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At 10/23/12 05:54 PM, Profanity wrote:

At 10/23/12 09:26 AM, DarkSoldier wrote: How did I misinterpret my teachers intentions?

You didn't cite any sources.

Obama 82
Romney 18

100% accurate.

At 10/23/12 06:37 PM, Profanity wrote:

At 10/23/12 06:34 PM, JMHX wrote:

At 10/23/12 05:57 PM, TheMason wrote:

(Oh...and let's not forget GitMo is still open, we left Iraq on Bush's timeline, and Obama used a Bush-style surge in Afghanistan.)

Gitmo Gitmo Gitmo

Gitmo is no longer a torture prison. The Obama Administration has filed a law to allow the residents to be detained until they can be processed safely.

Now think about how vague and eminently bendable those two sentences are, and you'll see why I'm so anxious to have the fucking thing closed.

At 10/23/12 05:45 PM, TheMason wrote: Cootie,


Secondly, I would not put slavery as an issue that falls on this spectrum. The reason is from the founding, slavery was one of the most divisive issues the young nation faced. The 3/5ths compromise/clause is an example of this. This was not, as students are taught in High School and American/Black Studies, a scheme to say that blacks are 3/5ths of a man. It was a check on Southerners from using their slave population to gain seats in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College.

And if you don't find the division of a person into fractions as a means of political chess, I don't know what to say. That really ended up making them no-fifths of a man, if you think about it.

Then you have the Missouri Compromise which basically meant that for every 'free' state admitted to the Union a 'slave' state would be too (and vice versa). So the point is, slavery was unpopular from the beginning with many not wanting it since it violates our fundamental belief in individual liberty.

"Individual liberty." Yeah, maybe in Massachusetts. Seriously, though, there's a whole socioeconomic structure for why the North wanted slavery out of the way, and it had nothing to do with individual liberty. It isn't like freedman former slaves in the North were getting a sweet deal, either. The way they were treated by the North is one of the great untold historical scars in American history.

At 10/23/12 05:58 PM, TheMason wrote:

At 10/23/12 05:57 PM, TheMason wrote:

At 10/23/12 05:57 PM, TheMason wrote:

(Oh...and let's not forget GitMo is still open, we left Iraq on Bush's timeline, and Obama used a Bush-style surge in Afghanistan.)

Gitmo Gitmo Gitmo

You get Congress to work with the White House on the Gitmo plan they tried for three years to push, then we'll make some progress on Gitmo.

At 10/23/12 05:27 PM, LemonCrush wrote:

At 10/18/12 08:15 PM, JMHX wrote: Hey, welcome to all of American History. What's your name, you must be new here.

I don't recall Washington becoming a dictator. I don't see Eisenhower passing the Patriot Act and starting wars.

I don't recall ANY American president becoming a dictator. And yeah, Eisenhower never managed a war that quickly got insanely out of hand. He never leaned directly on J. Edgar Hoover for black-bag operations or anything. Eisenhower was a pristine alabaster God in a four-star uniform.

For a follow-up on how excessive polling can yield what is essentially a normalized bell curve covering all potentialities, here's Monday's list of polls:

I think you guys are playing coy to a fault here on how American politics assigns credit and blame. We don't say, "The soldiers won World War II," even though it's plainly obvious that yes, the men fighting overseas won that battle for us, while Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman (among many others in the War Department and in Allied governments) provided the overarching strategy in collaboration with commanding officers. But for the purpose of not getting bogged down in an endless recursive cycle of hair-splitting, we just say "FDR won World War II," even though he was technically dead by the final conclusion.

It's the same when we raise up "George Washington," when by any account it was the Continental Congress that enabled almost all of Washington's victories through the necessary bureaucracy that funds and enables warfare. It's the reason we say "Johnson lost Vietnam," or "George W. Bush got Saddam Hussein," or any number of linguistic shortcuts. I'd point to the number of conservative articles highlighting Bush for capturing Hussein, and I never once faulted them for doing so, as one of the advantages of the presidency is the ability to take credit (or bear fault, as Bush also did) for events that occur during your presidency.

So no, it's not technically true that "Obama got Bin Laden." He didn't fly to Pakistan and pull him out of bed himself. But when someone says "Obama got Bin Laden," do we understand what they mean? Do we understand that Osama bin Laden was captured and killed under the order and administration of President Obama? Yes? Then stop being so goddamned coy about assigning credit just because it's a man you disagree with politically. It doesn't advance the debate, and frankly it's a lazy way to avoid acknowledging a political reality.

At 10/23/12 12:13 PM, Cootie wrote:

At 10/23/12 09:39 AM, ZJ wrote:

And let's be honest here. Do you really think that in today's bureaucratic world, that the government is going to take away tons of elected positions from its cronies? I can't say that I see that really happening.

Hell no. The government seems to care about help their buddies out more than helping out all of us and doing what is right. So far 5% of elections have been decided by the electorial vote. I think that is FAR too often.

I'm pretty sure all elections end up decided by the electoral vote, considering electoral vote is the SOLE measure for deciding an election under the Constitution, even if it ends up causing a deadlock that reverts to the House and Senate.

At 10/23/12 12:44 PM, lapis wrote: Listen to this man. Listen to all that he has said to you. His messages are timeless :D

I stand by everything in that post.

I prefer books from major publishing houses and professional journalists, because they never contain inaccuracies.

I didn't want to write this post, but I feel the need given some of the messages I've received and the comments I've gotten about the state of political discussion here.

Hello, I'm JMHX. How are you? I'd like to talk to you about politics by way of telling you a bit about myself. I've been working campaigns and elections since the 2000 Indiana Gubernatorial election, when I was a young buck intern. I pulled up roots, moved to Washington, D.C., completed two degrees and postponed a third in progress, worked alongside a former United States Senator from Indiana as his policy analyst in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, headed the Communications shop for a U.S. Congressman from Indiana and transitioned to public policy and lobbying at a large social media company before taking my current position as the head of Strategic Political Communication at a large PR firm in the center of the city. Now I work mainly with banks and financial services firms looking for a voice on the Hill.

I'm a Democrat active in Virginia politics, recently elected to a very local position. Being from Indiana, I run on the conservative end of the Democratic spectrum. I'm a free-trader and an investor sympathetic to a restructuring of the tax code, especially where double-taxed dividends come in. I'm here to tell you to cut the bullshit:

- Everyone here, Democrat and Republican and Socialist and Marxist, Libertarian and Green and Constitution Party, needs to start debating in good faith with each other. You're online handles on a low-population political board. Stop being so goddamn prideful of your points and actually try to listen to the individual writing their point. If you're going to counter them, I challenge you to do it without profanity or personal attacks. I'm guilty of some of this, because man, seeing the same argument repeated ad infinitum is really, really frustrating.

- Accept flaws in your candidate, regardless of your personal convictions. The number one rule of political analysis is intellectual honesty. If you can't accurately accept when your guy lost a debate or fucked up a policy (or, more importantly, if you don't understand what the goals of the candidate are going IN to the debate or policy), you're going to give dreadful analysis. Not everything in national politics is about the outright win. There are very few knockout punches. Just deal with it. I can guarantee there's practically no partisan screaming between Democratic and Republican analysts when the cameras are off. They're surprisingly honest.

- Stop making sweeping claims off of relatively limited data. This is something my free-trader friends do a lot. Recognize the limitations of scholarly research and, most of all, political polls. We're in a Wild West era as far as polling is concerned, and as you can tell from the huge range of polls out there, it's really risky to stake one's argument on a poll, which is itself just a snapshot of a window in the past. If you're going to debate something, best stick with defendable claims instead of sweeping generalizations about an entire country, party, economic sector or culture.

- Delete your first rebuttal. You know that sentence you banged out in anger after Warforger or Korriken said something you think is just so liberal/conservative? Delete it. Stop for a few minutes and think about how you can phrase the rebuttal that actually ADDS a discussion point or piece of data. If your rebuttal is a sentence that contains the words "liberal" or "conservative" in an insulting way, I'd advise you look back and rethink.

- Ask. If you don't know how something works, like, say, the international financial system or something, and someone has made a broad claim that uses that system as its backbone, ask them to clarify. Ask for specifics on how it works and how it fits into the argument. As a strategist, I've bamboozled people with big, complex paragraphs before. They were meaningless. They threw in words like "federal reserve inflation adjustment bond issues," which means nothing, but it got me a vote on Dodd/Frank. Sometimes the best way to get an opponent to back down isn't to move the debate forward, but to pause it on that issue and provide better understanding of a system than they have.

I want to debate with you bros, but this is entirely too personal and rancorous right now. Y'all need to calm down a bit and realize this should be fun. If you look at it from my perspective, having been on and off the Politics forum since I was in high school many moons ago, a lot of the good, quality debate on here prepped me for the fast-thinking I have to do in my job. It sounds silly, but it's true.

Also: Obama ~288 Electorals. Callin' it.

Those overflowing feels when Wikipedia generally holds up about 80-87% of the time depending on topic.

America. America is my source.

At 10/23/12 12:55 AM, Cootie wrote:

At 10/23/12 12:35 AM, JMHX wrote:

It doesn't have anything to do with right or left, religion, or political party? At the root conservationism is retaining tradition

Actually, conservationism is about responsible use of natural resources.

At 10/23/12 12:53 AM, Profanity wrote:

At 10/23/12 12:49 AM, JMHX wrote:

At 10/23/12 12:48 AM, TheKlown wrote: Mitt Romney is probably going to win the Popular vote, a lot of experts are expecting Romney to win the Popular vote and President Obama to win the Electoral College.

>A lot of experts
>0.4% chance

>Replying to a person whose father tunes the TV to FOX news.

IN THE INTEREST OF FULL DISCLOSURE

I did find one New York Times analyst who has the following:

Romney wins popular vote 30.1%

At 10/23/12 12:48 AM, TheKlown wrote: Mitt Romney is probably going to win the Popular vote, a lot of experts are expecting Romney to win the Popular vote and President Obama to win the Electoral College.

>A lot of experts
>0.4% chance

At 10/22/12 09:08 PM, DingoWalleyStudio wrote:

I think that if everyone who could were forced to vote in National and State elections, and all states fallowed a District by District model instead of a State by State one, the Electoral College system would be fixed, and 3rd parties could actually start making appearances in certain areas.

Yes, mandatory voting doesn't undermine the ideals of the United States at all.

>Still fighting over whether Obama is "responsible" for killing Osama bin Laden

Face it, even Republican political analysts and party advisors have admitted Romney doesn't win on foreign policy, hence sticking to the message of jobs and the economy. If you can't accept the basic foundations of political analysis and positioning, you really ought not be engaging in political punditry, even on a shitty forum like this.

Proper political analysis requires the ability to admit when the guy you like fucked up, or else you're never going to have any credibility.

At 10/23/12 12:17 AM, Cootie wrote:

At 10/22/12 11:24 PM, NightmareWitch wrote: Do you have any examples?

All change throughout history? I already named the abolishment of slavery, allowing women to vote, and abortion being legalized as examples.

Abolition of slavery and woman suffrage were both pioneered by hard-right religious conservatives who also became notorious for founding the temperance movements that banned alcohol in Britain and the United States. The Women's Christian Temperance Union, one of the major woman suffrage groups in the United States, was avowedly conservative and worked with Republicans moreso than Democrats. They had to practically force Wilson to push suffrage into Congress in 1918.

The same for slavery, if you look at the abolition of the slave trade in Britain (religious organizations) and the major abolitionists in the north (conservative religious individuals led by William Lloyd Garrison). They were in no way what you'd consider liberal, and in many ways had social views on blacks that were more regressive than southerners, who at least had a plurality favoring manumission and a transition to a tenant-landlord sharecropping model. Abolitionists in the North saw it as their religious duty not only to free the black man from bondage, but to send him home, because he had no place in America.

ITT: People don't know the difference between a government and a private business and how the law affects each of them differently.

At 10/22/12 04:34 PM, Korriken wrote:

At 10/20/12 12:49 PM, Warforger wrote:

Romney: I'm different in these ways.

Obama: Bullshit.

Romney isn't allowed to answer.

By this logic a debate should go on forever about one question FROM SOMEONE IN THE AUDIENCE.

It wasn't so much a question as to why Romney is different from Bush, whose very name is toxic in politics, it was a shot to connect Romney to Bush without giving him any real way to defend himself.

Whose fault is it that the Bush name is toxic? Isn't the Republican Party the one about taking responsibility for one's actions and fuck-ups?

At 10/22/12 04:23 PM, Korriken wrote:

At 10/20/12 12:49 PM, Warforger wrote:

Um the question was to Romney, Romney argued why he was different from Bush and then Obama argued why they're still on the same page in terms of what they did wrong.

exactly. How come Obama wasn't asked how he is different from Bush? Even you should be able to figure out the reason this question was asked in the first place.

Because the woman IN THE AUDIENCE specifically asked the question to Gov. Romney, being that he is running to be the first Republican since George W. Bush in the White House. Or is this more of that conspiracy stuff, stacking the audience with 'secret liberals' to shame Romney for being a Republican? Hey, to be fair, Romney knew full well upon running that it would invite comparisons to George W. Bush.

don't make me laugh.

Yes, don't.

At 10/22/12 01:01 PM, WizMystery wrote: Any who oppose, how about this short list of things that are also discriminatory towards age?

1. Child Labor Laws
2. Legal Drinking Age
3. Age of Consent
4. Minimum Driving Age
5. Social Security/Pension

6. Prostitution

At 10/22/12 11:37 AM, TheMason wrote:

At 10/21/12 10:28 PM, Warforger wrote:

All I'm suggesting is isn't possible that there is something the pollsters are missing. Especially, since economic-based models of predicting the election are not in agreement with the polls.

This election is the first time in a while that national tracking polls and state tracking polls have diverged so sharply so close to election day. And to be fair, the 1940s really were the early days of polling, where methodology was yet to be standardized. A great example of early polling methodology errors is 1936, when Literary Digest ran a poll for Landon v. Roosevelt, and found Landon winning in a landslide. Of course, as we all know the actual election repudiated the Literary Digest results.

There's a good reason for that - Literary Digest polled ONLY ITS SUBSCRIBERS, who tended to lean heavily Republican and thus into the Landon camp. This was the poll that really changed the landscape of professional political polling, and began the long journey to developing accurate methodology. Things have gotten much more accurate since then.

At 10/22/12 04:24 AM, Feoric wrote: We haven't tried taxing ourselves out of the Great Recession, though. The Bush tax cuts were extended, remember?

You no rike grorious Chinese attack ad? You go to camps!

At 10/21/12 11:56 PM, naronic wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=trueview-instream&v=pdD cMPO_-TA

me rikey

Plenty of nice places ban kids. I love 'em. Not kids. Fuck kids. But not in the sexual way. Maybe in the sexual way.

At 10/21/12 09:12 PM, EKublai wrote: This news has been hitting the wire about for a about a day now, and it will likely be a big topic during tomorrows debate.
Sources have indicated that Iran has announced it is now open to enter unilateral, one-on-one dialogues with The United States regarding its nuclear program. This has been the goal of Obama's administration all along, and potentially represents a major breakthrough in halting Iran's vying for nuclear armament.

Unilateral talks aren't going to happen, and those haven't been a goal of the Obama Administration "All along." Obama has always stressed disarmament PRIOR TO any talks, and talks were always intended to be multilateral, as was the case with North Korea during the Bush Administration.

Regardless of whether or not one believes talks to be the right step or not, Iran isn't going to go from blatant bellicosity to White House-level talks just because it suddenly wants them. Of COURSE it wants them. Their economy is on the brink of total collapse.

I for one welcome our robot overlords.

At 10/21/12 02:42 PM, science-is-fun wrote:

At 10/16/12 05:53 PM, TheMason wrote: Where Keynesian economics went wrong is that he failed to account for the greed for power that politicians and government bureaucracies have.

The problem is it's difficult for laymen to judge what government policies should be precisely and unfortunately people rely on shills like Krugman for the complex analysis required, or the polar opposite, at this point though several indicators have exceeded historical maximums so we can safely say it's time to reel things back in now.

Can we "safely say that?" Because economists in Europe said that as the catalyst for continent-wide austerity, and economic growth/employment hasn't exactly been booming since the austerity measures went in to effect. On the other hand, buildings and cars in Greece have certainly been on fire a lot.