I don't know if this was posted here or in another thread already, but this is a pretty good article that lays out the fundamental demographic problems facing the Republican party:

We are a clattering, opinionated cluster of nearly all the world’s races and religions, and many of its languages, under one flag.

You would not know any of this looking at who is voting in one of the strangest presidential primary campaigns in history. There is no other way to put this without resorting to demographic bluntness: the small fraction of Americans who are trying to pick the Republican nominee are old, white, uniformly Christian and unrepresentative of the nation at large.

None of that is a surprise. But when you look at the numbers, it’s stunning how little this Republican primary electorate resembles the rest of the United States. They are much closer to the population of 1890 than of 2012.

Given the level of media attention, we know an election of great significance is happening on the Republican side. But it’s occurring in a different place, guided by talk-radio extremists and religious zealots, with only a vague resemblance to the states where it has taken place. From this small world have emerged a host of nutty, retrograde positions, unpopular with the vast American majority.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

I think that Rick Santorum has a genuinlely self-destructive side. I think he would rather see himself as the last righteous man on earth than lose an election. He's also a sanctimonious hypocrite, especially on economic issues. Yet Romney is so weak that he is now ahead. Amazing. The only worse career today than Democratic elected official is Republican elected official. .. .

Santorum is clearly neurotic and is likely a closeted gay or bi person who is repressing his sexual orientation because he is terrified of God condemning him to Hell. His obsession with other people's sexual behavior fits perfectly with repress-and-project behavior.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

I think that Rick Santorum has a genuinlely self-destructive side. I think he would rather see himself as the last righteous man on earth than lose an election. He's also a sanctimonious hypocrite, especially on economic issues. Yet Romney is so weak that he is now ahead. Amazing. The only worse career today than Democratic elected official is Republican elected official. .. .

We need to ask why clowns like Santorum can get ahead in our political system. It's as if nothing that they say matters except that it stirs the anger and ignorance of a certain part of the public.

Santorum would be an incredibly weak President. Sure, he has some "tough guy" traits, but that ostensible toughness hides spiritual and intellectual weakness. He has always been a political opportunist, and he became a stooge of George W. Bush in the belief that such would catapult him to power. I figure that about every Governor or Senator thinks that he can be President.

The only positive that I see is that he seems to be a loving husband and father. His obsessions with sexuality and procreation offset that badly. Why can't he grow up on homosexuality? Gay is OK.

...I will be signing off for a couple of weeks due to a long journey.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

I think you're speaking for yourself. Not Millenials, many of whom really believed he would bring everybody together, create world peace and calm the seas. They also didn't realize he'd be terrible when it came to the economy.

Only those Millies that have as bizarre a definition as yours of what is doing terrible on the economy -

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

We need to ask why clowns like Santorum can get ahead in our political system. It's as if nothing that they say matters except that it stirs the anger and ignorance of a certain part of the public.

Santorum would be an incredibly weak President. Sure, he has some "tough guy" traits, but that ostensible toughness hides spiritual and intellectual weakness. He has always been a political opportunist, and he became a stooge of George W. Bush in the belief that such would catapult him to power. I figure that about every Governor or Senator thinks that he can be President.

The only positive that I see is that he seems to be a loving husband and father. His obsessions with sexuality and procreation offset that badly. Why can't he grow up on homosexuality? Gay is OK.

...I will be signing off for a couple of weeks due to a long journey.

To begin with, my Santorum post said "than lose" instead of "than win."

I agree that Santorum seems to be awfully afraid of some sexual impulse or other.

PBrower2, I hope that last line wasn't meant to sound quite as ominous as it did.

And speaking of departures, we haven't seen James around for quite a while.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

I don't know if this was posted here or in another thread already, but this is a pretty good article that lays out the fundamental demographic problems facing the Republican party:

That was an interesting quote from the article. It does seem at the moment that the social changes of the last 40 years--integration, immigration, women's rights and gay rights--are the single most important definer of the current Republican party and have made those people forget that anything else is important. The related development is the hate industry (clear channel and Fox) dedicated to arousing hatred against those changes and the "elite" that stands for them. And at the rate things are going, we will enter the High shortly with those people soundly defeated (and dying off at a rapid rate), but with a total mess of an economy and a fairly incoherent foreign policy.

Originally Posted by JDG 66

-Because they're being force to pay for it.



-You really should read entire articles before commenting on them:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ark-steyn?pg=2

This is a very curious priority for a dying republic. “Birth control” is accessible, indeed ubiquitous, and, by comparison with anything from a gallon of gas to basic cable, one of the cheapest expenses in the average budget...

...Not everyone wants it in their health coverage; they'd rather have something else. If an employer is forced to pay for this, it means something else isn't getting covered. So, if its such a great investment, then you should be happy to let the individuals who want it pay for it on their own.



-No. As I pointed out above, just as not everyone wants bacon (they'd rather have baklava), not everyone wants birth control in their health plan. If it's forced in, then that means something else is given up.

Your analogy stinks.




-If you can't tell the difference between a feudal lord, who you are bound to by law, and an employer, whom you can quit if you don't like what he has to offer (including his health plan), then you are both the world's crappiest historian AND the world's worst economist.



-Because it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulentinvestment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation.

...its only difference from a conventional ponzi scheme is this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

...The Ponzi scheme usually entices new investors by offering higher returns than other investments, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. Perpetuation of the high returns requires an ever-increasing flow of money from new investors to keep the scheme going.

...in the government version, the sucker doesn't have a choice.



-No, that would be a 50-something year-old man who has to be supported by his parents, and then bad mouths them behind their backs on an international forum.

For those interested in Glick's banality, here is a complete dismantling of it -

http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...215#post378215

- that of course is for those, like Glick and the majority of people, who remain completely ignorant of how our monetary system actually works. You still believe federal spending is dependent on federal taxation, i.e, that there is an actual transfer of funds from one group to another and the federal govt is just the "bag man."

For those who thinking has evolved to a higher level, here is another response to the Glick banality -

http://www.fourthturning.com/forum/s...175#post411175

Originally Posted by wtrg8

Don't worry all Health premiums are going up; with or without contraceptives. But then again, we have a President that wants to model our country like the European Union experience. How is that working out?

The current European Union model (as well as the UK) is imposing austerity to appease the "confidence fairies" to magically cause economic expansion. The leading edge of that laboratory experiment is with Greece and the UK where GDP is dropping off the cliff. This will soon enough spread to a broad recession to the other EU countries with the possibility of something worse being triggered through the convoluted financial machinations installed over the last couple decades by market neo-liberalism of the Right (i.e. another financial meltdown like we had in 2008).

The call for us to be like Europe (actual Europe, not the false meme you seem to have bought into like you've bought into freedom fries) comes from today's GOP 'thinking.'

Originally Posted by wtrg8

Don't worry all Health premiums are going up; with or without contraceptives. But then again, we have a President that wants to model our country like the European Union experience. How is that working out?

We don't know yet.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

And speaking of departures, we haven't seen James around for quite a while.

Maybe he took an anti-T4T contraceptive. Not dispensed from a Catholic hospital of course.

Originally Posted by playwrite

For those interested in Glick's banality...

Not interested, and won't be!

Wow, Sunday talk shows today, nothing but a parade of ignorance. Starting with Glover Norquist, Eric Cantor, Michele Bachman, the GOP Presidential dwarfs, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, and what passes these days as conservative pundits and 'intellects.' Pathetic and depressing.

Basically two causes - (1) the subclass of WMDs know as Wild Mysterious Vaginas (WMVs) requiring absolute control by old white guys and (2) the horror of the federal debt!

Imagine the impotence of the GOP if people actually came to their senses about federal debt and put aside the fear mongering for what it is - silly. Add that possibility to the actual emerging reality that the owners of the WMVs are becoming about as scarce in the GOP as WMDs turned out to be in Iraq. All the GOP would have left to fear monger is the two guys and a wedding cake.

But there is hope for maybe the rest of us. The Washington Post does MMT!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...PMR_story.html

Modern Monetary Theory, an unconventional take on economic strategy


About 11 years ago, James K. “Jamie” Galbraith recalls, hundreds of his fellow economists laughed at him. To his face. In the White House.

It was April 2000, and Galbraith had been invited by President Bill Clinton to speak on a panel about the budget surplus. Galbraith was a logical choice. A public policy professor at the University of Texas and former head economist for the Joint Economic Committee, he wrote frequently for the press and testified before Congress.

What’s more, his father, John Kenneth Galbraith, was the most famous economist of his generation: a Harvard professor, best-selling author and confidante of the Kennedy family. Jamie has embraced a role as protector and promoter of the elder’s legacy.

But if Galbraith stood out on the panel, it was because of his offbeat message. Most viewed the budget surplus as opportune: a chance to pay down the national debt, cut taxes, shore up entitlements or pursue new spending programs.

He viewed it as a danger: If the government is running a surplus, money is accruing in government coffers rather than in the hands of ordinary people and companies, where it might be spent and help the economy.

“I said economists used to understand that the running of a surplus was fiscal (economic) drag,” he said, “and with 250 economists, they giggled.”

Galbraith says the 2001 recession — which followed a few years of surpluses — proves he was right.

A decade later, as the soaring federal budget deficit has sharpened political and economic differences in Washington, Galbraith is mostly concerned about the dangers of keeping it too small. He’s a key figure in a core debate among economists about whether deficits are important and in what way. The issue has divided the nation’s best-known economists and inspired pockets of passion in academic circles. Any embrace by policymakers of one view or the other could affect everything from employment to the price of goods to the tax code.

...much more at link

It would have been good for the article to also have pointed this out -

1817-1821: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 29%. Depression began 1819.
1823-1836: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 99%. Depression began 1837.
1852-1857: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 59%. Depression began 1857.
1867-1873: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 27%. Depression began 1873.
1880-1893: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 57%. Depression began 1893.
1920-1930: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 36%. Depression began 1929.

Remember that Clinton Surplus? Why that didn't cause a depression then (outside of the dot.bomb recession) was the enormous debt binge supported by new financial instruments - we all now know that cheating death is a temporary measure with the financial meltdown of 2008. Fortunately, smarter heads got federal deficit spending up (but eventually proven not enough) to keep us from falling into a severe depression.

I strongly recommend reading the Post article. There is nothing more important than this issue right now. It is the path out of this 4T. It is also the path to the demise of the GOP as it exists today - they will eventually be seen for what they truly are - ignorant and very harmful to our nation's prosperity.

Question: Are primaries usually this...uh... animated? Just wondering, since the only primary I've been old enough to completely remember is the '08 primary. That and I remember Dean's head blowing up in '04 when I was like 10. Lol funny stuff.

Originally Posted by Cole94

Question: Are primaries usually this...uh... animated? Just wondering, since the only primary I've been old enough to completely remember is the '08 primary. That and I remember Dean's head blowing up in '04 when I was like 10. Lol funny stuff.

No, this primary has been fairly crazy. There have been five candidates who could legitimately claim front runner status based on polling. Usually there are at most three, and typically there is just a front runnner and one credible challenger.

This is easily the most volatile primary of either party since the current primary system emerged in the 1970s. (Although, to be fair, a lot of those I was too young to personally witness. Still, five front runners is definitely a new high.)

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

And at the rate things are going, we will enter the High shortly with those people soundly defeated (and dying off at a rapid rate), but with a total mess of an economy and a fairly incoherent foreign policy.

Or, the second quarter of the Crisis, depending on when one dates the Crisis start. It's with noting that the last Crisis is the only one that appears to have produced decisive leadership in a rapid fashion. If you hold, as many do, that the Civil War Crisis started in the mid 1850s, you have to admit that you can easily have a Crisis where the political system dithers for a long time while problems accumulate. Also, in the Revolution, it took the whole Crisis to settle on a form of government. FDR may be the exception, not the rule.

Originally Posted by wtrg8

Don't worry all Health premiums are going up; with or without contraceptives. But then again, we have a President that wants to model our country like the European Union experience. How is that working out?

As far as healthcare, well, they tend to have better outcomes with lower costs. And Obamacare is far short of achieving any sort of European healthcare model. The closest would probably be the Swiss system, but our version of health reform was always a centrist compromise that made relatively large concessions to insurance companies and social darwinists.

Whether or not Europe's monetary union was a good idea is a different issue altogether.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

Or, the second quarter of the Crisis, depending on when one dates the Crisis start. It's with noting that the last Crisis is the only one that appears to have produced decisive leadership in a rapid fashion. If you hold, as many do, that the Civil War Crisis started in the mid 1850s, you have to admit that you can easily have a Crisis where the political system dithers for a long time while problems accumulate. Also, in the Revolution, it took the whole Crisis to settle on a form of government. FDR may be the exception, not the rule.

You might also consider that FDR's New Deal was a warmed up version of Teddy Roosevelt's Fair Deal, proposed from the Republican's Liberal wing back when the primary divide between Republican and Democrat was arguably North / South. FDR might have stepped in decisively at the start of his Crisis, but the unrest focused against the Robber Barons and the notion that the government had no role in maintaining a healthy economy had been going on for quite some time. The issue had been debated and struggled over through the entire Gilded Age and beyond.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

I don't know if this was posted here or in another thread already, but this is a pretty good article that lays out the fundamental demographic problems facing the Republican party:

That was an interesting quote from the article. It does seem at the moment that the social changes of the last 40 years--integration, immigration, women's rights and gay rights--are the single most important definer of the current Republican party and have made those people forget that anything else is important. The related development is the hate industry (clear channel and Fox) dedicated to arousing hatred against those changes and the "elite" that stands for them. And at the rate things are going, we will enter the High shortly with those people soundly defeated (and dying off at a rapid rate), but with a total mess of an economy and a fairly incoherent foreign policy.

Actually, they're all dying off. But the balance of the young will tip it in the progressive favor.

Best...

Conservatives Remain the Largest Ideological Group in U.S.

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

Actually, they're all dying off. But the balance of the young will tip it in the progressive favor.

Best...

Strange.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

Conservatives Remain the Largest Ideological Group in U.S.

Here comes that "People only "think" they are conservative arguments." We've gone there like a million times.

A plurality is not a majority.

Originally Posted by pizal81

Here comes that "People only "think" they are conservative arguments." We've gone there like a million times.

Just look at the the evidence of the 2008 presidential election. Obama is not a conservative.

Originally Posted by Kurt Horner

Or, the second quarter of the Crisis, depending on when one dates the Crisis start. It's with noting that the last Crisis is the only one that appears to have produced decisive leadership in a rapid fashion. If you hold, as many do, that the Civil War Crisis started in the mid 1850s, you have to admit that you can easily have a Crisis where the political system dithers for a long time while problems accumulate. Also, in the Revolution, it took the whole Crisis to settle on a form of government. FDR may be the exception, not the rule.

I don't really agree about the Civil War crisis starting before 1860. Now the revolutionary era did have a dual crisis: British tyranny set off the first after 1774, post-revolution anarchy set off the second in the 1780s. And I too have speculated that we could disintegrate to near anarchy in the next ten years, but I think its unlikely. If indeed Obama wins, I predict balancing the budget will become his mantra again---or rather, cutting he deficit--and if the economy recovers somewhat the crisis mood will pass, even though our economy will in some ways be weaker than at any time since the 1930s.

This is an interesting story about Paul Babeuf, former boys school headmaster, anti-immigrant Arizona sheriff, and speaker at CPAC. Not only is he gay, his lover was an illegal immigrant.

I wonder if we should have a pool on the number of Republican or religious right activists who will turn out to be gay or having other kinds of personal indiscretions between now the election. I will conservatively estimate 3. This is a huge part of our political problems today: people who can't deal with their own feelings are taking their personal conflicts out on the body politic.