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White House Correspondents Dinner
Posts
You don't suppose Obama's trying to get him to say something really... REALLY inappropriate in retaliation, do you?
I mean, Trump hasn't exactly kept his cool these past couple weeks.
Trump doesn't need anyone egging him on to say something dumb. I mean the dumbest thing he's said so far is "I'm running for President."
I always knew this Birther thing had the potential to blow up in the Right's collective faces the more they pushed it. They had ample opportunity to drop it, but the moment he released the long form they turned into the political laughingstock of the nation.
No they didn't.
We like to think they did because it's become so ridiculous to us. But we read the news on occasion.
The birther story is not nearly as divisive as we wish it was, and considered that the first headline on FoxNews was "White House releases what is says is Obama's birth certificate" I don't think we're going to get the traction we really want to.
The fact is a little less than half the country will still vote Republican in 2012. We just have to hope they put someone so incredibly ridiculous on the ballot that it either motivates the Dems to get out and vote or scares the Republican voters into staying home.
Reportedly, republican presidential candidates tend to perform better in elections the more conservative they are. This was claimed as the main reason McCain lost, he wasn't conservative enough, so conservative voters just didn't vote, because their choices were "No vs. Hell No."
Is there any truth to this claim? W obviously was pretty conservative, as was Sr until he backpedaled on the no new taxes schtick. Reagan I'm less sure about, since that's a bit before my time, and I don't really know about whoever lost to Clinton in 96 (Dole? Buchanan?). I have no idea about candidates before Reagan. Was Nixon super conservative?
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Obama's opening was pretty good and I enjoyed the use of Ol Dirty Bastard.
Also, we are forced to vote. If we don't we get a $220 fine. How would the US fare if this system was in place there? Would your political landscape drastically change?
There would be a huge shift to the left. The demographics that are least likely to vote (younger people, poorer people, and minorities) are also the demographics most likely to vote liberal.
It would literally never happen, and if it did it would lead to riots and millions in property damages. Only about half the eligible voters care enough to vote currently, and we have it scheduled during the week so a lot of companies get away with not letting their employees off to vote even though legally they have to. Plus our public transportation is horrific so a ton of poor people would just have to suck up a 220 tax every two years. It would engender massive hate towards whoever implemented it.
But yeah, if implemented somehow, it would drastically change our political landscape. We'd probably skew a bit left in the long run, but in the short term because the Democrats would be the only people to even consider this they would get absolutely destroyed in elections.
I havent finished this video yet but my gosh. Obama. you need a role on Parks and Rec
Some people find the idea of rich celebrities, politicians, and news media people getting together for an expensive dinner distasteful.
Personally, it's mostly the news media bit that bothers me, because it reinforces the "political reporters are one of US" thing that makes beltway political reporting so divorced from reality. It's hard to objectively report on your friends and drinking buddies being completely wrong about things.
Pretty much this. The press is supposed to be policing politicians, not schmoozing with them.
That ship sailed ages ago. It has fallen to informed voters to help the people around them when political knowledge can be appropriately shared.
i've not seen seth myers bit yet.
i don't really have a problem with idea of the correspondents' dinner.
I mean, if there's a juicy story that embarrasses the administration, if one journalistic institution doesn't jump on it, another one will.
Seth had a couple of funny riffs.
We repeatedly see things go completely unreported beyond cspan or random internet blogs. Heck, how many news orgs, even the left-ish ones, reported exactly WHY Ryan's budget was neither serious nor mathematically sound? The reality of it is that the dinner is not paying for the reporters, it's simply a symbol of what generally happens. The reporters seem to consider themselves part of the faux nobility we've made of congress/the WH, and absolutely despise either being wrong themselves, or pointing out that something is factually wrong coming from inside the beltway. They pretty much let the dumbest shit slide because if they dared to sit around constantly calling people out on it, they might lose access to stories later.
*grumble* Yeah, this ship sailed long ago, but I can still be bitchy about it. Our news media has about as much journalistic integrity as any other news aggregation system. They don't research and expand on stories, they just recite press releases and talk about how smart *insert news popular person here* is, because the press release said they were.
the big problem is that there isn't really a public appetite for it. fox news has shown that what people really want out of a new organization is a cheerleading squad for their team
I question the importance of Hunter S. Thompson's influence on anything.
But most importantly, Col. Hunter Gathers.
"Nobody has seen this footage in 50 years, not even me..."
"Staterun Media Productions" In faux Soviet font.
"From the people who brought you Universal Healthcare... And, the Massive Backlash Against Universal Healthcare"
Shimmy shimmy ya, shimmy yam, shimmy yay
So, courtiers?
Over here, its on a Saturday usually, and almost every school and public bit of land generally has a polling station, so there is usually 1 within a 5km radius. We also do postal votes, which is what I generally do, they send you a ballot in the mail and you send it back. Hell you can even vote if you are outside your area very easily.
Hell even our military who are overseas at war get to vote.
Not voting is so foreign to me...
Anyways, for those who have yet to see, do watch it all, good stuff.
Part one:
Part One, I'm a real American
Part two:
Trump is on Fox and a fox is on Trumps head!
It varies by state. Some states (like mine) won't allow absentee voting unless you won't be in your county at all for the entire day.
Also I just read up on how you elect a president.
You don't vote for him, you vote for someone to vote for him for you, but that person might turn around and vote for the other guy?
How convoluted can you get?
It's to make sure the small states don't get ignored or something. And the electors' ability to not vote the way the voters did is pretty much forgotten at this point - it never happens.
And my crack about black people is only a half truth. There are not enough polling stations in our cities so that lines there are long. It's particularly a problem in the poorer cities, or the poorer areas of cities, thus: badness. A lot of modern American electoral politics is creative disenfranchisement of people who tend to vote Democratic (young people, minorities) by Republicans.
I don't see why not, I can do my taxes online and all kinds of other things. If voting was compulsory, its not like my social security number could be used twice and if I go to vote and it says "you've already voted" I know some shenanigans are in play
The biggest risk there is politically active people voting for all of their friends who don't care, and that's a giant almost insurmountable risk with online voting
I would say we just need the boomers to die, but many of the most insane politicians are younger
And while we're changing the system, let's change to Instant Runoff Voting.