That was fast. When is that election anyway? Next year?
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PoliGAF 2013 |OT1| Never mind, Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
- Thread starter ClovingWestbrook
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That was fast. When is that election anyway? Next year?
I'd not be surprised if Hillary were dissembling. She's ensconced as the clear favorite for the Democratic nomination. And she's garnered approval, even after the Benghazi row, from the broader public. Perhaps she's truly weary after decades of public service, but she'd be spurning an unusually lucrative opportunity. It might prove overwhelmingly tempting.
Rubio is not worth obsessing over. He's an unremarkable politician who receives inordinate attention only because he's one of the few minority Republicans. Aside from his ethnicity, he's a typical Republican. An average, lackluster candidate. I think he could win a presidential election, but he's not especially formidable.
No. Hillary is the strongest option, but the Democrats retain quality alternatives. They're certainly competent enough to defeat whatever wretch the Republicans nominate.
No but someone at Fox thinks Germany is sunnier than the US. So there's that.
PhoenixDark
Banned
Pretty amazing that he's using donor money to attack someone who is 100% not running; she just got divorced for christs sake. Maybe this is just a "make fun of the liberal" rally around the flag moment he's using to appease conservatives...but it's stupid as fuck.
I don't think anyone who cares about Benghazi was gonna vote D in the first place.
I think that's what they were hoping for. I doubt very much that it worked.
PhoenixDark
Banned
Agreed. Watching the 180 from "we love Hillary and wish she was president!" to "she watched our boys die!" has been entertaining. Alas the public doesn't care. Not saying Benghazi wasn't a fuck up, just that republicans severely overplayed their hand.
Remember those nine attacks on US embassies during Bush's terms? The ones no one had anything to say about
No. It did not even mar her slightly. After consistently rating as the most popular public official throughout Obama's first term, her approval rating has never been higher.
speculawyer
Member
No. They tried to make a big deal of for this election and nobody gave a shit. 4 years from now people are going to give even less of shit.
Watching John McCain melt down over this manufactured and disgraceful nonsense tells me that he wasn't simply a good old republican who made a poor choice with a Veep pick, but rather a fucking venal angry shit bullet that we narrowly dodged.
He has fucked himself for good. And I think Karl Rove will now be seen as a net drag on the party.
Link
The Autumn Wind
Does anyone know how many total Americans died in those attacks? I'm legitimately asking, because it would make a strong counterpoint to people still "angry" about Benghazi.
zero shift
Banned
So is the blog dead?
speculawyer
Member
Oh . . . I just finished a run and I watched that and laughed so fucking hard at that that I started coughing and my belly hurts.
I hope not. I was keeping it alive for a little while, but have been sick as hell the past week or so and have a bunch of other projects put on me at the same time (I'm still working 3 jobs here! lol)
zero shift
Banned
Are you trying to buy a PS3?
speculawyer
Member
PS3 was 2 jobs, PS4 is 3 jobs.
I've been busy with my own stuff the last few weeks (I'm working on a technology in the classroom story that I may post on the blog as well but that won't be for a few months), but I've been planning a thing on the penny specifically for it.
Nah, trying to keep above water with my student loans... Mostly, though, I'm trying to get my resume/portfolio good enough that I can get a single decent job sometime soon.
jamesinclair
Banned
You guys blew your wad too early eh?
I warned you about that....
Ive had a blog for almost two years now and shit gets hard to maintain.
I aim for 3x a week. Had my best month ever this January though.
Well, if everyone did one piece per week we'd have more than enough content.
Haters gonna hate.
Wait, I hate Kentucky; so much cognitive dissonance.
WOULD
vote for her
jamesinclair
Banned
Yup, you have enough contributers that each doing 1x a week would mean always new content.
You need a more centralized process though. IE: if three people do an article one day, they get posted over 3 days, with the first simply being the one most relevant to recent news
Al-ibn Kermit
Junior Member
They need an editor. Somebody who never posts anything, but who streamlines the content and spreads the word through fake article comments and virtual marketing.
jamesinclair
Banned
Pretty much, although the editor can contribute to.
Also, reddit is a good way to get hits, although you wont want to submit to the main politics one. Find some subreddit with enough traffic in it, but first build up an account so you dont get flagged as spam.
And create 200 twitter accounts that all follow each other and retweet themselves.
zero shift
Banned
Hell freezes over? The economist looks toward Nordic countries for the model?
I thought that was a pretty shitty article. They are doing awesome and are ranked amongst the best in everything, but it is unsustainable for some unexplained reason and that they should be more like singapore, just because free market is better, for some unexplained reason
makes perfect sense
The superpacs have definitely led to fire-and-forget advertising. This last election cycle, if someone even MENTIONED they were possibly running for an office or thinking about supporting someone, you'd have 3 attack ads on them within a week here.
People have so much old money to play with that they're using it as a sledgehammer on thumbtacks. The conservative PACs are really taking their donors out to the cleaners with their own money.
edit: example here is Bob Kerrey said he was looking into running in the Nebraska Congress race. Looking into it, not even a candidate. There were Kerrey attack ads by the end of the week. He wasn't even a candidate yet and nobody even knew who the opponent would be if he did run.
It must be nice to be a homogeneous country with a small population.
TheHeretic
Banned
Well to add something to the comparison, Nordic countries are a very difficult model for others to follow. The Governments administer lower populations with high levels of cultural homogeneity unlike the US, Britain and many other more diverse countries. They also bear classically socialist elements in that the function of high taxes isn't re-distributive to poorer members of society as per Liberalism, but is effectively paid back to taxpayers through Government services they are the primary beneficiaries of.
Its remarkable how well their Governments function but i'd pin it down to high levels stability and a lack of social problems generally. Throw in a history of racism, high levels of deeply foreign immigration and extreme differences in values across the population and they'd more closely resemble other countries in how nightmarish politics can be.
zero shift
Banned
Its the Economist what do you expect? I also loved how they praised Sweden's school system ignoring the fact that they have pretty subpar education (worse than America) in which there is nowhere to go but up and that Finland has the most leftist type education possible and has the best education in the world as they rank 3 in PISA.
I also love how letting businesses fail is far right now. You could tell that they were grasping for straws in that article for "but they are pretty far right too!"
I'm just shocked that they recommended the Nordic countries. The magazine is economic right wing as fuck. They just don't believe in austerity.
I'm personally interested in how Cyprus does things. They're lead by a "Communist" party after all.
But i thought school vouchers were the way to go!
And I dont think the economist is terribly right wing. Of course, I am comparing the economist to republicans, and if the economist was a person, he wouldnt be a republican
Speaking of school vouchers. What exactly is the end game? I just never understood how anyone could advocate for such a seemingly short sighted approach. Sure, all the dedicated parents and motivated kids will try to flock to the best schools, but what about the rest of them that dont get into them? How does that improve those schools who are stuck with the left overs? It seems like it would make them a hell of a lot worse and punish kids who have parents that don't take an active role in their education...
adamsappel
Member
Are you new to the Republican party? They don't care about those kids. Those kids should be pulling on bootstraps and become janitors at their schools.
zero shift
Banned
In Sweden's defense the voucher program is very new and has grown exponentially. Voucher schools went from compromising a fraction of a percent of all schools to ten percent in just a few years. And according to a study, not sure how valid, education results have improved in both private and public schools.
That said...
this. I mean its so shortsighted. Its similar to limiting union bargaining. I mean yeah you will see increases the first 2, 3, or 4 years, but what about the next 20, 30, and 40 which is ultimately whats most important?
Their right wing tendencies tend to be aimed at regulations and social spending. Just look at how they pick on France any time they mess up and ignore Germany when they are at fault.
He's pretty charismatic, speaks well, has a hot wife, looks quite Presidential, etc. etc. He's basically the closest thing to the GOP Obama in terms of his prospects.
I guess thats my point. the economist actually favors more social spending than republicans
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/08/non-social_conservatism
old article, but you wouldnt see an article like that in the Weekly Standard or some other right wing shit rag
zero shift
Banned
Healthcare is the only thing The Economist likes socialized. And I mean the ONLY thing. Its kind of like how the American right hates government spending anything that aren't retirement funds and the military.
adamsappel
Member
And I would take economist republicans over American republicans in a heart beat. We'd actually have socialized medicine, which would insure everyone, put more money into back into middle class pockets, and solve this stupid debt 'crisis' by actually solving what is causing our increased spending, rising medical costs
zero shift
Banned
Well yeah. But American Republicans are to the right to what Venezuelan Socialists are to the left.
Actually I take that back, Hugo Chavez has actually done some good things for Venezuela even in the past few years. Can't say that about the modern Republicans.
zero shift
Banned
The Economist, generally speaking, takes a lot of socially liberal stances, has aggressively pushed for drug decriminalization and prison reform, is in favor of more liberalized trade and migration policies, advocates for a carbon tax and, as you noted, is in favor of universal health care. Forget comparing them to American conservatives/Republicans; I prefer those stances to the ones that Democrats take.
zero shift
Banned
I don't have a problem with their social stances, I have a problem with their economic stances.
It must be nice to be able to ignorantly blame minorities for all your problems, without explaining why.
You might be interested in knowing that, at the very least, Sweden (can't talk about the other Nordic countries) is far from homogenous (but who needs facts when you have stereotypes?), having seen significant immigration from the middle east, Asia, eastern Europe, former Yugoslavia and more, and has, as a percentage of its population, more foreign-born residents than the US, yet manages to maintain this economical model.
The comment on the 'lack of social problems' is funny too, as, though immigrants are overrepresented among criminals, proper welfare services probably do a lot more to reduce crime than having a homogenous population does (as observed by the fact that Sweden indeed does have a large amount of immigrants, yet less crime than most nations, the comparison to the US in the previous paragraph being extremely relevant to this point when comparing crime levels as well).
The Librarian
Banned
Yeah, guys, stop ignorantly blaming minorities for the US' shortcomings.
Tim the Wiz
Banned
Exactly. It's really weird listening to people talk about how culturally homogeneous contemporary social democracies are. Scandinavian nations have plenty of immigration.
This just typifies the excuse-driven narrative:
The strange framing of American variant "Liberalism" as left of social democratic policy makers in the process of state redistribution. Very, very odd.
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