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It really is amazing that most of the Republicans don't really seem to get why they lost and didn't even see it coming. Meanwhile, Team Obama got just the results they were expecting. It really doesn't help the Republicans to produce data that shows them winning if it isn't based in reality.
The Republicans with at least half a brain realize they have a demographic problem, but they don't seem to get they have a policy problem as well. The electorate recognizes there is a deficit. They think Obama's approach of asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a bit more and cutting military spending makes a lot more sense than tax cuts, "closing loopholes" and severely slashing social programs. Apparently Speaker Boehner and friends didn't get the memo that it was President Obama and his policies that won. Not only did they win the election but there is plenty of polling that shows the electorate prefers Obama's approach. I think President Obama should sell his proposal for dealing with the "fiscal cliff" directly to the people because the Republicans don't appear to be ready to compromise. I really hope the Democrats stand firm. Oh yeah and the Republican's demographic problem isn't going away if they keep referring to African Americans and others as takers and Latinos as illegals and all the rape talk, not even supporting equal pay for women and trying to suppress the vote. On top of that they have warring factions between the Tea Party and Establishment Republicans. They have a lot of problems and I am skeptical they can really turn this around. America is changing and changing fast. It has been for quite some time. |
from Michael Moore
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This just about makes me cry! When I first came out in '78, the thought that there would now be states where we could marry was so out of my frame of reference, it was unthinkable.
It is a moving train and will not be stopped, though I cannot believe it îs stil not legal in California of all places! Washington same-sex marriage opponents concede By Natalie Jennings, Published: NOVEMBER 08, 4:43 PM ET Washington state is on track to become the ninth state to approve gay marriage as opponents of a referendum there conceded Thursday afternoon: “With added results showing that we have not closed the gap, it now appears clear that Referendum 74 will be narrowly approved,” said Joseph Backholm, chairman of Preserve Marriage Washington, which worked to defeat the measure. Voters in Maryland and Maine also approved same-sex marriage measures on Tuesday, while Minnesota voters rejected a constitutional ban on it. With the news from WA, means 49+ million Americans (16% of pop) will live in states where same-sex couples can get a marriage license! |
LGBT Voters Crucial to Obama Popular Vote Victory: LGBT Voters Vital to Outcome in Florida
http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.ed...-vote-victory/ |
They're back-peddling on immigration policy. Latinos got out and voted, and it will pay off for them. That is not always the case. We lgbt folks voted Democratic for decades before we started getting crumbs from the table.
It's a good day for my students. It was fun this morning to hear the clip of Hannity saying he had "evolved" on the issue. Gawd. But who cares. This is how politics works. I am just glad that there will be reform. |
I meant the Republicans are backpeddaling on their anti-immigration policies. It's a joy to behold. It's another "I never thought I'd see the day."
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First elected Transwoman in NH State Legislature: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/...tes-first.html
Also of note is that NH is the first all-woman delegation (Governor, Congresswomen and Senators)! http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2...-and-governor/ |
Much of what I see going on is the typical morning after a disappointing evening with sudden tranformations, "new" pronouncements, and generalized bargaining that goes along with licking ones wounds. As a result, I try not to overinvest in what looks like fundamental changes of heart. The cynic in me gives this euphoric peroid a couple of weeks to a month before reality sets back in. Remember, it was just Monday when we were all on pins and needles, worried about what could happen, worried about the polls, worried that we could lose, worried about the impact of losing, worried about where we would be moving to and if our passports were up to date. We were worried with good reason. Come Tuesday, with victory at hand, that worry turns into euphoria. Almost like you can feel the strutting of the peacock amass in its glory at having dodged utter disaster. Relief for sure. So were we worried for nothing? Victims of our own misgivings? Or were we reacting to something very real, almost palatable? Is a huge electoral win a pronouncement of a country undivided when in reality, the margin of victory over all was .4% of all voters. Not exactly an overwhelming stamp of approval or is it? I am thrilled voters went against those who still have mental processes that include things like legitimate rape. Yet, I am very mindful that the most damage to womens reproductive rights was not done on the federal level. It was done by state legislatures who enacted weird shit under the guise of protecting womens health. It is great more states are going to allow gay marriage or at least not define marriage as between a woman and a man. If memory serves, with the exception of Iowa, the approvals would overlap as expected on the maps of the election/pre-civil war maps Linus shared. Fundamental change or following the typical course of division? Im not sure what to think about the marijuana stuff. I dont drink or do drugs so it is of no importance to me except as a driver who has to share the road with another group of individuals with substance induced impaired judgement. As a cultural change I do see some issues tho not necessarily in a positive direction. To me, this just opens the system up to more and more dui cases clogging up the court system, more avoidable deaths, more revamping of the educational system and their just say no to drugs or whatever the current programming is, more confusion for kids about whether and/or which drugs are good for them or bad for them, more escapist coping. Just my opinion tho. I do see much more stuff taking shape as to the states defying and challenging the federal government, and the feds challenging the states. Not sure if this is a good thing or not. Conflict does beget change eventually albeit sometimes ugly change with unpredictable and unexpected results. Interesting times to be sure. |
Intellectual Stimulation:
This is one BAD ASS straight white male. Tell it.
Letter to a future Republican strategist regarding white people November 9, 2012 To whom it may concern regarding the United States federal elections of 2014, 2016 and beyond: Allow me to introduce myself to you, the existing (or aspiring!) strategist for the Republican Party. My name is Eric Arnold Garland and I am a White Man. Boy, am I ever – you need sunglasses just to look at my photo! If I read the news correctly, I fit a profile that is of extreme importance to the GOP, as I embody the archetype that fits your narrative of Real Americans. Just how much should my profile interest you? Are you sitting down? My family lineage goes back to the MAYFLOWER, BOAT ONE!!! (Garland family of New England-> John Adams -> Howard Alden -> Plymouth colony ->KINGS OF MUTHAF***IN’ ENGLAND) I am a heterosexual, married to the super Caucasian mother of my two beautiful children who are, inexplicably, EVEN WHITER THAN I AM. I am college educated (Master’s degree!) and affluent. I am a job creator and small businessman. We pay a lot of taxes! Every year! I grew up in a rural area and despise laziness! Having started my own business, I have complained at length about the insanity of federal, state and local bureaucracy – and its deleterious impact on the innovative small businessman. I currently live in the suburbs in a historically Red state. HOLY WHITE PEOPLE, BATMAN!!! Wow, you’re thinking – this is not some Mexirican in the Sun Belt we need to attract via harsh anti-Castro policies or appeals to “valores de familia” - this is the BREAD AND BUTTER OF THE GRAND OLD PARTY, a Mayflower-descended small business owner, burdened by taxation, looking out for his beautiful White family in the suburbs of a city (St Louis) surrounded by racial tension and urban blight! How can I put this gently? My wife and I are not sensitive to your messaging, nor did we vote for the candidates you proposed for us this past Tuesday. B-b-but, what? Aren’t we investors, hard-workin’ white folk surrounded by same in a manicured cul-de-sac, scared by a vision of economic collapse amidst the takers in a land of fewer givers? Didn’t Mitt Romney’s strong family, wealth, leadership history and chiseled chin give us the uncontrollable urge to high-five him into the White House? No. May I explain why not, purely for your education, such that you might be interested in winning an election on the national level at some point in the future? It bears pointing out that I should be your Low Hanging Fruit, the easy vote to get as opposed to, say, African-Americans, Latinos, or Asians – and you’re not even speaking well to me. The reasons why ought to concern you deeply. As a Card-Carrying White Male I love expressing my opinion irrespective of whether people care to hear it, so let’s get started. >>>>>> Science - One of the reasons my family is affluent is that my wife and I have a collective fifteen years of university education between us. I have a Masters degree in Science and Technology Policy, and my wife is a physician who holds degrees in medicine as well as cell and molecular biology. We are really quite unimpressed with Congressional representatives such as Todd Akin and Paul Broun who actually serve on the House science committee and who believe, respectively, that rape does not cause pregnancy and that evolution and astrophysics are lies straight from Satan’s butt cheeks. These are, sadly, only two of innumerable assaults that the Republican Party has made against hard science – with nothing to say of logic in general. Please understand the unbearable tension this might create between us and your candidates. Climate - Within just the past 18 months the following events have come to our attention: a record-breaking drought that sent temperatures over 100 degrees for weeks, killing half the corn in the Midwest and half the TREES on our suburban property – AND – a hurricane that drowned not New Orleans or Tampa or North Carolina but my native state of VERMONT. As an encore, a second hurricane drowned lower Manhattan, New Jersey and Long Island. The shouted views of decrepit mental fossil Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma that this is a fraud perpetrated on the American people by evil, conspiring climate scientists is belied by such events and is looking irresponsible to even the most skeptical. Healthcare - My wife and I are quite familiar with America’s healthcare system due to our professions, and having lived abroad extensively, also very aware of comparable systems. Your party’s insistence on declaring the private U.S. healthcare system “the best in the world” fails nearly every factual measure available to any curious mind. We watch our country piss away 60% more expenditures than the next most expensive system (Switzerland) for health outcomes that rival former Soviet bloc nations. On a personal scale, my wife watches poor WORKING people show up in emergency rooms with fourth-stage cancer because they were unable to afford primary care visits. I have watched countless small businesses unable to attract talented workers because of the outrageous and climbing cost of private insurance. And I watch European and Asian businesses outpace American companies because they can attract that talent without asking people to risk bankruptcy and death. That you think this state of affairs is somehow preferable to “Obamacare,” which you compared ludicrously to Trotskyite Russian communism, is a sign of deficient minds unfit to guide health policy in America. War - Nations do have to go to war sometimes, but that Iraq thing was pretty bad, to put it mildly. Somebody should have been, I dunno – FIRED for bad performance. Aren’t you the party of good corporate managers or something? This topic could get 10,000 words on its own. Let’s just leave it at: You guys suck at running wars. Deficits and debt - Whenever the GOP is out of power, it immediately appeals to the imagination of voters who remember the Lyndon Baines Johnson (!) administration and claim that the Republican alternative is the party of “cutting spending” and “reducing the deficit.” The only problem with your claim is that Republican governments throughout my entire 38 year life (Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43) have failed to cut spending and deficit and debt EVEN ONCE. I hope you understand that your credibility suffers every time you promise one thing for three decades and do the EXACT OPPOSITE. Egads – if you actually were the party of fiscal responsibility – you might win our votes despite your 13th century view of science! Gay marriage - As the child of Baby Boomers who got divorced (as was the fashion!) in the 80s and 90s, and for whom 50% of my friends had their homes broken by divorce in the critical years before age 18, I sure am unsympathetic to your caterwauling bullshit that “gays will destroy the sanctity of marriage.” Perhaps if everyone in your generation didn’t take the period of 1978 – 1995 to start surreptitiously banging their neighbors and coworkers, only to abandon their kids because “they just weren’t happy,” I would take your defense of marriage more seriously. The institution of Middle Class suburban marriage was broken by the generation of aging white Baby Boomers who populate what is left of the Republican Party, so your defense is wrongheaded and disingenuous. And moreover, as someone who got called “faggot” about 127 times a day from the years 1985 through 1991 – guess what – I grew up to be pretty good friends with actual homosexuals, whose sexual orientation is usually the least significant thing about them. The Republican perseveration on homosexuals as any sort of threat consigns them to history’s trough of intellectual pig dung. >>>>>> That’s quite enough for one essay, wouldn’t you say? Now, given my initial description as a wealthy, hard-working, job creating, heterosexual, married suburban White Male – doesn’t your current platform look woefully insufficient to the task of gaining my vote? This doesn’t even get into the demographic tensions that show that people of my exact profile are going away permanently in America. You can’t even win on what you perceive to be “home field advantage.” Uh oh, wait, I can already hear you through the web browser, dismissing all of my above points because THAT GUY WAS NEVER GONNA BE A REPUBLICAN ANYHOW, CUZ HE’S A LIBRUL WHO HATES AMERICA AND… All right, let’s do one last point: Meanness- Your party is really mean, mocking and demonizing everyone who does not follow you into the pits of hell. You constantly imply – as Mitt Romney did in his “47% speech” – that anybody who disagrees with you does so not by logic or moral conviction, but because they are shiftless, lazy parasites who want “free stuff” from “traditional Americans.” Wow, you guys managed to follow up a stunning electoral defeat with insulting the very people you wish to attract for a majority in the political system! Brilliant! You are losing elections because being angry and defensive and just-plain-mean is more important than being smart and winning elections – and thus you deserve everything happening to you. If you want to know exactly where you failed in 2012, and will continue to fail, here it is. Look you assholes, I’m as traditional an American as it gets, and I do not “want free stuff.” I am a taxpayer, and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. I got my first job – dragging bags of cow manure, horse feed and fertilizer around a farm store – when I was 12. I started my first company when I was 28. I have followed the vast majority of the rules set out for middle class white males (for good and for ill.) And if it weren’t bad enough that your policy positions are a complete clusterfuck for the reasons I lay out in great detail, you manage to follow up the whole exercise with insulting me, my wife, and my friends of every stripe who didn’t vote for your political party – all of whom are hard-working, taxpaying, job creating, law abiding, great AMERICANS of EVERY COLOR AND CREED. From this white, Mayflower-descended strategic analyst, allow me to offer you the three strategic options you have before you: 1. You drastically moderate your platform to harmonize with the policy positions I present above 2. You disband the party and reorganize it to reflect current realities 3. You kick and scream and stamp your feet and call me and my friends names – and submit to several decades of one party rule While I do not want a one-party system, I also don’t particularly care which of these options you choose. If you look carefully at the numbers on Tuesday, nobody else cares, either. Just a word to the wise from one White Man to (presumably) another. |
Dear Eric Arnold Garland, Your righteous indignation is duly noted. However, we are having just a little difficulty taking your temper tantrum seriously. First of all, we checked the Mayflower records. We confirm your lineage did make the voyage. Unfortunately, they traveled in coach which is the Mayflower equivalent to the 47% slacker class. IF they had traveled first class, your DNA would carry more weight. Second of all, we appreciate you elaborating on why you yourself are so freakin special. We hear that your unique specialness makes you an authority on all and everything. We have received millions of letters from special people just like you. We do understand that on the day all of you were born, you were each led to believe a star rose in the east and wise men came bearing gifts. I regret to inform you that your parents lied. You were all nothing but flailing mounds of flesh in stinky diapers screaming your colicy lungs out. Nice to see you have at least outgrown the diapers. Thirdly, while we appreciate how valuable you THINK you are to the cause, you really arent. While we appreciate you buying into all the rhetoric, the fact you still have to work to make a living, renders you nothing more than a common peon. Those of us who ARE important do appreciate your willingness to behave like a rat in a maze, chasing the miniscule trinkets of success we set in your path, deluding yourself into thinking you are succeeding. It amuses us to watch you and your overinflated sense of self think you are actually going somewhere. Fourth, and here is where you become wearisome, you are a necessary cog in the wheel of life but you are also a drain. You are a small business owner. I know you think this makes you special, an entrepeneur, a potential savior. Truth is, you cost us a small fortune. Guaranteed loans, special tax incentives, all the little perkies we feed you is what make it possible for you to be and feel successful. You own a lily white house in a lily white neighborhood with a lily white fence. It is the handouts you get that makes this possible. You tend to forget the mortgage and property taxes you deduct from your taxes deprives us of billions of dollars of revenue each year. You tend to forget we choose to subsidize the clean water you drink, the remnants of the toilets you flush, the electricty you depend on, the gas for the guzzlers you insist on buying, the food you put on the table......all money given to make your life easier and less expensive. Are you grateful for these gifts? I think not. Same for your wife, the physician who doesnt see people until they have 4th stage cancer. The hippocratic oath says.....first do no harm. It does not say first do no harm only to those who can afford care. You are merely exploiting an industry for your own personal six figure or more gain. If you and your wife are soooooo concerned about poor people, what are YOU doing to change that? One last thing....we know you fancy yourself as a job creator. There are millions of unemployed Americans and you can accommodate how many? Do I need to use both hands or will one suffice? Oh, btw, creating more bigoted, sanctimonious, self centered, me-ists doesnt count. In closing, we thank you for your input. We thoroughly enjoyed it. It added immense laughter to the morning coffee hour. Please accept this gift :baby: from us. Given your excessive whining, we are sure it will come in handy. Sincerely, Ask me if I give a shit, the whom to which this was addressed |
Maureen Dowd:
"Romney and Tea Party loonies dismissed half the country as chattel and moochers who did not belong in their 'traditional' America. But the more they insulted the president with birther cracks, the more they tried to force chastity belts on women, and the more they made Hispanics, blacks and gays feel like the help, the more these groups burned to prove that, knitted together, they could give the dead-enders of white male domination the boot. The election about the economy also sounded the death knell for the Republican culture wars. Romney was still running in an illusory country where husbands told wives how to vote, and the wives who worked had better get home in time to cook dinner. But in the real country, many wives were urging husbands not to vote for a Brylcreemed boss out of a ’50s boardroom whose party was helping to revive a 50-year-old debate over contraception. Just like the Bushes before him, Romney tried to portray himself as more American than his Democratic opponent. But America’s gallimaufry wasn’t knuckling under to the gentry this time."
- Maureen Dowd, writing for the New York Times. |
CBS Morning News
Ben Stein: The GOP will come back
(CBS News) Before we close the book on the week just past, some last thoughts on Campaign 2012. Republicans have been doing a lot of soul-searching since Tuesday's election - and that includes our contributor Ben Stein: Wow. It sure hurts to lose, and we in the GOP came so close in so many vital states and in the popular vote. And, in hindsight, we can see we made some big mistakes - weak behavior in the third debate, wacky Senate candidates, naming as a candidate a man of great wealth and a finance background after a Wall Street debacle. But let's not cry and swear to leave the country, as some of my Republican friends did the other night. Our position as a party is not at all terrible. We still control the House. We have enough votes in the Senate to block anything we hate. The Democrats know they won by a modest margin. They have no overwhelming mandate, and they know it. I have seen our party in far worse shape - after the Goldwater disaster of '64; after Watergate and the thorough beating we got in the 1974 elections when we barely held a third of the House. We have been pronounced dead and buried over and over again. And we've always come back, like the Energizer Bunny. Only we don't want to be just a bunny. We want to be the creating party, the party of life and energy. And we can be. We still have great ideas: Limited government; a warm welcome for small business and job creators; appreciation of living by work, not handouts; the protection of innocent life; fairness for he working family; recognition of the basics of individual liberty. But we have to make some changes in our hearts - big changes. This is not the white man's country exclusively anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time. The strategy of appealing to angry white men is not correct, either morally or practically. This is a genuine multi-cultural, multi-racial democracy today. We must appeal to working women, to single women, to blacks. In particular, we can and must stop hurting the feelings of Hispanics and start inviting them into our party. We must plead with them to see that we have common cause on many issues, especially small business, the value of hard work, the sanctity of family and life. We can do it and we will do it. Next time around, let's find a man or woman with the eloquence and charisma of a Barack Obama on our side, and a party platform that invites everyone, of every sex and race who shares the best of our values into our tent. And at their best, they are still America's best values. © 2012 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
Mulling This Over
Why Arizona is a red state in a sea of blue states "Before this election cycle, New Mexico experimented with messaging and figured out how to reach its diverse Latino population. They created messages that moved beyond “Sí, se puede” (Yes, we can) and which appealed to first-generation Latinos as well as to sixth-generation Latinos, resulting in a greater voter turnout. New Mexicans, in other words, did not treat Latinos neither as a static or homogenous group, and took steps to ensure its message appealed across generational lines." http://21border.com/2012/11/12/why-a...f-blue-states/ |
Oh lookie, Georgia wants to be like Texas...
Georgians 'peacefully' petition the Obama administration, asking to secede from the United States Posted by Max Blau @maxblau on Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 11:50 AM It's been less than a week since the nation re-elected President Barack Obama, giving the Commander in Chief another four years in office. Unsurprisingly, the election's outcome didn't please everyone. But rather than simply deal with the results, however, thousands of Georgians have decided that they would rather secede from the United States. |
What would JC -- Jimmy Carter -- say?
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add alabama, arkansas, colorado, florida, indiana, kentucky, louisiana, michigan, mississippi, missouri, montana, new jersey, new york, north carolina, north dakota, oregon, south carolina and tennessee to the list
they need 25,000 signatures in 30 days to be reviewed by the admin i think a vote with your feet response is valid to a government you find destructive it's an interesting where would you draw the line question though in the past i have toyed with the idea of being an individual secessionist i find the idea of being a sovereign entity very appealing |
What the hell...
Secession petitions filed in 20 states By Mike Krumboltz, Yahoo! News | The Lookout – 7 hrs agoIn the wake of last week's presidential election, thousands of Americans have signed petitions seeking permission for their states to peacefully secede from the United States. The petitions were filed on We the People, a government website. States with citizens filing include Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Oddly, folks from Georgia have filed twice. Even stranger, several of the petitions come from states that went for President Barack Obama. LINKYLOO |
at least Colorado voters actually legalized marijuana by constitutional amendment.....LEGAL in the state....not decriminalized.....and they also legalized industrial hemp..........
Washington state also legalized marijuana and hemp. |
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