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I'll admit the various whines about too much liberal in X makes me happy inside, and I just wish it was more true than it really is.
This is obviously some technical term I don't understand. I saw it in 3D, which wasn't my first choice, but it was the start time that best fit my schedule for that particular day. I liked it. As a Tolkein geek, I liked the backstory stuff. I also liked the battle of the stone giants. I have read the book many times and had forgotten that part, which in truth was little more than a throwaway line in the book, and was probably more metaphor than anything else.
I could have done without the bird #### on Radagast's face though.
I'm not a Marxist, nor have I ever had the opportunity to kill a whale. I suppose I would - I've long maintained you shouldn't eat an animal you aren't willing to kill; and I think I'd eat a whale given the chance (obviously not a whole one).
You should move to Canada. We have so many people wanting to vote Marxist we've had to give them two parties to choose from. The Communist Party of Canada, and the Marxist-Leninst Party. Just don't vote for the Canadian People's Front...
It is a frame rate thing, where a whole pile of people have complained about how the high frame rate looks very wrong. I have not seen it so I have no opinion myself.
I enjoyed it. Though I'm not particularly observant. I only noticed the higher frame rate because I have a friend with a ridiculously high frame rate TV and so I picked up on the similarity. (You can see Geordi's eye-balls through his VISOR on that TV!)
I certainly didn't notice anything negative about the higher frame rate.
It seems strange to you that we had a poll asking people which candidate they wanted to win?
***
Well, there were several other candidates for president this year, and at last count they had tallied less than 2 percent of the vote. That seems like the very definition of "not viable."
***
In terms of money controlled by the actual campaigns, it appears Obama outspent Romney by a wider margin than he beat Romney in the popular vote. I wasn't a fan of the Romney campaign at all, but the idea that Obama ran a "frugal" campaign is just silly. Obama was an incumbent president heavily favored by the media who only won by 3-plus points despite outspending his challenger.
In the 2000 election, there were three Communist parties on the ballot in Florida, The Florida Socialist Worker's party, The Socialist Workers party (no state affiliation apparently), and the Socialist Party of Florida (splitters!).
Yes, because we don't normally ask what we want to happen. We usually ask what we think will happen. Pre season prediction threads, post season awards predictions, free agent threads, those all ask what we think will happen, not what we want to happen.
I don't like the historical associations of the term "progressive". For one thing, it's confusing to have 2 "progressive" movements. For another, using the same term implies some sort of continuity or shared belief system. The original Progressives were basically indifferent to civil rights, even hostile to them. One of the good things about liberalism is that it incorporated civil rights.
That said, I don't feel that strongly about this. The term "liberal" itself has changed meaning over the years, to the annoyance of libertarians who might have used that term 150 years ago. Still, the term "liberal" has acquired a fairly stable modern meaning and I don't see any reason to change it. I'm proud of liberals and what they've accomplished.
I think he's saying his political views are his political views, whether there is a viable candidate to support them or not.
I'm (slowly) becoming more in favour of the monarchy as a force in Canadian politics, but no real political party supports that. Certainly none of the ones I've voted for (and will likely continue to vote for) in my life. But that doesn't mean that this particular insane political position isn't one I (half-heartedly) support, and which differntiates me from other people who voted for the same party as me in political discussions.
People who vote the same way often have very different political beliefs. Especially in a nation like the US where there are only two options.
"fact-checked" is more like it.
You keep hanging your hat on this, but it's simply not relevant. Obama won by 24 points in the only race that mattered. Or to get more technical, he won every state that he needed to win by 5 or more points.
We did? I seem to remember Andy asking how people were going to vote and people responding to that, which I suppose is another way of asking "which candidate do you want to win", though it's certainly not a direct mapping between the two ...
Joe, you're completely missing the point. How well candidate(s) of my political alignment do in the presidential election (assuming they exist, a dubious assumption) is totally irrelevant to whether I can have it. Being a Marxist is a perfectly viable political alignment, you just aren't going to see any Marxists elected, except maybe as the occasional dog catcher, for the forseeable future (although Perot got ~20%, and Ventura was goveror.) Even if I'm likely to vote for a generic Democrat over a generic Republican, doesn't mean I'm going to represent the Democratic position in a discussion. I'm going to represent my own position (which doesn't fit terribly well in either of those boxes).
If pedantics were an Olympic sport, the IOC would just send the gold medal to BBTF and skip the hassle of running the actual competition. In what universe is "how are you going to vote?" not a "direct mapping" to "who do you want to win?" Are there large numbers — or even small numbers — of people who (intentionally) vote for a candidate they don't want to win?
I liked this randomness, actually, but I see what you mean. If they had shaved time off the goblin battle and added it onto some kind of something somewhere to offer a little history info-dump/exposition/lengthening on the mountain titans, I wouldn't have minded.
I did not see it in the much-debated new frame rate.
This quote may be credible from someone who didn't spend the entire election season talking about how Romney was going to win because the economy was so terrible and how there was no way the electorate was going to be as Democratic as it was in 2008. Now you want to pretend that Obama winning was expected and by not winning by more he must have been wasting money. Especially because you are ignoring soft money and pretending the entire pro Obama campaign spent more than the entire pro Romney campaign.
Seriously dude you are a treasure.
Let's look at facts. Obama managed to get more TV ads for less money. Obama didn't try to stick the press corps with crazy high food bills. Obama's election day machine actually worked (and did not crash and burn like ORCA).
In what way was Obama wasteful compared to Romney?
Note: I would rather hear evidence how the Iranian government is composed of maniacs or even acknowledgment the Iranian President has little or nothing to do with Iranian foreign policy, but I will take what I can get.
I vote for hopeless candidates I wouldn't touch with a thousand foot pole if they had significant influence. A couple of Marxists and Facists in a chamber of 435 sounds good to me, but scores does not. Also, I like being contrarian. And I'd like to give 'em a chance to get their deposits back.
And one is a number.
To me "leftist" sounds too pejorative, "progressive" is what fellow travelers used to call themselves as a sort of wink wink nudge nudge code word, whereas "liberal" is what every major advocate for necessary social change called themselves from the New Deal all the way up to the time that the right wing noise machine made it into an expletive. That's not enough to make me abandon that perfectly good word.
-------------------------------------------------
In terms of money controlled by the actual campaigns, it appears Obama outspent Romney by a wider margin than he beat Romney in the popular vote.
The operative words there are "actual campaigns," since when you add the partisan Super PACs to the totals, the Romney team actually outspent the Obama team by $992M to $985.7M. In the post-Citizens United era, the distinction between the formal campaign organizations and their "independent" front groups is little more than a legalistic fig leaf.
I wasn't a fan of the Romney campaign at all, but the idea that Obama ran a "frugal" campaign is just silly. Obama was an incumbent president heavily favored by the media who only won by 3-plus points despite outspending his challenger.
Which is at least half a dozen points better than those risible "unskewed" polls you kept citing as if they actually meant something more than wishful thinking on the part of you and the unskewers.
I fully admit that I'm the crazy leftist on this board arguing for a complete ban on private gun ownership. It's a completely fantastical position, but I think the country would be a better place if such a ban were enacted.
I actually agree with a lot of this. I do believe that there is a uniquely American individualistic streak that has made this a great country. I generally take an expansive view of the Bill of Rights. I fully admit that I'm the apparently hypocritical liberal that wants to vigorously defend all rights except for the ones conservatives like. My explanation for this position is that I don't have much concern for what is and what is not considered to be a "right". I think laws generally should be passed on the basis of a balancing of the merits. I think a balancing of the merits supports an expansive reading of most of the rights included in the Bill of Rights. I do not believe a balancing of the merits supports an expansive view of the 2nd Amendment. Given that this view is at odds with our existing Constitutional structure, my argument would look a lot different in a brief submitted to the Court than it does on this board.
The nature of American politics, though, since the dawn of the Republic (Washington's pleas aside) has been a two-party system. I do think we've entered a phase of more rigid alignment of party ideology -- once upon a time, you could find plenty of liberal Republicans (think western Republicans around WWI and a few generations following) and also conservative Democrats (primarily in the south). You really don't find that much anymore, at least, not at any meaningful level.
3rd options really only work at the local level -- you can find enclaves here and there where non-D/R aligned parties control town councils and what not, but the only state that has anything approaching a viable 3rd party option is probably Vermont... where the Vermont Progressives (and assorted allies) usually control 5-10% of the GA seats and who - along with some very left Democrats, can sometimes get a seat at the table for major legislation.
At the federal level, though -- D and R are really the only realistic options and always have been (setting aside party realignments and names of the parties). The few 3rd party options we've had have almost always been either personality driven (TR, LaFollette - arguments can certainly be made about the earlier 'Progressives' being a real 3rd option/force however, Long/Long descendant briefly, Perot) or single issue driven (Dixiecrats).
Personally, I'd borrow from Churchill and say that our two party is the worst -- except for all the others... Parliamentary driven governments that rely on coalitions just tend to be too unstable for my taste.
OK, that I do remember. And you're right, it's not a direct connection, because...
In the universe where people vote strategically. I recall from that thread numerous posters stating they preferred Obama or Romney win, but because they were in a safe blue or red state and their vote ultimately wouldn't matter, they were going to vote 3rd party.
I would not mind a near complete ban, though hunting and such sport should (I think) clearly be allowed. I think we are a long way from anything like that though sadly. So I will settle for what I can get (which clearly means giving me anything is a slippery slope and all guns would be banned two minutes after limiting magazine size or something).
Link.
Of course it's relevant. The idea that a candidate can lose the popular vote but win the Electoral College is little more than trivia to the people who run presidential campaigns, at least until desperation time kicks in late in a (likely losing) campaign.
***
No, I'm not missing the point. Obama won the pre-election poll here by 92-8 (if I recall correctly). You seem to believe that almost 60 points of Obama's support was from people with highly heterodox positions vis-a-vis the actual Dem platform, and I've seen no evidence to back such a theory. In fact, I've repeatedly asked the liberals here to list the issues on which they disagree with the Dem platform, and I've only gotten a small number of replies, none of which indicated heavy disagreement with the liberal agenda. The two biggest that I can recall were a guy who is pro-death penalty and another guy, a restaurant manager, who — surprise, surprise — is against raising the minimum wage.
During the first half of the 20th century there were two distinct "progressive" movements. The first ran roughly from the late 19th century through 1924 and was associated with trustbusting and general economic reform, with little or no commitment to civil rights as we think of it today. The second one was a one shot movement, largely dominated by Communists and their fellow travelers, that was set up to run Henry Wallace against Harry Truman in 1948. That party featured an admirable (and prescient) commitment to racial equality and a strong tendency to blame the United States for the cold war. The current wave of "progressives" up to now seem to me to be mostly trying to avoid being tarred with "liberal", which from an historical perspective is rather ironic.
The people who said they wanted Obama to win were counted as people who wanted Obama to win.
Actually -- it's much closer to 4% than 3%...
Believe it or not - there are still some outstanding certifications, both in big Obama states (New York and Hawaii haven't yet certified and the NY votes left appear to be NYC).
I'll link to the bible - Dave Wasserman's GoogleDocs spreadsheet --
But with NY and HI still not final, the count is now:
Obama 65,621,466 (50.98%)
Romney 60,875,416 (47.29%)
Other 2,231,181 (1.73%)
...So -- Obama's margin is currently 3.69%
Among the interesting things you might notice...
Far and away, the biggest turnout drop was in NY (though - that may change with certs outstanding) -- off by 12%... to whatever extent Sandy 'helped' Obama, I think the NY numbers (NJ was also off by nearly 6% -- one of the higher drop-offs as well), it probably also depressed his popular vote margin of victory a bit.
The biggest turnout jumps came in DC and UT, with VA, NC, and NV showing strong gains -- as well as CO (+7%!) and WA -- the tokers made it to the polls ;-)
Swing state turnout was up a smidge -- 0.36%, while non-swing fell 3.13%
I like the word Progressive more then the word Liberal, because it links more strongly with my feelings on what I stand for - progress, change, always moving forward in a way that benefits humanity. Liberal to me has more of a meaning around generosity and lack of constraint which fits, but not as well.
And the excellent branding job the GOP has done regarding the word Liberal fits here to, Progressive is relatively less tainted (to those who are not history buffs, which I must not be because I don't have the same word connotations as others here do for the words Liberal and Progressive).
In a larger sense I suppose it doesn't matter much.
Only 4 states were decided by less than 5 points - FL (O + 0.98%), NC (R + 2.04%), OH (O +2.98%), and VA (O +3.87%)
I'll also add a link to Mark Newman's excellent maps -- including my favorite especially, the cartogram that shows weighted votes by county (i.e., shades of blue-purple-red) with the county sizes scaled to population.
Wait, are you saying Obama's win wasn't expected? I didn't expect it, but Nate Silver certainly did.
"Stick the press corps with crazy high food bills"? What does that have to do with anything? In a $2,000,000,000-plus campaign, the press corps' food bill was barely a rounding error.
I never said Obama's campaign was "wasteful." I said it wasn't "frugal."
For a start, consumers saved some $107 billion in 2012 thanks to gas prices that are significantly cheaper than in Europe and Asia, according to IHS. That works out to about $926 per household, or about the same amount as the estimated average savings Americans received from the temporary payroll tax cut in 2012.
The 16 producing states are also benefiting. Fracking is boosting state and local government revenue by around $30 billion a year, IHS estimates. North Dakota is running a $1.5 billion budget surplus - equivalent to about a third of the state’s general fund spending. And the unconventional boom has created about 1.7 million jobs - only the largest public infrastructure investments can top that. And it should create another 1.3 million by the end of the decade.
There’s another bonus, too. The surge in oil production saved America about $185 billion in oil imports in 2012. Bargain-price energy is boosting exports, too, as petrochemical makers and other manufacturers flock back to America. Citi believes the fracking bonanza could cut the trade deficit by as much as 80 percent over the coming decade. That’s something fiscal stimuli could never do.
let me reiterate that i am not discounting environmental concerns. i completely support ongoing research in this area. but i do not think we need to put everything to a dead stop while the research happens given there is no 'burning platform'.
but this among other things was why i was dismissive of more govt stimulus. i supported the first stimulus as i am not senator shelby. i just think as with most things in life moderation is the key. we had a flood of cash. now we need to go at this from another direction.
As much as I liked the movie, this was sadly true in a few places. There were a couple of scenes where the dialogue resorted to some really dumb speechifying to make points that was already quite obvious as well. I did enjoy it, and will go see all of them but it ain't going to be a LOTR.
I saw it in 3D IMAX and thoroughly enjoyed the viewing experience. The trailers provided enough time for my eyes to get used to it before the movie started.
i think it's worth a try to start 'charging' banks to have money over 'x' amount.
initially they wanted to encourage sufficient capitalization but banks are now just pocketing the change versus making loans they should make.
get that money out there
I only I had been more clear in my post, oh wait I was ...
EDIT: The value being - obviously - he won. I doubt many of his donors are upset at how he spent the money. Romney and his donors have certainly been grumbling. And the reporter thing is a symptom of a campaign very loose with money and spending much more than it needed to, like they did with buying ads.
If you saw it in IMAX, it wasn't the HFR 48FPS version.
[edit]
(which is the one that has generated all the complaints)
((valid, IMO, it didn't look as consistently bad as I thought it would, but it frequently looked terrible))
Democrats actually took 51% of the total House votes, but won only 46% of the seats.... This is only the 2nd time in the last 40 years this has happened (the other being 1996 - with the Dems also getting the short shrift).
An interesting read (and I'd also suggest checking out the links to other studies)... in short - yes, redistricting hurt Democrats in 2012... but the larger issue for Democrats (and actual, real proportional representation if you care about that and really do think that the HoR ought to be as proportionally representative as possible) is that urbanization puts the Democrats at an inherent disadvantage.
Boy the whole Bush administration really has been lost down the memory hole, hasn't it?
I think he is specifically saying pre-election you claimed all the indicators were against an Obama victory, and now post-election saying all the indicators made an Obama victory inevitable.
I don't see how anyone can seriously advance the idea that Mitt was at some sort of financial disadvantage (although some here will).
Bingo. If Nate Silver came and made a post about how Obama was inevitable it would be credible. Joe K making the same post is laughable.
Indicators? I recall a specific claim that Romney was going to win.
It would be interesting to cross-correlate the names. I don't think I commented, though I won't pretend I wouldn't have preferred Obama over Romney. I wouldn't answer a call for liberals to disagree with the liberal agenda, because I'm not a liberal. But I also get the feeling you're likely to label anything that isn't part of the GOP platform part of the liberal agenda.
That said, I don't know, I'm pro-whaling (mostly a call-back joke, though it's true), anti-vegetarian, favor low corporate taxes (though high-ish personal taxes), oppose funding/supporting most forms of "clean" energy (100% nuclear, although I can find grudging support for solar, if I have to, I guess), generally pro gun ownership, want to move people away from colleges/universities to vocational schools (and re-orient a lot of high school that way) ... probably a lot of other things, I can't really guess what you consider to be the liberal agenda.
Is being pro-burning garbage liberal? Europeans do it, but in American it seems to run afoul of the enviromentalism that's been "liberal" for the last twenty or thirty years.
The big problem with that flood was that it came far too much in the form of state block grants... States - which were facing budget hurdles of their own - then promptly used it overwhelmingly to plug budget holes. Now, that's still stimulus - plugging those state-level budget holes most definitely kept a whole host of teachers, firefighters, cops, etc employed - and also went to getting state-needed/run projects done...
However - and hey, my view is certainly colored by my own state's (IL) mess - I just don't think it's necessarily true that states are more efficient than the feds.
I'll toss out one more Wasserman tidbit...
If every state allocated EVs like ME and NE -- Romney would have eked out a 276-262 win....
Also, I felt, too dickish towards Bilbo. In the book Bilbo wasn't really accepted by the Dwarves for a while but they were generally cordial towards him and didn't resort to insults like Thorin did in the movie. While I am fine with movies changing events and such from the book I really dislike shifts in character, such as Faramir initially deciding to take the One Ring for Gondor in the Two Towers movie.
It was definitely like watching Arthur Dent but frankly first-half of the book Bilbo is a hell of a lot like Arthur Dent anyway so I thought the casting was pretty spot on. I do wonder though if he'll be able to step out of that and be second-half Bilbo (braver, more confident, a bit of a leader) properly.
The biggest annoyance I had though was that Orcrist and Galmdring didn't ####### glow blue! Only Sting did, in spite of Gandalf saying in the troll cave that the two swords would glow blue when orcs are near. That was a pretty big goof.
Agreed about the Gollum scenes being the highlight of the movie, they were pretty damn near perfectly done.
agreed that some amount of funds was used as described but the stimulus was more broad based and overall effective.
this talk of more stimulus is kind of dumb. it's not going to happen which is why folks are going to have be creative from the govt side on how to help the private sector keep the momentum going.
of course, resolving the current standoff would be a good first step and in my mind more than enough from the govt side on spurring on the economy.
again, there will not be any more stimulus and folks clamoring for such are just being daft
I think he is specifically saying pre-election you claimed all the indicators were against an Obama victory, and now post-election saying all the indicators made an Obama victory inevitable.
Joe always had it both ways. Obama was the incumbent with all the "takers" financially indebted to him, so therefore he had to be favored to win. OTOH the polls were "skewed" towards Democrats, and the "unskewed" unemployment rate was in double digits, so therefore Obama was going to lose. Every time Joe started yakking about the "biased" polls and ridiculing Nate Silvers's projections, I pointed out that on Intrade he could cash in on his superior understanding and get odds ranging from 5 to 3 to 3 to 1, depending on the time period. And every time I did that, he quickly backed down with one Earl the Pearl spin move or another. He's the original BTF 3-card monte man.
This is terrible. One can call for more stimulus if it is the right thing to do and still acknowledge it is unlikely to happen. In what way is that daft?
Besides as a negotiating first position you always want to include things that can be compromised away. Why on earth wouldn't Democrats that actually want a stimulus, think it would be a good idea on merits, follow up and argue for the policy they like?
Now if they are sitting down in the dirt and refusing to govern over something that is never going to politically happen then it might be a problem, but right now that problem sits squarely in the GOP camp not with the Democrats.
So no it is not daft to call for more stimulus when clearly the economy could use more stimulus.
I once wore a "Nuke the Whales" T-shirt I bought from The American Spectator, but I can't stand seafood, so I guess at least I'm not a Sushi Liberal.
Most amusing bumper sticker I ever saw was "Nuke Gay Whales for Christ".
That said, I am horrified by whaling and the thought of those tremendous (in nearly every sense of the word) animals being slaughtered and possibly driven extinct makes me sick.
i am speaking in terms of folks declaring that the govt should issue more funds in the manner done previously. one should recognize that along with congressional approval not happening the public is not supportive. the mood is not there for that form of the stimulus.
hence my statement that the feds need to be more creative.
getting the deal done in front of them would help.
getting banks to stop sitting on money would also help.
the fed adjusting its focus on employment will help
see, there are other ways than just sending out checks willy nilly.
folks need to use that lump 3 feet above their backsides
All hunting should be sustainable; driving species to extinction (except like, smallpox) makes no sense. Maybe I'm back in the "dyed in the wool liberal" column?
if you can get the asiatic culture to change its mind about whales that would likelyl be a huge step in the direction you want to go.
at least that is my undersatnding.
I agree with all of the above. To solve the ever so scary fiscal cliff we just need to get HW and I (well I'll let Obama do it if he wants) in a room together for a couple hours and viola!
Bibi -- apparently not satisfied with so publicly betting against the sitting US President who just won reelection -- has decided to keep poking the bear... Haaretz is reporting that Netanyahu is going to appoint Ron Dermer as Israel's UN ambassador.
For those unacquainted - Dermer is a pretty big GOP player, Bush friend, and known neocon (he's buddies with Dan Senor, who -- for me at least, serves a complete and automatic disqualifier for Romney or any Republican that cozies up to him... Senor likely would have been a big player in any Romney administration foreign policy apparatus).
Bibi's playing with fire here... Despite going further than Israeli prime minister ever would have dreamed in backing a Presidential candidate (much less a challenger) - or hell, perhaps even any foreign leader ever - there was no realignment of the American Jewish vote yet again.
Neoconservative foreign policy has been wholly rejected by the American people -- I'm not even sure it has plurality support within the Republican party anymore (despite the last two GOP Presidential candidates having 'advisory staff' riddled with the idiots).
With John Kerry coming in as SoS -- and him being a lot less hawkish than Hillary -- Bibi is seriously running the risk of doing more damage to the "special relationship" with the US than I think he understands.
I have no doubt that the US would defend Israel - not that they need it - in the face of an Iranian attack... but with Syria crumbling, Egypt still muddled, and Iraq a terminal mess for a generation - Israel simply doesn't have the same security concerns it had 20 years ago. Any idiot can see that.
I'm not discounting the fears or issues surrounding terrorism and whatnot at all, but I think (hope?) the US can only be pushed so far. At some point - the UN Security council vetoes Israel can reliably count on from the US, the pressure we apply internationally to our European allies who would prefer we be a bit less staunch, etc.... all of this comes at a price for the US, and it's a really terribly idea for Netanyahu to continually do things which amount to either direct or indirect flippings of the bird to the current administration.
There comes a point when the US might well say - #### it, you're on you own... not wholly, of course - but there's a point where the buddy you go out drinking with just becomes too belligerent, gets in too many fights, and you decide you're going to get a bit more choosy when you decide to "have his back".
This is true, but only if you make certain assumptions about the way districts should look. I don't have any problem, for example, making a pie-slice district which has the narrow end inside a city and the wider end in the suburbs. AFAIC, districting is a method of dividing up the two parties, not of keeping to city or county boundaries.
In Hawaii, one of the most liberal states, we burn a great deal of garbage at the H Power plant, to produce electricity. It reduces the amount of oil we need to import, and the amount of land we have to devote to landfills.
this is a plan a long time in development.
You have summarized what I was thinking earlier today wonderfully. Honestly I am not anti-Israel, but I am certainly becoming much less pro-Israel. Bibi is a complete tool. The Israeli's get to pick who their leader is, but there is nothing in the US constitution that mandates we have to support them above all else.
But I am not sure he is wrong about how the GOP feels. After all on this very board we see that making threatening speeches towards Israel is enough to get branded as a Maniac by a large chunk of the GOP, even if the speeches are by some chuckle-head not in charge of foreign policy.
I wish Sam M would make an appearance, but his next post in a political thread will be the first one I see. He's a Constitutional Law professor.
Me too...Putin signed into law today a bill that bans U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children.
Yes, punish us.
I thought this was a joke. I guess it is some retalitory move for some statement(s) the U.S. has made regarding human rights violations. He was compared to King Herod by somebody.
Sure, if they were serious enough criminals. Let's not forget that the trigger for the raid was primarily the Branch Davidians' stockpiling of illegal weapons. I'd have just watched them carefully, investigated peacefully, and once I had evidence that there were no hostages, leave them alone until they tried something.
Koresh was a creepy dude, but nothing he was found to have been doing really merits the excessive force used by the government in Waco.
This is another reason why I don't like parliamentary governments!
If I'm not mistaken, Kadima (center-left) has a plurality of seats in the Knesset (albeit slim)... but Bibi's Likud has run circles around them when it comes to coalition building, leaving the constantly squabbling Israeli left tokenizing themselves in the resulting governments.
I am no expert on Israeli politics - but from what I gather, Netanyahu's regime is more a matter of his side being a lot better at getting their act together while the opposition constantly rides around in clown cars bumping into each other.
I did not know this, interesting.
America's Constitution
by Akhil Reed Amar, Yale Law Prof. Left leaning prof (I'm no lefty), an extremely good history, a biography of the constitution. It is for the legal scholar crowd, but still reachable for serious readers. Reasonable people disagree with some of this interpretations/inferences but this is high level work.
He has other books on the subject matter too.
JoeK making any post is laughable. He's Maynard.
You wouldn't say that if you understood those whale noises. They say some pretty terrible things about you and your mother.
Are we just discounting entirely the whole \"####### 13 year olds" bit?
Basically - the Israeli President (who is directly elected, I think, but has no real power) nominates a member of the Knesset as Prime Minister... in practice, the nominee is selected based on party leader preferences. The nominee then has to present a government and win a confidence vote. I think Israeli toyed with direct elections in the late 90s, but it didn't really work out.
Since Israel has a significant multi-party system - it's been especially rare for a single party (in fact, I'm not sure it's ever happened) to win an outright majority... You also end up with some really, really, really odd coalitions -- it's not all that unusual for far right (or far left) parties to align themselves with center/center-right/center-left parties rather than their more ideological cohesive fellows. Imagine electing a Green party Senator - but him caucusing with the Republicans ;-)
Shimon Peres was the last really successful left/center-left Israeli leader (in fact, I think he's still President) but he's pushing 90... Ehud Barak had a brief go of it for a while, but he's said he's bowing out of politics completely next year... Ehud Olmert (prime minister prior to Bibi) was more centrist - but he was scandal plagued. Tzipi Livni is basically the left/center-left hope in Israel - but she recently left Kadima to form a new party (new parties form constantly) and (rightly or wrongly) has gotten a lot of the blame for the left's inability to ever coalesce.
Again... this is why I don't like mutli-party parliamentary systems!
The best thing about having Harvey around is that he can say things like this that are true, but everyone (but maybe Joe) know it would be stupid to write him off as a paranoid liberal.
my party does not sit on its hands.
this was the backup plan to not being able to connect with additional voting groups
given how 2008 and 2012 panned out this effort is receiving full support from all fronts which is why you heard in it in the news within days of the election
EDIT: most of what I know comes from an Israeli born friend who also enjoys the sport of politics -- just sent him my summary to see if I got it right, and he said not bad, but I'm about 9 months dated -- Livni didn't leave, she got drummed out of Kadima, and the 'great left hope' is now Shaul Mofaz (he insisted I use the quotes - he's a Livni fan). Mofaz, interestingly -- was born in Tehran.
precisely.
i would encourage the dems to craft a response quickly as internal polling, not romney polling, shows that in framing this correctly voters respond positively to the change. winning by district can make sense to people versus winner take all. it also has an 'us vs. them' approach (metro vs rural) which resonates with folks outside of cities.
this is dangerous stuff and given that the train has left the station your folks might want to do something before it picks up much more speed.
and relying on the courts will only last so long
How are they not within the current system?
A couple of elections where the Republican wins with 40% of the vote would lead to a Constitutional crisis tout suite.
ADDENDUM: Coke to SdeB.
But if they Dems want to get ahead, I suggest they agree with the general idea but only after all 50 states adopt nonpartisan redistricting.
House and Senate leaders from both parties to meet with Obama in about an hour.
GOP sources say they'll be getting a tweaked version of Obama's last counter-offer to Boehner before negotiations broke down.
Other reports say that a 60-90 day extension will be passed if a 'framework agreement' can be reached, as it's too late to do the details.
Senate Dem sources say no extensions - no 'kicking the can down the road'.
Progressive groups are turning up the heat -- Moveon, PCCC, DK, and other groups are all peppering the WH, Senate Dems, and House Dems with "bright line" petitions holding firm on 250K and not one scintilla of change to any entitlements as a part of any deal... word on the street is that the prog groups fear they're being out-hustled by equally hard line "NO DEAL!" groups on the right.
There is also the problem of the highly balkanized nature of the parliament, and the fact that since seats are allocated proportionally, anyone party with over 2% of the vote gets a seat.
The four biggest parties in the Knesset now are Likud (27 members), Kadima (I think down to 21 members), Yisrael Beiteinu (originally formed by secular-leaning Russian Jews, now with ,15 members) and Shas, (culturally conservative sephardic Jewish party with 10 members). Then you have the remnants of the Labor Party (split into several groups), the Ultra Orthodox, and some other socialist and right wing parties.
This creates the opportunity for a lot of wheeling and dealing. Likud has shown itself superior in recent years at putting together a coalition.
EDIT: Coke to Zonk
I'll return half the coke -- as you're right about Likud/over Kadima... when Livni left/got drummed out - she took 7 members of Kadima with her, so the fragmenting now leaves Likud, not Kadima as the largest party in the Knesset.
let me state very clearly that what i am about to post is if i were advising the president.
again, if i were the guy at his elbow
he should link it to the debt limit. this is the big lever on the gop side and one they want to use to balance the scales in the next negotiation. he needs to strip that out
it's a holiday. all anyone is going to k now is that the gop threw up on itself
don't do a deal if the debt limit is not included
I wholeheartedly agree... but I get the very strong feeling that any deal that includes that is completely impossible, at least - prior to Jan 1.
Maybe a post-Jan 1 cleanup deal...
That is the minor system of the current electoral college. But nothing in the major system of the constitutional republic is broken, per se, by a reconfiguration of the process by which the electoral college divides up the votes.
It's an obvious ploy by the minority to preserve their status quo privilege, yes. But it's perfectly constitutional, no?
Even assuming all the allegations about Koresh were true, do you really think they merited the deaths of 28 children at the hands of the government? Don't you think you're taking your slut shaming a little far here? Of course the reality is that the evidence against Koresh for child rape/abuse wasn't exactly ironclad stuff anyway.
I get the distinct feeling that if you were Boehner and I were Obama, we could probably get this whole thing wrapped up in 90 minutes over a few tumblers of Hendricks...
it's easy to deal when you don't have voters, existing relationships, promises made, etc.
we have no idea all the items the speaker is juggling and frankly i think the press is being unduly harsh on the man
once the calendar changes the dynamic changes. right now the biggest asset both sides have is fear of the unknown.
Boehner is in a hell of a jam, but it's a problem of the party's own making so my sympathy is muted.
acknowledged
by the way, don't be surprised if a new element comes out of the deal with mcconnel expected to save the day. he's a conniving little b8stard but has the big asset of having his senators in lock step.
you need to do something about that stutter
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