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Post by jessebaker on Apr 19, 2010 12:27:56 GMT -8
Sarah Palin not running in 2012 only means that she's most likely running in 2016.
2012 is going to be a bad year for Republicans and I would not be shocked if some of the long-term power brokers in the GOP are already, in private at least, conceding defeat to Obama and preparing for 2016. And given the HUGE amount of work needed to get Sarah Palin presentable for a Presidential run, I would not be shocked if the long game set up is to spend six years to up Sarah's war chest and get Sarah rehabilitated so that she doesn't come off like an ignorant fool....
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Post by michaelpaciocco on May 19, 2010 14:51:00 GMT -8
Finally, Canada is in the race! ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100519/national/bank_firebombingAnd unlike the guy at Times Square, this bomb went off! But of course, it's not called "terrorism", even though there's the threat of force against the government, the political agenda, the promise of more to come.... when brown people threaten to blow up something (but fail), it's terrorism. When (what is 99.999% certain) college age white stoners ACTUALLY blow up something, it's "anarchists" and filed under crime. Funny how it works. Personally, I'd love to see live footage of SWAT raids on some suburban neighbourhoods complete with a 40 year-old mom getting tazed and a kid sister eating pepper spray while a dreadlocked 21 year old in a Che t-shirt is on the receiving end of a nightstick beat down. Just to impress on the white and right-wing people that they can be included in "Collateral damage" that a government inflicts. Edited to add: I realize the above sounds mean, but the double-standard in place in North American society burns me, and while I wish for no harm to anyone, the fact is that I have little faith left in my fellow man to willingly give up his duplicity. |
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jun 16, 2010 5:45:39 GMT -8
On the "$1 Trillion in Afghan Mineral Wealth" story: I'm going to say I'm extremely skeptical that this isn't an exaggeration or outright lie. Why do I believe that this claim might not be true? 1) The utter corrupt ineptness of Karzai's government and their willingness to say and do anything to stay in power 2) Not to sound harsh to my fellow Americans, but after "WMDs in Iraq" I'm skeptical to believe ANY claims from the US government. 3) As a young lad, I remember the Bre-X Scandal. Now, I realize that few people outside of Canada have even heard of Bre-X soooooo.... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-XI'm just saying that if the geologists who put this together dissappear, we'll have something. |
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jun 17, 2010 7:26:03 GMT -8
Wow! So now according to the Afghan government, their mineral wealth is now $3 Trillion!
Yeah, the "insane exaggeration" theory grows....
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Post by jensaltmann on Jun 17, 2010 11:49:44 GMT -8
Uhm, hello? Republican Party? Anybody home? Can anyone figure out why a politician felt the need to apologize to BP for, you know, harrassing them about that little oil leak in that minor stream?
I guess part of the reason is because this isn't an election year, so he felt it was more important to secure donations rather than pretend to give a fuck about how the voters feel.
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Post by K-Box on Jun 18, 2010 4:05:52 GMT -8
Uhm, hello? Republican Party? Anybody home? Can anyone figure out why a politician felt the need to apologize to BP for, you know, harrassing them about that little oil leak in that minor stream? I guess part of the reason is because this isn't an election year, so he felt it was more important to secure donations rather than pretend to give a fuck about how the voters feel. The scary thing is that the voters in that particular elected official's demographic have echoed his apologies to the huge fucking corporation, AGAINST THEIR OWN ECONOMIC INTERESTS, because they'd rather remain poor and shit upon their entire lives than renounce the right to shit upon others in the incredibly slim chance that they ever become rich themselves. America makes a lot more sense once you realize that, if slavery was ever reintroduced as a credible political possibility in our country, there are legions of working-class whites who would rather be slaves themselves than be deprived of the POTENTIAL opportunity to own OTHER people as slaves. |
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jun 26, 2010 11:18:35 GMT -8
So, the McChrystal thing.....
Anyone else thinking that the US just dodged a coup? I'm not saying it could have happened, but at the same time, I don't think it is no longer an impossibility.
Having read the article, it seemed like McChrystal was everthing McCain wanted to be, but the fallout proved that end of the day, he fucked up big time without any consideration for the fallout and he knew it.
But then again, I don't think McChrystal would have been the one to do it - my understanding is he doesn't have the support of a lot of the troops or the brass or the political connections to make it happen, and he didn't want to be the one history books would record as "the man who broke over two centuries of American Democracy."
Petreaus, on the other hand....
Michael
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Post by jbhelfrich on Jul 14, 2010 8:57:06 GMT -8
No no. McChrystal, despite putting his foot in it, and making some very poor choices of staff (who made most of the juicy quotes in the article, as I understand it) was actually pretty Democratic for a general.
And putting Petreaus on ice fora few more years by sticking him in a job where he can't resign any time soon? Possibly the best political move Obama's made yet.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jul 14, 2010 11:39:08 GMT -8
No no. McChrystal, despite putting his foot in it, and making some very poor choices of staff (who made most of the juicy quotes in the article, as I understand it) was actually pretty Democratic for a general. And putting Petreaus on ice fora few more years by sticking him in a job where he can't resign any time soon? Possibly the best political move Obama's made yet. Having read the article online myself, it's about a 60/40 split between the staff and McChrystal. And just because he's Democratic (or democratic, however you want to think of it) doesn't mean that it couldn't happen. I don't subscribe to the belief that your political party affiliation means you wouldn't consider taking a hard line or going over one. As for Petraeus? Well, it's a double edged sword - because it puts a man who clearly has political ambitions out of the US, but it makes him that much more beloved by the troops, and if he were to walk away from it, it would be absolutely devestating to their morale. |
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Post by jbhelfrich on Jul 14, 2010 16:06:01 GMT -8
if he were to walk away from it, it would be absolutely devestating to their morale. Which is why he can't do it without undermining his whole personal mythology. It's made him a 2016 problem if it hasn't removed him from the equation entirely. |
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Post by jarddavis on Jul 21, 2010 4:30:37 GMT -8
A problem for whom, though.
Obama's not going to get reelected. The republicans get the White House for 2012 and four years (minimum). And I can say this without a clear idea of who the front running Republican is.
Petreus runs against who for the Republican nomination?
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Post by K-Box on Jul 21, 2010 15:58:08 GMT -8
Obama's not going to get reelected. Jard, I'm sorry, but this is completely removed from reality. Obama is polling higher than either Reagan OR Clinton were at this point during their presidencies, and Palin - the strongest GOP contender to challenge him - is so divisive that a QUARTER of Republicans say they would defect from their own party to vote against her. Moreover, the teabaggers - who have become the dominant force in the Republican Party - have so poisoned the well for the GOP that what SHOULD have been their year in the midterm elections now sees even conservative pollsters like RASMUSSEN giving Democratic Congresspeople a SIX-POINT LEAD in the generic ballots, completely REVERSING the GOP's earlier leads in the same ballots. If ANYONE who is a member of the teabbager movement gets the Republican nomination in 2012 - and pretty much the ONLY way you could get the GOP nod now is by being a teabagger - it's going to be a party-reversed version of Reagan-versus-Mondale. |
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jul 21, 2010 18:05:30 GMT -8
Jard, Kirk, let me settle this for you.
You're both wrong.
Here's the hard fact about America - your elections over the last 20 years have been decided by a narrow thin margin of victory in terms of the popular vote. What this means in simplest terms? It's a crap shoot.
Back in SEPTEMBER of 2008, I wouldn't have bet on Obama winning against McCain. Until the Stock Market crash, and David Letterman litterally spending an entire week of his program to bashing McCain inside and out. It was at that exact moment, and you can go check the polling data, where it went from McCain having a marginal lead/dead heat, to McCain losing ground.
And that's it - with this narrow a margin, there are only two determinants to winning the presidency:
1) MONEY: How did Obama win Indiana, a state that's been Republican since Truman? Oh, he outspent McCain SEVEN TO ONE.
2) LUCK: Sometimes it's something as simple as McCain looking weak and indecisive during the Stock Market turmoil. That's all it can take is a single mistake.
So don't kid yourselves, 2012 will be a crapshoot and any prognostication now is virtually USELESS.
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Post by Anders on Jul 21, 2010 22:00:40 GMT -8
Here's the hard fact about America - your elections over the last 20 years have been decided by a narrow thin margin of victory in terms of the popular vote. What this means in simplest terms? It's a crap shoot. Not to quibble with your main point, which I think is absolutely correct, but the above is at best misguided. In the US, the popular vote doesn't matter for the result of the election. At all. What matters are the swing states and the few upsets (like Indiana). That the popular vote turns out close is only because there are so many states and they are approximately balanced as Democratic and Republican. You could win the election with about 20-25% of the popular vote, provided those 20-25% made up just over half the voters in states controlling just over half the electoral votes. (Assuming the electors wouldn't vote against their states, which would be a real concern in that situation.) But to reiterate my point: The popular vote is just a general indicator of popularity, it doesn't decide who wins the election. The only thing making it useful at all is that there are enough states that the wild variations average out. |
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Post by jarddavis on Jul 21, 2010 22:18:03 GMT -8
You're all failing to take into consideration something very simple.
It's all about the money.
First of all, Obama may be polling higher than Reagan or Clinton at this point in their Presidencies, but at the moment, he's still polling pretty low.
The Health Care Reform Bill will hurt him as much as help him. Because a lot of people are not only pissed off about the bill, but about the way it was passed.
Kirk's right in that you could literally see the moment when the McCain campaign failed. He told everyone the economy was strong and literally within hours it tanked.
The Recovery, so to speak, is nowhere near as strong as everyone hoped it would be and is giving many indications of simply stalling out at this point. People are still out of work, and Obama's having to fight the same people who pushed for Unemployment Benefits two years ago to extend the same. And people aren't looking at why the economy failed, they're not looking at the massive amounts of spending during the Bush Administration, they look at who has been in charge the last 4 years.
The Tea Party movement has the ability to throw the monkey wrench into the elections, yeah. Possibly named Ron Paul or Tom Tancredo, but people keep missing the real point about why the Tea Party is dangerous, and why having Palin as a spokes person is dangerous. They look good on TV. The fact that not one black person or hispanic person can be seen in these ads is not being noticed as much as it should be. And the simple fact of the matter is, A tea party win, no matter who the hell it is, is a Conservative win. period. Doesn't matter what they call themselves. They're conservatives. You might as well simply call them Republicans and be done with it.
Everyone keeps saying Palin is a joke. But the fact of the matter is, she's beautiful and sexy and America responds to that crap. And anyone who doesn't believe me should go back and watch a CNN tape of of the Biden/Palin debate. It was 45 minutes before anyone began to realize she had no clue what she was talking about. Biden should have had her in tears. The first 45 minutes, every time that woman smiled, she gained ground.
The Cons are better at Spin, Presentation and messing with America's collective heads. They're gearing up for 2012 already.
The Dems are going to try to coast in on the HCR bill and find out not everyone is as happy with it as they would hope.
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