Blumenthal, Paul and other idiots...POLITICS Thread

by **Rococo4** » Thu Jul 15, 2010 21:15:31

is it her or barbara lee that goes around looking for funerals to attend in her home district

by **jerseyhoya** » Thu Jul 15, 2010 21:19:57

I don't know but Ms. North Vietnam is on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs :lol:

by **drsmooth** » Thu Jul 15, 2010 22:24:50

jerseyhoya wrote:
drsmooth wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:Someone whom I know was running focus groups testing messages against the financial overhaul, and the numbers I was told about how it's polling shocked me. Like 50/50 nationally with fair language, worse in the subsample of swing congressional districts.

you do know this is incomprehensible outside that space between your ears, yes?

but it has the sound of something interesting so I encourage you to try again. What is the "therefore" we hunger for?

A gentlemen with whom I was conversing on the 234th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence (aka the day Joe Blanton and the bullpen blew a 5-2 lead to the $#@! Pirates) happens to be employed in the field of public opinion research. We were discussing some of his most recent work, and he mentioned doing focus groups for a major credit card company (rhymes with Pisa) on different messages that they might want to use to influence public sentiment on the major financial bill that had recently passed the House.

I mentioned I was surprised that so many vulnerable House Democrats had voted against it, and so few GOPers supported it. He said they did a national poll in conjunction with the focus groups that found the total sample was evenly split on whether they wanted Congress to pass the financial reregulation bill they were debating, and the subsample of respondents in the Congressional districts that are considered competitive in the fall opposed Congress passing the measure. This finding went against my instinct on the bill that it was probably a winner for Democrats because if there's one thing Americans distrust more than Congress in 2010, it's Wall Street. The gentleman with Pisa as a client who was on his 5th half litre of some fancy, high ABV Belgian beer while I was drinking a 375 of Makers Mark straight from the bottle admitted he too was surprised a little bit by the numbers, but said for Congress to be 50/50 on an issue is a rarity these days, so this really was something of a winner or at least less of a loser than anything else Democrats have recently pushed.

well, thanks for trying anyway

couldn't it be that the bill itself was too murky for people to know what the eff it does, so opinions are split 50/50 based on confusion rather than "real" opinions?

by **The Nightman Cometh** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 01:19:44

jerseyhoya wrote:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK3rTUgoQD4[/youtube]

i'd post every dumb thing a republican has ever said but the bandwith just from the comments on evolution would crash the site

by **drsmooth** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 07:19:36

The Nightman Cometh wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK3rTUgoQD4[/youtube]

i'd post every dumb thing a republican has ever said but the bandwith just from the comments on evolution would crash the site

you could get out ahead of the upcoming gusher of their remarks on why tax cuts for patricians are good, but safety net spending is bad

by **pacino** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 07:49:54

the tea party leader is apparently insane, and thinks calling people 'coloreds' is funny because it's in the NAACP title

by **jerseyhoya** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 08:50:47

"the tea party leader" :lol:

by **VoxOrion** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 10:14:17

I like "Tea Party Members" - like there's a list somewhere.

by **jeff2sf** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 10:38:15

Vox, you keep doing this sort of thing from a far. Do you like the Tea Party? Are you down with their principles? Are you closer to JH or to a TeaPartier?

by **Werthless** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 13:14:27

The Nightman Cometh wrote:i'd post every dumb thing a republican has ever said but the bandwith just from the comments on evolution would crash the site

You don't enjoy hearing politicians saying dumb things if the person's a Democrat? Just sit back and enjoy the shitshow.

by **dajafi** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 13:26:31

Werthless wrote:
The Nightman Cometh wrote:i'd post every dumb thing a republican has ever said but the bandwith just from the comments on evolution would crash the site

You don't enjoy hearing politicians saying dumb things if the person's a Democrat? Just sit back and enjoy the $#@!.

I'm not sure if "enjoy" is exactly the word, but the "North Vietnam" thing was... let's go with "painfully funny."

by **dajafi** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 13:33:49

To go back a couple days to our discussion of a new top tax bracket, here are some numberson the impact of one such model.

by **VoxOrion** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 14:47:29

jeff2sf wrote:Vox, you keep doing this sort of thing from a far. Do you like the Tea Party? Are you down with their principles? Are you closer to JH or to a TeaPartier?

I wouldn't even know what I was agreeing to if I said I shared their principles (certainly not among you lot and your perception of the thing). I'm fascinated by manufactured boogey-men, and I think that describes the Tea Party very well. If I ever defend them it's based on that more than anything.

I've posted here plenty long enough for anyone to know what I think about most things, to some of you more than others. I am a "little-c" conservative and I am not a Republican. I think I'm more socially conservative than JH, overall, though he may just be a reflection of where I was ten years ago and we'll meet here at some point.

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 14:54:41

The Nightman Cometh wrote:
jerseyhoya wrote:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK3rTUgoQD4[/youtube]

i'd post every dumb thing a republican has ever said but the bandwith just from the comments on evolution would crash the site

Whoa... I never saw that before... whoa. Whoa.

by **pacino** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 15:51:41

i doubt most people get more socially conservative as they age...it's probably more that younger people move the goalposts.

anyway, the 'tea party' is just a bunch of angry people that got riled up by freedomworks. it's much simpler than people have made it. they're all angry for different reasons, but it was not any grassroots anything. what's tough is figuring out what the heck the individual supporters actually want. We know what dick armey wants. we know what sarah palin wants (and she uses and abuses teabaggers as she pleases). we dont really know what these supporters WANT, we just know what some of them don't want...and that's socialism! others dont want social change! others dont care! others don't want financial reform but yet they do! regulation is for losers! the government sucks, please elect me to it! who knows what else i want!!! IM ANGRY

it's the republican base rebranded as 'outsiders'.

so i made a misstep calling mark williams 'the' leader. however, he is A leader. and he made a ridiculous, ridiculous posting which he's since gotten a ton of guff for. but to think that there are a lot of people who describe themselves as tea partiers that don't also believe the way he does is to deny reality.

by **TenuredVulture** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 16:30:17

pacino wrote:i doubt most people get more socially conservative as they age...it's probably more that younger people move the goalposts.

There's probably something to the way in which life cycle effects are conflated with generational effects. Personally, I don't think I've changed my politics on social issues, but I've definitely become more conservative on many social issues. For instance, I don't think shacking up is a great idea, I think divorce is a much bigger social problem than I used to think, I think the two parent family is better than a single parent family for raising children and it's probably better for one of those parents to not be working full time at least while the children are pre-school aged.

On the other hand, I still believe young people should receive comprehensive sex ed and access to free birth control without parental notification.

Interestingly, if you compare generations, survey data shows young people are far more tolerant of homosexuality and gay marriage than their elders, but are more likely to oppose legal abortion.

by **dajafi** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 16:39:41

TenuredVulture wrote:...I don't think shacking up is a great idea, I think divorce is a much bigger social problem than I used to think, I think the two parent family is better than a single parent family for raising children...

Depending on how you're defining "shacking up," there might be something of a disconnect between the first bit here and the rest.

I see cohabitation mostly as a durable test of compatibility a couple understakes before marriage. Being a child of divorced parents myself, I probably wouldn't have been willing to get married were my then-girlfriend, now-wife not amenable to living together first. I think this is pretty common nowadays; certainly it was among my friends, even discounting for the fact that NYC housing arrangements often push couples to cohabitate before they're necessarily "ready"... as they did with my now-wife and me a year before we were on a lease together.

(All that said, if the premise that cohabitation isn't something done with the shared assumption that if it goes well, they'll subsequently get hitched, that's a different story.)

As I understand it, the traditional objection to cohabitation was that the couple was "living in sin," a concept that I think would seem quaint to most today. I get the social cohesion and child-rearing arguments against permanent coupling without marriage; is there another piece I'm missing?

(And yes, I'm pursuing this in part because I don't want to think about the miserable two innings of baseball I just watched, and also because I don't much feel like working.)

by **pacino** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 16:57:42

only in politics are people in their 40s and 50s considered young

Mr. Obama is young, 48, as is British Prime Minister David Cameron (43), with whom he meets next week, and as were Bill Clinton (46 on Inauguration Day) and the somewhat older but still distressingly young George W. Bush, sworn in at 54. Mr. Cameron's partner in governance, Nicholas Clegg, is also 43. Stephen Harper of Canada is 51, Nicolas Sarkozy of France a youthful 55.
Youth is supposed to bring vigor and vision. In general, however, I think we find in our modern political figures that what it really brings is need-for greatness, to be transformative, to leave a legacy. Such clamorous needs! How very boring they are, how puny and small, but how huge in their consequences.

It's almost like people under 70 have to look towards some sort of 'future' or something.

by **Woody** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 17:42:38

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjGJPPRD3u0&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

by **Trent Steele** » Fri Jul 16, 2010 17:44:48

holy crap. that ad is so wrong and so many levels. if it wasn't real, I would assume it was part of an SNL skit. I can understand why many people would not want a mosque there (especially family members) but this doesn't advance that dialogue; it shoots the dialogue in the mouth.

Archived

Blumenthal, Paul and other idiots...POLITICS Thread