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No, but politics is an iterative process. You fail and fail and fail until you don't.
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True.
The question becomes tho, what happens when you get several candidates in the primary? Does the left really have a single overarching quality that they can rally to (such as the Republican/NeoCons and Religion)?
And then does it serve us well to have a mirror of the GOP Primary we're seeing now (where the candidates are trying to court the outliers so hard that the inevitable attempt to swerve back to the middle is going to be whiplash inducing)? Just as "Conservatives say crazy things" is true, I don't doubt there are things to the left of my politics that would make me go "errr, guys... you're losing me here."
I guess my big fear is not that the GOP goes full stop crazy, but that the "liberals" starts to fracture first, thereby allowing the full crazy to win because we're fighting amongst ourselves, and not able to put up a solid defense against it.
That's the risk we have to take. It will be a long and destructive process which will evolve over time. We can learn from mistakes if we try.
Liberals becoming a Tea Party entity would be a good first step from the current status quo. We've got to start somewhere or nothing will change.
You are terrible at reading comprehension.
If you mean, simply have a grassroots group that works on their behalf... well, we've had a lot of those. Some of them even merit falsified scandals by fake journalists to destroy. (too soon?)
Nope. Not soon enough IMO.
I've retyped this response three times, because I'm not sure how to word it without having someone jump down my throat for it, but I wonder if part of the problem is we are, for lack of a better term, not willing to totally compromise ourselves in our attempt to 'gain power'.
It seems to me that any step made in good faith to try to improve things on a social level is responded to with a SLOM-style attack from outside. And if any one of them is not refuted/gets through, regardless of validity of the strike, we recoil back to where we started, while 'the opposition' gets crazier and crazier, because we're too afraid to not offend anyone. We're trying to be the party of everyone, while our opponents are trying to be the party of "50% +1"
The minute the left starts being about 50%+1 is the minute they stop deserving to have our support.
I'm not just saying that because of "YAY IDEALISM", I'm saying it because the 50%+1 mentality is essentially what caused the Republicans to drive their bus off of the cliff. We're seen the results in slo-mo now. Republicans have been doing the minimum work to keep their evangelical+neocon+rich guy tripod together while generally only serving the needs of the rich guys for about 30 years now, and it has resulted in Rick "Dogfucking" Santorum.
It is frustrating to see all the baseless attacks, but just keep repeating to yourself: "The Boomers will be dead soon. The Boomers will be dead soon."
The party for everyone is a workable concept IMO. It just needs to be competently managed to please that many factions at once. It's more difficult to run successfully but with enough compromises and making sure all factions needs are cared for it could be a powerful force in politics.
The difference is Republicans unite over things they hate, liberals unite over things they care about.
Yeah. It's "You're different from us, but that's ok, we'll listen to your opinion" vs "NOT LIKE US KILL THE WITCH!"
Oh my mistake then. I'm sure the Perfectly Democratically Elected Government that enjoys a majority support of the Civilian Population, with totally no ties no drug warlords is happy to have the US army in his country as honored guests bringing freedom. I'm sure the Afghan National Army is honoring US troops with freedom bullets and that there's totally no connection with the history of western colonialism and US perspectives on Afghanistan. You'd have to be crazy to draw those kind of conclusions. After all rapine and plunder are totally not on the table. Taxi drives being tortured to death in Bagram are super happy and understand the sacrifices they have to make.
I'm sure Karzai doesn't mean it when he calls for Bagram to be turned over to Afghan control. Totally situationally necessary, not all related to to historical precedent. Nope not one bit.
After all Obama ended abusive practices and continues to win the war on terror. Carry on fearless leader carry on. To stop now would be to let the terrorist win.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,650242,00.html
http://www.straitstimes.com/Project_Syndicate/Story/STIStory_772410.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/01/08/afghanistan-detainee-abuse-bagram.html
"You can be yodeling bear without spending a dime if you get lucky." -> reVerse
"In the grim darkness of the future, we will all be nurses catering to the whims of terrible old people." -> Hacksaw
"In fact, our whole society will be oriented around caring for one very decrepit, very old man on total life support." -> SKFM
I mean, the first time I met a non-white person was when this Vietnamese kid tried to break my legs but that was entirely fair because he was a centreback, not because he was a subhuman beast in some zoo ->yotes
Just want to say I fully agree with this. That's been one of my biggest issues with people left of the GOP ever since I could vote. The dems and liberals don't make an attempt to get people elected on the down ticket. The GOP was able to get control of the VA legislator and several towns, cities and counties because the people who lean left didn't bother to run anyone against them. Sure they may not win many of those, but if you start throwing you name out there people start to realize, "hey, I don't have to vote for this guy anymore because he isn't the only one on the ballot."
I'm sure liberals would have liked to run against them, they just don't have the resources or motivation to accomplish it.
They may be driving the bus off a cliff, but they are the ones steering the bus and we are stuck as passengers.
Santorum/Romney may be a joke in the presidential campaign, but downticked(all the way down) they got candidates for every spot. Dems can't say the same.
What's the line here?
"People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand."
I understand that you enjoy hyperbole more than acknowledging that specific words have specific meanings, but yes the circumstances of Afghanistan are not really related to the American colonization of the Philippines after the Spanish-American war. They are their own wonderful alloy of horribleness. Likely drawn more from our experiences in the recent past, arguably impacted mostly from the lingering effects of the Cold War and proxy battles amongst disparate groups through both influence client states and force via the armed forces, and the peculiar circumstances of the successes and failures of the past 12 years compounded by neglect and a political ratchet in favour of more bellicosity. Fortunately we are stopping things now so while circumstances are likely to continue to degrade it will likely improve over the medium term given a lack of such direct influence.
It really doesn't take that many resources to run for the school board. If anything it just takes having local offices small enough to pay attention to what positions exist that you can run people for and a copier able to make enough forms to have people sign.
It's an anecdote, but about 10 or so years ago there was an election around here for "Board of Sewer and Water" or some sort of low level town council thing. 4 open seats. 3 people ran. top 4 vote getters got the seats.
Some 18 year old HS senior thought it would be funny to get some of his buddies to write his name in on their ballot when they voted. Like 10 people did. It was enough for him to get 4th.
Pretty simple one, really. Liberals are for fairness. Give everybody an honest shot at a fulfilling life.
Claiming there aren't common threads in American occupation of Asian countries is either facetious or wholly ignorant of history. Latching on to colonization and ignoring the words for word similarities in the "we must save them from themselves, to leave would be worse than to stay" invites comparison to straw man. If one can't make those kinds of simple and direct connections... IDK, there's nothing that can be said.
Feel free to claim that Afghan people want us there. That their social institutions are not blatantly corrupted and non-democratic. Everyone acknowledges the current government would collapse immediately if the US military left. That must be because it enjoy so much broad support from the population.
"You can be yodeling bear without spending a dime if you get lucky." -> reVerse
"In the grim darkness of the future, we will all be nurses catering to the whims of terrible old people." -> Hacksaw
"In fact, our whole society will be oriented around caring for one very decrepit, very old man on total life support." -> SKFM
I mean, the first time I met a non-white person was when this Vietnamese kid tried to break my legs but that was entirely fair because he was a centreback, not because he was a subhuman beast in some zoo ->yotes
And you can feel free to quote me claiming that or other statements that you want to attribute to me.
I liked one of the comments:
Did you miss the part where he wants to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy? The part that made those cuts especially awful? How he wants to close tax loopholes for corporations and the rich? Or how Obama boosts the economy with proven effective measures like stimulus spending on infrastructure rather than big tax cuts to "job creators"? He's got a plan for a nationwide high-speed rail network. Do these sound like Bush policies to you?
Foreign policy: Do you remember Obama's stance on the Iraq war? How he thought it was a stupid idea? He didn't speed up the withdrawal timetable but that's a world away from the policy of starting absolutely unnecessary wars because yeee-haw.
Omar is not a drug dealer, he's a stickup man!
Yemen, Somalia, Libya. Expanded operations in Pakistan. No option off the table with Iran. Following Bush Policy just doesn't seem like a stark retreat from Bush to me.
I've been pretty careful to say policies as enacted.
Obama's Stimulus Spending was incredibly similar to Bush's stimulus spending.
Obama's hands off approach to the SEC, same as Bush.
Obama's handling of the war on terror? Same story.
Obama the candidate said a lot of things that were in stark contrast to Bush. Obama the president, not so much.
But ACA in 3, 2, ....
"You can be yodeling bear without spending a dime if you get lucky." -> reVerse
"In the grim darkness of the future, we will all be nurses catering to the whims of terrible old people." -> Hacksaw
"In fact, our whole society will be oriented around caring for one very decrepit, very old man on total life support." -> SKFM
I mean, the first time I met a non-white person was when this Vietnamese kid tried to break my legs but that was entirely fair because he was a centreback, not because he was a subhuman beast in some zoo ->yotes
Not really.
I'm remember back to when I could first vote and Joe Ann Davis was still VA 1st district representative and the democratic party flat out told the one guy willing to run against her that they would not back him period. The thing was the guy wasn't crazy at all, it's that they figured they wouldn't win the seat and didn't want to spend anything on his run. The guy even told them that all he wanted them to do was to give him their blessing and label and he would do the whole campaign without any funding, just get him on the ballot as a democrat.
That's the crap I'm referring to, much of the time it isn't that no one wants to run or really an issue of money, they just pussy out because they don't think there is any value in even token backing of someone in a race they have no shot of winning. They really shoot themselves in the foot because it's better to have you name out there, with someone running a campaign on shoestring (you just give them the party name and the ballot spot) and lose. Than to have no one on the ballot, despite having willing volunteers because that creates the illusion that most are content with the incumbent.
It's not even arguable. Either you understand that facts are facts or you don't. Good Day Sir.
"You can be yodeling bear without spending a dime if you get lucky." -> reVerse
"In the grim darkness of the future, we will all be nurses catering to the whims of terrible old people." -> Hacksaw
"In fact, our whole society will be oriented around caring for one very decrepit, very old man on total life support." -> SKFM
I mean, the first time I met a non-white person was when this Vietnamese kid tried to break my legs but that was entirely fair because he was a centreback, not because he was a subhuman beast in some zoo ->yotes
You are extraordinarily dumb.
A single tactical strike in Yemen, killing Somali pirates who committed an act of war and maybe throwing a single company over there to help knock out warlords causing shit along the border with Eritrea at the Somali's request, logistical support in Libya. None of these are even remotely close to the sort of stuff Bush did. False Equivalency ad absurdum.
Not really! Obama implemented a bunch of payroll tax cuts; Bush slashed capital gains taxes.
Congress more or less runs the SEC, not the Executive. There's nothing he can do about how shitty the penalties are until Congress makes them something more painful (which will never happen.) I haven't seen any indication that he's restraining the SEC.
Except for that time he immediately ordered an end to torture and attempted to close Guantanomo before Congress through a shitfit.
Obama is not God-King of America. Your grievances, where they are not hyperbolic, more properly lie with Congress.
I do understand that facts are facts. Which is why I consider your false representations to be wrong. PL 110-185 essentially just provided a new line on your tax form in order to receive several hundred dollars in your next return and expanded the eligibility for GSE's to secure mortgages. PL 111-5 did significantly more in both direct spending as well as in tax expenditures. Nevermind the difference in quintiles that were targeted by those tax expenditures besides. Good night, moon.
This is definitely a problem for liberals. They need to be apart of the system and never back down from fights with politics. I'm unsure how to fix it. This attitude needs to change or we'll be stuck with the status quo.
I'm the one with the goofy grin on the left.
Do you remember Obama the candidate saying he wasn't against all wars, just dumb wars? Because he did. Libya: no ground troops needed, just air support for a while and we're done. Yemen/Somalia? Yeah, there's been strikes there. Obama has always said he'd go after terrorists wherever they were. Bush's policy was to act stupidly on shaky intelligence. Obama's policy is to kill terrorists. And you can't just add up the number of countries even faintly involved in military action to measure how war-y a president is.
The other left?
Ed & Larry : "Doesn't matter."
I recently was gifted a thing in Steam. If it was from you, thank you very much!
I think all things considered, Obama has been extremely moderate in terms of military action. In fact, I'd say it's where his careful, calculated actions and trust in his advisors and general tendency not to shoot from the hip has paid off. He could have dropped a whole mess of troops in Libya, and didn't. He could have continued to stick around in Iraq, and didn't. He could easily justify another five years in Afghanistan, and didn't. I think expecting him to end all US military actions and with the flip of a switch bring us back to isolationism is pretty goddamned crazy.
Probably the largest criticism that can be levied at Obama in terms of a terrible expansion of Executive power was when he signed the NDAA. But we've been down that road, and I'm not going to rehash it here. There's a pretty strong argument that vetoing it was a battle he could not win. But whether Obama uses it or not, it's here to stay.
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Even more tellingly, he could have dropped a whole mess of troops in Iran, during their election protests in 2009, and didn't.
Cause he was too busy apologizing and starting illegal wars, amirite?