Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Bernie is doing what legislators are supposed to do...

Except that Bernie correctly recognized that the 'half-loaf' of that particular law was no more than a giveaway to industry shareholders. So, if you're insistent that legislators are 'supposed to' do bad things for their own gain, then I guess Eric would be right -- you are to blame for the problem of legislators doing exactly what you want them to do.
Although, at that point, I guess it's not really fair of you to call corruption a problem. You seem to regard it more as a feature than a bug.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Except that Bernie correctly recognized that the 'half-loaf' of that particular law was no more than a giveaway to industry shareholders. So, if you're insistent that legislators are 'supposed to' do bad things for their own gain, then I guess Eric would be right -- you are to blame for the problem of legislators doing exactly what you want them to do.
Although, at that point, I guess it's not really fair of you to call corruption a problem. You seem to regard it more as a feature than a bug.

He compromised on the health care reform law "for his own gain?" How so?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

He compromised on the health care reform law "for his own gain?" How so?

Whatever the Chicago sleazebag (and/or his operatives) offered him. There's a reason why they kept the meeting private.

And he didn't 'compromise' -- which necessarily implies a meeting-in-the-middle. He flipped completely and positively and actively supported a thing he knew was wrong.

Originally Posted by Odin

I thought Wiccans considered using "black magic" (AKA, curses) to be a bad thing.

Just more proof that all religions are full of hypocrisy.

No, it's proof that all religions have their idiots, crazies, and yes, hypocrites. I think you misunderstand the Wiccan strictures against black magic. Not only is it morally evil, but it *will rebound on the doer* sure as there is such a thing as karma. That pagan is in for a world of blowback on her curse, and I wouldn;t want to be around her when it hits. Or seeps in, depending.

Originally Posted by The Rani

The End Is Near
12-21-12

Yes, indeed. The sun will stand still, the cold winds will blow, and a season of excess, bad behavior, overconsumption, and idelenss will begin. And last for 12 days.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

No, it's proof that all religions have their idiots, crazies, and yes, hypocrites. I think you misunderstand the Wiccan strictures against black magic. Not only is it morally evil, but it *will rebound on the doer* sure as there is such a thing as karma. That pagan is in for a world of blowback on her curse, and I wouldn;t want to be around her when it hits. Or seeps in, depending.

I just want to make it clear. My friend isn't involved, but she knows of people who are involved with it. In fact she said she doesn't plan on getting involved because the entire thing strikes her as being immature.

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Whatever the Chicago sleazebag (and/or his operatives) offered him. There's a reason why they kept the meeting private.

Where's your enthusiasm for scientific evidence? You know of no such "reason" or any evidence of such.

And he didn't 'compromise' -- which necessarily implies a meeting-in-the-middle. He flipped completely and positively and actively supported a thing he knew was wrong.

It was indeed a meeting in the middle. He voted as he and his constituents believed. You just disagree. btw I guess my other statements stand, I guess, since you didn't answer them.....

Has there ever been a candidate who has gotten way with so many dishonest flip-flops? Why do 40-something % of voters get flim-flammed by this guy?



You vote for this guy, and you don't know what you're getting. It's that simple.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Has there ever been a candidate who has gotten way with so many dishonest flip-flops? Why do 40-something % of voters get flim-flammed by this guy?

You vote for this guy, and you don't know what you're getting. It's that simple.

The same group voted for GWB ... twice! Sadly, lying or stupid ideas have little impact on electabilty (as differentiated from the abiity to govern). It's all in the gut: is this guy (so far its all guys) a leader, yes or no? Obama come s across as limp, and the Democrats seem to prefer a little limp to ultra-viral. The GOP, the opposite.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Well the blue tide, seeping in from the oceans and Great Lakes, is receeding at the moment, according to the RCP map. Maybe global warming will cause it to rise again. It certainly should, if people are paying attention to it; or at least people should be smart enough not to vote for the wrong policies, and for a man to carry them out who can't be trusted to say or do the same thing from one day or one hour to the next, except maybe to protect his own pocket. Just because he can perform well at a debate? Come on, we already knew that. Well, we'll see how smart the people are. I stand by my prediction until it succeeds or fails!

I know I know, there is also New Mexico, and contrariwise, the Gulf states. With that in mind, the blue tide mostly represents oceans and lakes, but also in general the tide from beyond our borders. You can see the blue tide from below in southern Texas and even Arizona as well as NM and the coastal states of FL and CA, but not the Gulf states. The red menace, or the rusting and scorching heat, represents heartland areas of America; or you could call it provincial, as opposed to urbane and aware of the larger world.

Eventually, the red Southeast will get swamped from both sides, as Metropolis continues to move south (already into Virginia, and edging into North Carolina at Raleigh-Durham) while South Florida continues to move north (already signs of this in Savannah and Charleston).

The entire I-95 corridor will be coterminously blue by 2020-25.

And barring a massive policy reversal by the Republicans, the Latino tide will have added Arizona to the Dem column by then - to New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, all of which may already be irretrievably lost to the GOP.

Romney may, however, temporarily interrupt this pattern.

Originally Posted by '58 Flat

Eventually, the red Southeast will get swamped from both sides, as Metropolis continues to move south (already into Virginia, and edging into North Carolina at Raleigh-Durham) while South Florida continues to move north (already signs of this in Savannah and Charleston).

The entire I-95 corridor will be coterminously blue by 2020-25.

And barring a massive policy reversal by the Republicans, the Latino tide will have added Arizona to the Dem column by then - to New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, all of which may already be irretrievably lost to the GOP.

Romney may, however, temporarily interrupt this pattern.

After this election, it looks blue all the way. The GOP will have to change or go out of business to make way for a new party.

Originally Posted by '58 Flat

Eventually, the red Southeast will get swamped from both sides, as Metropolis continues to move south (already into Virginia, and edging into North Carolina at Raleigh-Durham) while South Florida continues to move north (already signs of this in Savannah and Charleston).

The entire I-95 corridor will be coterminously blue by 2020-25.

And barring a massive policy reversal by the Republicans, the Latino tide will have added Arizona to the Dem column by then - to New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, all of which may already be irretrievably lost to the GOP.

Romney may, however, temporarily interrupt this pattern.

You all sound like a bunch of megalomaniacs bent on world domination. You literally sound like comic book villains.

The left wing faith in "demographics" dictating the future (i.e. Democrat race politics producing a one-party state) is simply not true. VA went for George W. Bush in 2004 by 8.2 percentage points. It went for Obama in 2008 by 6.3 percentage points. There was no demographic shift of that magnitude in the state over the course of four years. It was a result of pre-existing voters switching from one party to the other in one election cycle (or staying home). When you look at the exit poll numbers from 2004 and 2008 nationally, what you see is that the largest single shift, both percentage-wise and in absolute numbers, was among white males.

Here are the exit polls from 2004 and 2008 for VA. The demographic composition of the electorate was nearly identical, except for a 4 point increase among voters 18-29 and an overall increase in income (that terrible Bush economy).

Below are McCain's results among various groups, compared to Bush in 2004. The parentheses are the share of the electorate, in this format: (2004-2008%)

SEX
Men (46-46%): -12
Women (54-54%): -4

RACE
White (72-70%): -8
Black (21-20%): -4
Latino: (3-5%): no data for 2004

RACE AND SEX
White Men (34-32%): -11
White Women (38-38%): -5

2004 lumps all non-whites into one group by sex, so those numbers cant be compared.

AGE
18-29 (17-22%): -7
30-44 (32-30%): -8
65+ (10-11%): +4

The group in between 44 and 65 is hard to compare because they were split up differently in the two exit polls. Kerry won 65+ by 2 points in 2004. That's the only group where McCain improved on Bush.

INCOME
Less than $50k (39-30%): -11
More than $50k (61-70%): -7

Less than $100k (77-65%): -8
More than $100k (23-35%): -7


As you can see, there was a very small increase in minority voters from 2004 to 2008. There was a larger 4 point increase in voters 18-29, but the biggest factor were shifts among these groups, going from Bush in 2004 to Obama in 2008:

- Men
- White Men
- Less than $50k/year

The percentage of white men voting dropped, the percentage of white women did not. White men who voted for Bush in 2004, particularly those in the lower half of the income scale, either stayed home or switched to Obama in 2008, in large numbers. That was the single biggest factor.

The one factor which does somewhat support the left's dreams (although only slightly) was the increase in the 18-29 vote and their heavy tilt for Obama. However it's worth looking at 2009, even though it wasn't a presidential year. Only 10% of voters were 18-29, and Bob McDonnell won them 54-44.

When you look at 18-29 turnout in presidential elections going back to 1976, you find that the average is somewhere slightly below 20%. 18-29 voters usually vote around 5-10 points more Democrat than other age groups. The only exceptions are 1984, 1988 and 2000, where 18-29 voters went slightly more for Reagan (1984) than some older voters, and where they voted exactly like other age groups (1988, 2000).

The two major exceptions in the opposite direction, which are relevant here, are 1976 and 2008. In 1976, 18-29 went for Carter by about 5 points more than the rest of voters, and they were a whopping 32% of the total vote. They were directly responsible for Carter's narrow victory. In 2008 18-29 were 18% of the vote, but they went for Obama by a whopping 16 points more than other groups. It just so happens that the 2008 group are largely the children of the 1976 group. Coincidence?

There are almost too many analogies between 1976-1980 and the last four years to list them all. This is just another one. I was comparing Bush to Nixon while he was still in office, and I've been talking about 30 year cycles even longer. It's an idea that doesn't seem to want to go away no matter how much I try to look at things as S&H described them.

EDIT

Put more simply, here's how much each group accounted for the shift in the overall vote in VA:

SEX
Men: 5.5
Women: 2.2

RACE
White: 7
Black: 0.9

RACE AND SEX
White Men: 5
White Women: 1.9

AGE
18-29: 0.4

For all of the hype about Millenials and increasing minorities, those groups had very little effect on the shift in VA from 2004 to 2008. It was overwhelmingly due to a shift among white males. Millenials only turned out at a slightly above average rate (although up slightly from Gen X lows), but those who voted were unusually tilted towards the Democrat. Minority voting was up, and blacks voted even more heavily Democrat than usual, but not enough to account for a huge difference.

Bush won 54-46. Obama won 53-46. It was a 7-8 point swing. Almost all of it was due to a shift among white voters, and 5 points of it was due to white males.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Yes, indeed. The sun will stand still, the cold winds will blow, and a season of excess, bad behavior, overconsumption, and idelenss will begin. And last for 12 days.

I was like "huh???", then I realized you were talking about Christmas and New Years, LMAO!!!

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

No, it's proof that all religions have their idiots, crazies, and yes, hypocrites. I think you misunderstand the Wiccan strictures against black magic. Not only is it morally evil, but it *will rebound on the doer* sure as there is such a thing as karma. That pagan is in for a world of blowback on her curse, and I wouldn;t want to be around her when it hits. Or seeps in, depending.

Ah, yes, I forgot about the Threefold Rule!

Originally Posted by radind

After this election, it looks blue all the way. The GOP will have to change or go out of business to make way for a new party.

The decisive year for that will be 2016, when the Tea Party Senators elected in 2010 are up for re-election, often in places in which they will be political anomalies.

Sorta off-topic, but this story is hilarious:

Woman Tells Police Being a Republican Should Keep Her Out of Jail

Diners at a West Des Moines restaurant ran into two things that don’t mix – alcohol and politics – not long before President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney meet in their second presidential debate.

After an encounter that neither candidate likely approved, Charlene Idelle Hunziker, 47, of Council Bluffs was charged with public intoxication and harassment of public officials.

Authorities were called to P.F. Chang’s China Bistro at Jordan Creek Town Center about 3:45 p.m. Friday after restaurant employees tried to eject Hunziker for upsetting other diners with her political rant, according to a report on file at the West Des Moines Police Department.

Officer Chris Morgan said in his report that when he arrived, Hunziker reportedly yelled at him and said he didn’t need to be there because “she was a Republican.”

Hunziker reportedly refused a sobriety test and admitted to having consumed alcohol, but insisted she was not drunk, according to the report.

A witness reportedly told Morgan that Hunziker was drunk and had been bothering other customers with her opinions about the previous night’s presidential debate, her support for Romney and her belief that “Obama had ruined this country and ... Muslims were causing America all these problems.”

The woman’s daughter proclaimed her mother “an embarrassment” and walked out of the restaurant, the witness said. When restaurant employees asked Hunziker to leave, she “got in the employees’ face and told them that she had rights and was refusing to leave.”

After the woman told Morgan she was a Republican, he told her that he couldn’t just leave – a statement she reportedly argued, according to the officer’s narrative of the encounter. The report said Hunziker kicked, screamed and struggled as Morgan and a backup officer tried to handcuff her and place her in the squad car.

En route to the police station, where she was booked before being transported to the Polk County Jail, Hunziker reportedly said that “she was doing this because she was a good mother.”

Can't. Stop. Laughing!!!

Originally Posted by Odin

I was like "huh???", then I realized you were talking about Christmas and New Years, LMAO!!!

"I was like"

sounds like someone I admire

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

"I was like"

sounds like someone I admire

All of us Millies talk like that!

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

You all sound like a bunch of megalomaniacs bent on world domination. You literally sound like comic book villains.

I hope so. The world is ours to gain! May the blue tide seep in and conquer heartland red America!

The left wing faith in "demographics" dictating the future (i.e. Democrat race politics producing a one-party state) is simply not true. VA went for George W. Bush in 2004 by 8.2 percentage points. It went for Obama in 2008 by 6.3 percentage points. There was no demographic shift of that magnitude in the state over the course of four years. It was a result of pre-existing voters switching from one party to the other in one election cycle (or staying home). When you look at the exit poll numbers from 2004 and 2008 nationally, what you see is that the largest single shift, both percentage-wise and in absolute numbers, was among white males.
....
Bush won 54-46. Obama won 53-46. It was a 7-8 point swing. Almost all of it was due to a shift among white voters, and 5 points of it was due to white males.

I see the point, if VA is representative. It's not really, though. The interesting thing about many red states is how the blue tide is almost literally seeping in. It wasn't just a 4-year change, but the long-term trend set the table. I mean more people from the north moving in to places like northern VA and central NC. As people move south and west, the heartland traditionalists are getting "swamped" by increasing numbers of northern liberals and moderate swing voters. You can add to that the shift from the Mexico border north, which you didn't show in VA, but shows especially in south-western states and helped turn CA dark blue. The shift in "white males" in VA is due in part to the fact that there were more of them, because there were now more white liberal males that had moved into northern VA-- which is suburban Washington DC (an extremely liberal-Democratic city), one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the country. And the people who live in that metropolis don't live in Washington DC itself, but mostly in northern VA.

The demographic shift can be overstated, and it may evaporate (as JPT has pointed out, people get more conservative/Republican as they get older). It's a question of degree; how many of the youth will stay liberal for how long; how many poor immigrants will stay liberal even if they get richer and conditions improve for hispanics. In the long-run, we simply have to wake up from the wrong ideas that JPT and the Republicans are peddling; chiefly trickle-down economics. I think the social conservative/religious fanatic element will shift more easily and more permanently than the social-Darwinist/individualist/trickle down nostrum. Money and dislike of "government" are always tempting illusions. But in either case, it's a question of how quickly they might lose power before our nation runs off a number of cliffs, and declines/splits up irreparably. How much frustration and stalemate before that talk of secession we see here becomes serious everywhere; how much before it equals the reverence people now have for the concept of the United States of America that Obama himself so eloquently spoke of in 2004. It will take a lot, but after all this is a 4T.

Now it looks like Rasmussen is the most liberal poll. It is the first one since the Romney debate surge to show Obama ahead again nationally, and the average lead for Romney went down this morning. Let's hope that's a sign, and that JPT will be dissappointed, and that he will have to keep putting out his theories about why the numbers showing Obama leading are wrong.

Bill Maher tells it like it is so well!

Realclearpolitics map has moved Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Penn. back to toss-up, as well as several others. Obama is down to 201-181 in the electoral lead. Not a good trend for him. Today's gallup poll (which interestingly increased its non-white reperesentation from 27% to 30% in its models) Shows Romney up one point 48-47 among likely voters. Romney leads in the rCP average by 1.4%. Can Obama staunch the bleeding??

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...llege_map.html

Originally Posted by Weave

Realclearpolitics map has moved Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Penn. back to toss-up, as well as several others. Obama is down to 201-181 in the electoral lead. Not a good trend for him. Today's gallup poll (which interestingly increased its non-white reperesentation from 27% to 30% in its models) Shows Romney up one point 48-47 among likely voters. Romney leads in the rCP average by 1.4%. Can Obama staunch the bleeding??

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...llege_map.html

... on the very day that some pollsters have Obama up by high-single-digits.

The post-debate bump for Mitt Romney was as ephemeral as an ice cube in the Phoenix sun.

I looked at the numbers for VA above. I thought I would do the same thing for the national numbers from 2004 and 2008, to satisfy my own curiosity. Here is how McCain did in 2008 vs. Bush in 2004 among various groups nationally:

SEX
Men (46-47%): -7
Women (54-53%): -5

RACE
White (77-74%): -3
Black (11-13%): -7
Latino: (8-9%): -13

RACE AND SEX
White Men (36-36%): -5
White Women (41-39%): -2

2004 lumps all non-whites into one group by sex, so those numbers cant be compared.

AGE
18-29 (17-18%): -13
30-44 (29-29%): -7
65+ (16-16%): +1

The group in between 44 and 65 is hard to compare because they were split up differently in the two exit polls.

INCOME
Less than $50k (45-38%): -6
More than $50k (55-62%): -7

Less than $100k (82-74%): -6
More than $100k (23-35%): -9

The swing in the national vote from (R) to (D) between 2004 and 2008 (about 5-6 percentage points) was not as dramatic as the swing in VA (7-8 percentage points). Here's how much these groups accounted for the actual shift:

SEX
Men: 2.7
Women: 3.1

RACE
White: 4
Black: 0.7
Latino: 0.7

RACE AND SEX
White Men: 1.8
White Women: 1.9

AGE
18-29: 1.9
30-44: 2
65+: -0.2

When you look at it nationally, the shift looks a lot more even and broad. 65+ did not shift at all. All other age groups shifted pretty evenly. The bottom line here is that while there was a small shift in the composition of the electorate, the shift within each group from (R) to (D) was larger. There was an unpopular incumbent (R), and the economy crashed less than 2 months before the election. Republican turnout was down, and Democrat turnout was up.

The one possible exception here is 18-29. The total share of the electorate that was 18-29 did not increase much from 2004 to 2008.The 2004 exit poll does not break down by age and race, but this is what 18-29 looked like in 2008:

Total (18%): Obama +34
White (11%): Obama +10
Black (3%): Obama +91
Latino (3%): Obama +27

This is the share of 18-29 by race:

White: 61%
Black: 17%
Latino: 17%

So you can see where the left's fantasy comes from. 65+ did not move from 2004-2008 while everyone else did, and 18-29 looks dramatically less white than older age brackets. There's one small problem, though. Blacks are not 17% of the population. They're about 13%, and they are not projected to increase as a share of the population in the future. They were 4-5 points greater as a share of the 18-29 electorate than they are a share of the 18-29 population. Because blacks vote almost 100% for the Democrats, each percentage point increase in the black share of the vote essentially translates into a 1 point increase in the overall Democrat share of the vote.

Here is the 2050 projection (keep in mind that projections this far out are inherently questionable) from the Census Bureau:

	2010	2050
Whites (includes "Some other race")	79.5%	74.0%
Non-Hispanic Whites	64.7%	46.3%
Hispanics/Latinos (of any race)	16.0%	30.2%
African Americans	12.9%	13.0%
Asian Americans	4.6%	7.8%

There is good reason for the focus on Latino/Hispanic voters in the future. However, 2008 was not the baseline for what will happen in the future. As I showed above, there was very high black turnout, particularly from 18-29, and black voters went for the Democrat by an even wider margin than usual. The share of the population that is Hispanic is projected to double, but the share of the population that is white is only projected to drop to 74%. There are certainly factors that you can look at that favor the Democrats. Hispanics are currently 16% of the population, but were only 8% of the electorate in 2008. Considering that they went for Obama by 27 points, an increasing Hispanic population and increasing Hispanic turnout should benefit the Democrats if that margin of victory remains stable. However, there are other factors to look at:

1. George W. Bush won 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004. Clearly the Democrats do not have Hispanic voters locked up the way they have black voters locked up.
2. Half of all Hispanics in the U.S. are white. It is highly likely that as time goes by, they will increasingly assimilate into the overall white population as every white immigrant group has in the past. That means that the electoral impact is likely to be at least half as significant in the future as the wildest (D) projections are currently salivating over.

All of the above is worth noting for the future. But that's not what happened in 2008. The 2-3 point shift from (R) to (D) among white voters was overwhelmingly the largest factor, and a fair amount of that was dictated by increased turnout among white Democrats and decreased turnout among white Republicans. To the extent that the 18-29 vote was influenced by demographics, it was largely because of the enthusiasm of black voters 18-29 for Obama. White voters 18-29 turned out below their share of the 18-29 population, and while Obama won them by 10 points, polls this year have shown them evenly split between Obama and Romney.

Originally Posted by Weave

Realclearpolitics map has moved Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Penn. back to toss-up, as well as several others. Obama is down to 201-181 in the electoral lead. Not a good trend for him. Today's gallup poll (which interestingly increased its non-white reperesentation from 27% to 30% in its models) Shows Romney up one point 48-47 among likely voters. Romney leads in the rCP average by 1.4%. Can Obama staunch the bleeding??

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...llege_map.html

If the race is tied in the polls, it means Romney will win. If he leads in the polls, it means he will win easily. The reason is that the polls have been weighted (falsely) for high Democrat turnout all year, and undecideds break for the challenger.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

If the race is tied in the polls, it means Romney will win. If he leads in the polls, it means he will win easily. The reason is that the polls have been weighted (falsely) for high Democrat(ic) turnout all year, and undecideds break for the challenger.

Usually the polls are accurate, but we can't tell now what they will say on the day before election day.