Oregon gov signed a law today for automatic voter registration, no doubt hates democracy and will ruin America.

Well, to be fair, automatic registration will mean more people voting and that means only one thing, communism.

I feel fairly certain the 'Pubs will mount a court challenge saying it's unconstitutional; a breach of the right not to vote (or even be registered) -- a subset of the first amendment right to silence as a form of free speech.

Monkeyboy wrote:Well, to be fair, automatic registration will mean more people voting and that means only one thing, communism.

not if they don't have ID's they won't!!

This Ben Carson ain't no rocket scientist, that's for sure.

Corporate tax breaks under Heavy C; the facts of this article should be a surprise to no one but it is still infuriating to read:

http://news.yahoo.com/nj-gov-christies- ... 03965.html

Monkeyboy wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

td11 wrote:https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/file-charges-against-47-us-senators-violation-logan-act-attempting-undermine-nuclear-agreement/NKQnpJS9

Got 200k+ signatures so far

disrespectful and gross

No doubt you'd feel better about it if they did it through a super pac with 100 million dollars or so... because then they'd be exercising their free speech.

lol, the fact that you would try to equate the two situations may be the largest contortion of reality I've ever seen from you. You used to be good at this. I guess it must be harder and harder to find justifications for things as the GOP moves further and further into crazyland, but I didn't think you'd fall this far. Really, maybe you should stick to baseball threads.

cue werthless defense in 3....2....1....

I forgot about this.

I don't really understand your post at all. But it's probably worth responding to because you got weirdly personal.

The Cotton letter seems to have been a bad idea from both a political and policy perspective. Politically, it shifted the focus from the nuts and bolts of the deal, where the White House is weak, to Republican intransigence or whatever. It also probably harms the chances of a veto override of any Iran bill Congress can pass. Policy wise, I think this is a pretty good case that even if the letter does make it marginally less likely that a bad deal is struck (either through a better deal being reached or no deal at all being the result), it makes it much harder for broad based sanctions to remain in place following a failed deal because true or not it will be seen as a reason for a deal not being reached. Some allies have much less appetite for continuing the sanctions regime, and if they perceive that the US doesn't really want a deal with Iran, there might be cracks on that front. The hope of either forcing Iran back to the table for a better deal for the west or even forcing a situation where the regime falls would then evaporate. And separately, I do think 99% of the time the whole politics should stop at the ocean's edge adage is a good one, and flouting that standard (even if others have done so in the past) isn't a great thing to do.

Many members of the Senate from both parties are (rightfully imo) concerned that a) the pending deal with Iran may be far too favorable to the Iranians and do too little to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons and b) the president is negotiating with an issue Congress has already weighed in on but not seeking their approval on the deal. Congress feels marginalized, and this seemed like an idea to point out without Congress this deal was only temporary. It certainly seems like there could've been better ways to go about doing this.

Whether the letter was a good idea or bad idea, whether it will prove effective at encouraging the president to strike a tougher deal or undermine him or cause the Iranians to walk away, etc. it was a public letter sent by United States Senators talking about policy issues. It is not a criminal offense, and looking for people who haven't committed a crime to be charged with a crime is weird.

Going further than that, hundreds of thousands of people signing a petition calling senators treasonous essentially for disagreeing with the president on foreign policy strikes me as insane, gross, disgusting, choose your own word. Through the Bush years we heard all about how dissent was the highest form of patriotism, and any questioning of love of country from the right of people on the left is treated as a grave offense (see the Giuliani shitstorm from a few weeks ago). But apparently it's totally cool to want 47 members of the US Senate arrested and called traitors. WTF?

So I said the petition was disrespectful and gross, echoing td's words about the letter itself, because I think it's a pretty fucked up thing. If that's my largest contortion of reality yet, I guess that's good, because it means I've never done much reality contorting.

Netanyahu peddling in scaring people about Arabs voting in droves

He also flip-flopped by stating he would never support the existence of a Palestine. All this in a last ditch effort to GOTV. At least we know what he's about.

Lol

Aaron Schock resigning. Too bad he turned out to be a criminal, I thought he would be a good statewide candidate in a few years.

jerseyhoya wrote:Aaron Schock resigning. Too bad he turned out to be a criminal, I thought he would be a good statewide candidate in a few years.

Schock and.... awwww

jerseyhoya wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

td11 wrote:https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/file-charges-against-47-us-senators-violation-logan-act-attempting-undermine-nuclear-agreement/NKQnpJS9

Got 200k+ signatures so far

disrespectful and gross

No doubt you'd feel better about it if they did it through a super pac with 100 million dollars or so... because then they'd be exercising their free speech.

lol, the fact that you would try to equate the two situations may be the largest contortion of reality I've ever seen from you. You used to be good at this. I guess it must be harder and harder to find justifications for things as the GOP moves further and further into crazyland, but I didn't think you'd fall this far. Really, maybe you should stick to baseball threads.

cue werthless defense in 3....2....1....

I forgot about this.

I don't really understand your post at all. But it's probably worth responding to because you got weirdly personal.

The Cotton letter seems to have been a bad idea from both a political and policy perspective. Politically, it shifted the focus from the nuts and bolts of the deal, where the White House is weak, to Republican intransigence or whatever. It also probably harms the chances of a veto override of any Iran bill Congress can pass. Policy wise, I think this is a pretty good case that even if the letter does make it marginally less likely that a bad deal is struck (either through a better deal being reached or no deal at all being the result), it makes it much harder for broad based sanctions to remain in place following a failed deal because true or not it will be seen as a reason for a deal not being reached. Some allies have much less appetite for continuing the sanctions regime, and if they perceive that the US doesn't really want a deal with Iran, there might be cracks on that front. The hope of either forcing Iran back to the table for a better deal for the west or even forcing a situation where the regime falls would then evaporate. And separately, I do think 99% of the time the whole politics should stop at the ocean's edge adage is a good one, and flouting that standard (even if others have done so in the past) isn't a great thing to do.

Many members of the Senate from both parties are (rightfully imo) concerned that a) the pending deal with Iran may be far too favorable to the Iranians and do too little to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons and b) the president is negotiating with an issue Congress has already weighed in on but not seeking their approval on the deal. Congress feels marginalized, and this seemed like an idea to point out without Congress this deal was only temporary. It certainly seems like there could've been better ways to go about doing this.

Whether the letter was a good idea or bad idea, whether it will prove effective at encouraging the president to strike a tougher deal or undermine him or cause the Iranians to walk away, etc. it was a public letter sent by United States Senators talking about policy issues. It is not a criminal offense, and looking for people who haven't committed a crime to be charged with a crime is weird.

Going further than that, hundreds of thousands of people signing a petition calling senators treasonous essentially for disagreeing with the president on foreign policy strikes me as insane, gross, disgusting, choose your own word. Through the Bush years we heard all about how dissent was the highest form of patriotism, and any questioning of love of country from the right of people on the left is treated as a grave offense (see the Giuliani shitstorm from a few weeks ago). But apparently it's totally cool to want 47 members of the US Senate arrested and called traitors. WTF?

So I said the petition was disrespectful and gross, echoing td's words about the letter itself, because I think it's a pretty fucked up thing. If that's my largest contortion of reality yet, I guess that's good, because it means I've never done much reality contorting.

Thank you for the thesis. I just said it was silly to compare the two, which it was. The line where I said you aren't very good at this and should stick to baseball threads was just me needling you a bit by paraphrasing a post you made to me a long time ago. I agree it was weirdly personal. Thank you for acknowledging your weirdness.

What I really do believe is that as the GOP has moved further and further to the right and resorted to more and more extreme acts, you have also been forced to the right in defending them. You used to come off as very reasonable, even if I disagreed with you. But you are now justifying stranger and stranger behavior, contorting yourself into all kinds of knots defending all manner of extreme behavior. If it is done by the right, you find a way to spin it, even if that spinning is starting to make you look like a slave to your talking points. This is just my opinion, of course.

But I'm good at posting in this thread

Monkeyboy wrote:What I really do believe is that as the GOP has moved further and further to the right and resorted to more and more extreme acts

Meh, they're just trying to impede Obama from anything he wants to accomplish, make him ineffectual, tarnish any kind of legacy that doesn't conclude with "Worst President Evah". It's their current playbook... do whatever is necessary to make the highest D in the land a failure. It's about winning elections, with the ultimate goal of controlling the house, senate, and WH.

I guess the coalition formation will take a while, but looks like Likud is doing quite a bit better than the polls and even the exit polls predicted. With ~75% of the vote in, they're leading the Zionist Union folks by almost 5%.

bibitrollface.gif

I'm seeing Bibi Mob rounding up 1, maybe 2 seats more than Zion?

drsmooth wrote:I'm seeing Bibi Mob rounding up 1, maybe 2 seats more than Zion?

http://votes20.gov.il/nationalresults

He's up about 4.5% with over 90% of the vote in. Should end up being about 30-24 Likud-Zionist Union from what I'm seeing. Polls were at 25-21 Zionist Union-Likud at the end of last week. Pretty stunning.

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:I'm seeing Bibi Mob rounding up 1, maybe 2 seats more than Zion?

http://votes20.gov.il/nationalresults

He's up about 4.5% with over 90% of the vote in. Should end up being about 30-24 Likud-Zionist Union from what I'm seeing. Polls were at 25-21 Zionist Union-Likud at the end of last week. Pretty stunning.

Y do you suppose let's call them more disinterested sources are forecasting narrower results?

Because they're going off the exit polls and not the actual results

Patrick Ruffini ‏@PatrickRuffini
Final average: ZU 25, Likud 22
Exits: Likud 26.2, ZU 25.6
Actual: Likud 29, ZU 24

Wild