aside and work together. Speaker Boehner seemed to say something like that last night; his statement was conciliatory and hopefully he won't be the roadblock he was before. The hope is that enough see it this way for the cogs of congress to begin turning again, despite the Tea Party presence.

I'll answer why this is terribly unlikely without some coercive handling and a bit of manipulation on Obama's part in your question.

Then the President needs to go around him, if that's even an option. Have other presidents been faced with similar intransigence from the House? How did they deal with it?

Ronald Reagan. Gipper used his bully pulpit(ironic how I am saying this now because in the OP, I criticized Obama for not using it) to influence a Democratic Congress and he regularly got his way.How? Because he is the President of the United States. The most recognized figure in all of the world. They are just Congressmen and Senators. Reagan simply appealed to the electorate of any particular member of Congress by going to the target state and saying why so and so is being an asshole or is not for the people. Of course the people are going to recognize the President's word because, who the fuck is the other guy? Thus forcing the Congressmen or Senator to have a shit ton of Case work. It only can backfire if said Presidnet is unpopular so Obama might need to be conscious on whom he targets. Reagan also engaged in the art of intentionally oversaturated every fiscal part of any bill he proposed(It is the Presiden't job to set the budget) so when Congress handled it, they simply brought down the intentionally unreasonable budget to Reagan's administration intended margins of the bill because anything done by committee is inconsistent since there is always a feeling that they must pass it or bring it down but not completely.

Now why is this antagonistic? That is the nature of our system. Bi-partisanship is stupid and attempting it is naive. There is a reason why both sides are different and there is no way in hell Boerner,despite what he says, or McConnell will lay down for him on the issue of taxes. Luckily not every Republican shares their views so the President can press the issue and still get things passed in spite of those who want to obstruct him. He simply has to look at representatives who see their hold of their position slipping.

[Badnik Mechanic]

It gets better. Ladies and Gentlemen, White People Mourning Romney. My favourite is this one.

Also this rather interesting article. Twitter has done a lot for society, including expose racists. Many people took to twitter and expressed their dislike at the election results by doing what most civilised people aparently do... become racist.

I won't post what was said, however, one such article on one such posted the tweets of lots of people and some guy decided to use google to find them. Turned out they were not very good at hiding their identities, within an hour, the majorty of the people on the article were in fact students, most were members of football teams, runners, one was even a 'pagent queen.' Anyway, they had their full names up, the schools they went to and an email campaign had already started against the schools they went to in a bid to throw them off their respected sports teams for being racist in public.

[TheGerkuman]

Isn't that cyberbullying, technically? Part of the idea of the internet is for anonymity and free speech, even if it leads to racist speech.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

Isn't that cyberbullying, technically? Part of the idea of the internet is for anonymity and free speech, even if it leads to racist speech.

Is stupidity part of free speech, or just a byproduct?

[Patticus]

Oh my, please let this happen:

Actress and Kentucky native Ashley Judd is being touted as a top contender to challenge Sen. Mitch McConnell in the 2014 election, with supporters saying it could produce the ”premier race in the country.”

”If you had an Ashley Judd-McConnell race, I think it would be as high profile a race as Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown,” said U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky.

Judd knows something about races. She is married to IZOD IndyCar Series driver Dario Franchitti, a three-time Indianapolis 500 winner.

http://www.courier-j...?nclick_check=1

That'll be fun.

Is stupidity part of free speech, or just a byproduct?

It's a necessary, if unpleasant, consequence.

[Tornado]

Ronald Reagan. Gipper used his bully pulpit(ironic how I am saying this now because in the OP, I criticized Obama for not using it) to influence a Democratic Congress and he regularly got his way.How? Because he is the President of the United States. The most recognized figure in all of the world. They are just Congressmen and Senators. Reagan simply appealed to the electorate of any particular member of Congress by going to the target state and saying why so and so is being an asshole or is not for the people. Of course the people are going to recognize the President's word because, who the fuck is the other guy? Thus forcing the Congressmen or Senator to have a shit ton of Case work. It only can backfire if said Presidnet is unpopular so Obama might need to be conscious on whom he targets.

I'll add to this: Clinton, when he had his Republican Congress during his second term, did have to let a couple of the things he wanted go. But he basically did the same thing otherwise, except he did it more by... well, being Clinton. "I want to do this thing, and your representative opposes it. I disagree with him, here's why I wanted to do it, and I hope you make the right choice." He explained his position as a personable guy, and got the ear of the voter by making them empathize with him and make them feel like it was their choice rather than making them get pissed at the representative who was stonewalling. Neither method is any worse or better than the other, and it depends on how you execute and the political climate of the person in question to gauge effectiveness.

Of note, Obama did try to do both things at varying points in his first term. The problem is, he wasn't consistent about it. He rarely did it when he should have, he didn't always target why he was doing it when he did (so on occasion instead of appealing to voters over a specific issue it tended to come off more as complaining in general), and he switched from the Reagan method to the Clinton method to try to appeal to voters (perhaps to take the best of both methods) which caused people to question the sincerity of the appeal.

Edited November 8, 2012 by Tornado

[Badnik Mechanic]

Isn't that cyberbullying, technically? Part of the idea of the internet is for anonymity and free speech, even if it leads to racist speech.

No thats slander and racism. Anything written or said on twitter is a written publication and as a result it falls under various laws about what you can or cannot publish.

Furthermore, almost all the students who made those comments had as their twitter avatars photos of themselves wearing their school uniform. One guy actually had his football team as his avatar. It brings themselves and their school into disriute. Also I believe that don't most sport teams at a school level have their players sign or take a pledge that they will uphold themselves in a manner expected of the school and it's standards?

[Phos]

Romney Death Rally? Not quite sure I'm familiar with that. Is it related to Romney supporters claiming America is dead since Obama (OBUMMER/NOBAMA) was re-elected?

It was a twitter hash tag telling of Romney using the powers of the old ones to try and make up for his sagging pole numbers.

[Conando]

Not even the Dark Lord Cthulhu could have helped Romney.

[Linkabel]

No thats slander and racism. Anything written or said on twitter is a written publication and as a result it falls under various laws about what you can or cannot publish.

Furthermore, almost all the students who made those comments had as their twitter avatars photos of themselves wearing their school uniform. One guy actually had his football team as his avatar. It brings themselves and their school into disriute. Also I believe that don't most sport teams at a school level have their players sign or take a pledge that they will uphold themselves in a manner expected of the school and it's standards?

You're right in that some schools, organizations, or jobs make you sign contracts that said not to use your social media accounts to make statements that will reflect on the organization.......but I've never heard of Twitter being consider a publication before....

The only way I can think the things published on social media that can be consider slander is if I'm a reporter that did a story that slanders a subject and use social media to share the story (or have said something bad about the subject in the past or keep doing it).

But if I'm regular Joe without any influence in the community then usually nothing happens, especially in the case of public officials/figures since it's harder for them to win slander cases (at least here in the U.S.). They can however dried you out of money defending yourself.

On another note, it seems that a woman from Kenya named her newborn twin sons Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

A young Kenyan mother has named her newborn twin sons after the U.S. president-elect and his defeated Republican challenger.

Millicent Owuor, 20, gave birth to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on Wednesday at the Siaya District Hospital in southwest Kenya, according to the Standard.

Owuor told the Kenyan news outlet her sons' names will always remind her of the election in the United States.

The hospital is near the village of Kogelo, where where President Barack Obama's father was born and where his 90-year-old stepgrandmother, Sarah Obama, resides.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/kenyan-mother-names-twins-barack-obama-mitt-romney-132344622.html

I'm just disappointed that the article didn't mention if Barack was born first

Edited November 8, 2012 by Pegasus Seiya

[Dark Qiviut]

The Electoral College projection is now all but over. According to the Huffington Post, the Romney campaign conceded Florida. Note that CNN hasn't projected the state to Obama yet.

Edited November 8, 2012 by Dark Qiviut

[Patticus]

The Electorate College projection is now all but over. According to the Huffington Post, the Romney campaign conceded Florida. Note that CNN hasn't projected the state to Obama yet.

NBC isn't calling it either. Some are saying it may not be until Saturday that it gets called.

[Sami]

So after calling for a revolution and blackmailing the fucking President of the United States... couldn't Donald Trump be charged with treason at this point?

[Patticus]

This article contains dangerous amounts of schadenfreude. You may experience a schadenfreudegasm. If schadenfreuderections persist for more than 8 hours, please consult your physician.

"We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."

They just couldn't believe they had been so wrong. And maybe they weren't: There was Karl Rove on Fox saying Ohio wasn't settled, so campaign aides decided to wait. They didn't want to have to withdraw their concession, like Al Gore did in 2000, and they thought maybe the suburbs of Columbus and Cincinnati, which hadn't been reported, could make a difference.

But then came Colorado for the president and Florida also was looking tougher than anyone had imagined.

"We just felt, 'where's our path?'" said a senior adviser. "There wasn't one."

Romney then said what they knew: it was over.

I almost kinda feel sorry for them. Almost. It must've been a damned depressing night at Romney HQ; rather a lot like 2000 and 2004 were for Democrats.

It's pretty staggering exactly how badly they misjudged the mood of the nation, really. They were so certain, so sure that Obama was finished - How could he be re-elected with the economy the state it's in? With Iran so close to Nukedom? With Obamacare being so seemingly unpopular? With that terrible first debate performance? Turns out, pretty easily, with a very wide margin in the electoral college, and an indisputable lead in the popular vote, thanks to the Obama campaign's first rate ground game and ongoing demographic shifts across the country.

[Dark Qiviut]

While watching The Situation Room on CNN, one of the segments talked about the "Blue Block."

Since 1992, several states in the north and west have been consistently voting Democratic by a good to convincing margin: Maine (both districts), Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii. When adding all those states, you get 222 Electoral votes already. If two or three states with a huge Electorate count (or four states with a great to good Electoral count [Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada]) sway to the Democratic Party, there's an outside chance of winning the election. Winning Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia or Pennsylvania and Florida results in the Democratic candidate winning the election.

Four states that are known to be mostly Republican are either swing states or turning blue. Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada (a swing state that's mostly leaned Republican over the years), and Colorado were previously solid or semi-solid red states. Over the past two elections, these four have been voting for the Democratic candidate. Prior to 2008, no Democrat won Virginia's Electoral votes since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. That state has voted for Obama twice. And the key reason is the growth of population in the urban and suburban cities, particularly Latinos, who have overwhelmingly voted for Obama. This election alone, 71% of the overall Latino population voted for Obama.

Also, Virginia and North Carolina, two previously (semi-)solid Republican states, were swing states in 2008 and '12 and may become swing states in the future. The total vote count for each state was extremely close. Obama won North Carolina by around 14,000 votes in 2008, while Romney won by around 97,000 votes in 2012. With how diverse the population is for both states, along with Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado, at least three of the five could be swing states in future elections if the GOP learns its lesson. But if the GOP remains stubborn, Nevada's hugely Hispanic population may stubbornly turn blue stubbornly.

And we could be getting even more new swing states. Georgia, Texas, and Arizona each have very diverse black and/or Hispanic populations. However, of the three, there's an outside possibility Arizona will be the first to swing, as Texas and Georgia have very solid conservative DNA.

Edited November 9, 2012 by Dark Qiviut

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

So after calling for a revolution and blackmailing the fucking President of the United States... couldn't Donald Trump be charged with treason at this point?

Not sure about blackmail, but as far as calling for a revolution, unless he actually pulls one off he can't be charged with treason.

[Sami]

Not sure about blackmail, but as far as calling for a revolution, unless he actually pulls one off he can't be charged with treason.

"Release your college records or I won't give millions of dollars to charity" sounds like blackmail to me.

[tenchibr]

"Release your college records or I won't give millions of dollars to charity" sounds like blackmail to me.

I never knew who Donald Trump really was until I saw "Celebrity Apprentice", since I didn't grow up in the US.

That said, I saw his name one time in a Bible I had. Yes, a Bible. It was a Teen Bible - one of those with random tidbits and stories. He was the subject of a story of perserverance, about how he went bankrupt but didn't give up on his dream.

I hope he's not in it anymore and I would rather see Obama take his place in the same story.

[Patticus]

"Release your college records or I won't give millions of dollars to charity" sounds like blackmail to me.

It would only be blackmail if Trump had seriously damaging dirt on Obama and threatened to release it if he didn't give out his college and highschool records.

Edit: Bloomberg has used age progression imaging techniques on Mr. Obama, to give us a glimpse of the man as he'll look post-presidency. He currently sports distinguished salt-and-pepper hair and looks years older than the fresh-faced young man we fell in love with in 2008, but how will he look in 2016?

And, if you ever wondered what Mitt Romney might've looked like after one term if he had won? They've got you covered on that score, too!

Looks like an older Tom Bergeron (current host of America's Funniest Home Videos).

[tenchibr]

If there's one good thing I can say about Mitt Romney, it's that he looks crazy good for his age.

But in that fake pic, he looks like a carcass.

Edited November 9, 2012 by tenchibr

[SuperStingray]

"Release your college records or I won't give millions of dollars to charity" sounds like blackmail to me.

That's closer to extortion than blackmailing. Blackmailing would be more like "Release your college records or I'll give millions of dollars to Al Qaeda."

[Patticus]

If there's one good thing I can say about Mitt Romney, it's that he looks crazy good for his age.

But in that fake pic, he looks like a carcass.

That's what four years of the presidency will do to you.

[Badnik Mechanic]

That's what four years of the presidency will do to you.

Just take a look at Tony Blair on the day he entered number 10. Compare it to the day he started his 3rd term. The difference is quite shocking.