Originally Posted by The Rani

Google images are so convenient:



But then, so is photoshop ... may the caller of Republican/Democrat douchebags/douchebaggesses beware.

Shit, I've been punked!!!

Eighty-Eight Percent of Romney Voters Were White
The GOP candidate’s race-based, monochromatic campaign made him a loser.

Originally Posted by Odin

Eighty-Eight Percent of Romney Voters Were White
The GOP candidate’s race-based, monochromatic campaign made him a loser.

Flip the coin: And according to Dick Morris 93% of black voters voted for Obama. I'm certain that had absolutely nothing to do with race at all either.

j.p.

Originally Posted by JDFP

Flip the coin: And according to Dick Morris 93% of black voters voted for Obama. I'm certain that had absolutely nothing to do with race at all either.

j.p.

LOL, you sound like the disgustingly racist comments below the article.

You know why most blacks and Latinos vote Dem? because YOUR party is full of racists.

Originally Posted by Odin

LOL, you sound like the disgustingly racist comments below the article.

You know why most blacks and Latinos vote Dem? because YOUR party is full of racists.

Ah man, classy! Can't fall back on anything else so you start yelling: "RACIST!!!". I saw that coming from a mile away. I still grinned all the same at the classic response knowing it was about to come. There for a moment I thought you would attempt to say something reasonable instead of throwing out the "RACIST!!!" card - but no, I guess I know you and your ilk too well.

Sure, there are racists in the GOP. And there are also just as many, if not more, racists on your end of the spectrum too. I find the veiled condescending and patronizing racism of liberals: ("No, no, it's not your fault you can't make it without government help because you were born a minority! The government has to help you!") to be just as vile as the not-so-veiled racism of racial epithets and slurs. At least outright racists are being honest about their hatred - which is more than can be said for the patronizing racists.

j.p.

Originally Posted by JDFP

Ah man, classy! Can't fall back on anything else so you start yelling: "RACIST!!!". I saw that coming from a mile away. I still grinned all the same at the classic response knowing it was about to come. There for a moment I thought you would attempt to say something reasonable instead of throwing out the "RACIST!!!" card - but no, I guess I know you and your ilk too well.

If one said minorities vote Democratic out of enlightened self interest, would that be any better?

Originally Posted by B Butler

If one said minorities vote Democratic out of enlightened self interest, would that be any better?

I disagree with you - but yes, it's far better to try to have a reasonable conversation even when the two parties in question disagree as opposed to throwing out the "RACIST!!!" card so many on the far-end of the spectrum love to put into play.

j.p.

Originally Posted by JDFP

Ah man, classy! Can't fall back on anything else so you start yelling: "RACIST!!!". I saw that coming from a mile away. I still grinned all the same at the classic response knowing it was about to come. There for a moment I thought you would attempt to say something reasonable instead of throwing out the "RACIST!!!" card - but no, I guess I know you and your ilk too well.

Sure, there are racists in the GOP. And there are also just as many, if not more, racists on your end of the spectrum too. I find the veiled condescending and patronizing racism of liberals: ("No, no, it's not your fault you can't make it without government help because you were born a minority! The government has to help you!") to be just as vile as the not-so-veiled racism of racial epithets and slurs. At least outright racists are being honest about their hatred - which is more than can be said for the patronizing racists.

j.p.

Uh, the GOP is racist, that IS the reasonable answer, insisting otherwise is denial. Then again, you also deny that the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia is a symbol of racism and hate...

Originally Posted by Odin

Uh, the GOP is racist, that IS the reasonable answer, insisting otherwise is denial. Then again, you also deny that the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia is a symbol of racism and hate...

Right. All Republicans are racists. And the Democratic party is the bastion of hope to all people. Case closed. I guess we can move on now.

j.p.

Originally Posted by JDFP

Right. All Republicans are racists. And the Democratic party is the bastion of hope to all people. Case closed. I guess we can move on now.

j.p.

I didn't say all republicans are racists, I said the GOP is racist, ever since Nixon's Southern Strategy it has catered to racist sentiment to get votes. It's BASE is full of racists.

Why do you think Birthers are concentrated in the South?

Why are people still quoting Dick [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/07/dick-morris-predictions-wrong_n_2088349.html]"Romney will win in a landslide" Morris.

Originally Posted by Huffingtonpost

So, if you recall, ol' Dick Morris, he predicted something of a landslide for Mitt Romney. Something of a crazy landslide, actually, in which it was an absolute given that Obama had already lost Florida, Virginia and Colorado; in which Ohio, New Hampshire and Iowa had "eroded"; in which the "battleground" was Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota; and "Romney momentum" was going to "wash into formerly safe Democratic territory in New Jersey and Oregon."

This was almost perfectly incorrect -- a near ne plus ultra of staggering wrongness, mitigated only slightly by the fact that Florida has not yet been called. And so this morning Morris has offered up his list of excuses in the form of a mea culpa titled "Why I Was Wrong":

I've got egg on my face. I predicted a Romney landslide and, instead, we ended up with an Obama squeaker.

As you can read for yourself, we are not off to a particularly great start, here, since it was not so much an "Obama squeaker" as it was an election in which it became pretty obvious where things were going around 10 o'clock, and then Ohio ended up getting called much earlier than expected, and Obama went on to win quite handily.

Morris recovers, however:

The key reason for my bum prediction is that I mistakenly believed that the 2008 surge in black, Latino, and young voter turnout would recede in 2012 to "normal" levels. Didn't happen. These high levels of minority and young voter participation are here to stay. And, with them, a permanent reshaping of our nation's politics.

If you just read his prediction, it isn't immediately apparent that an underestimation of the "black, Latino, and young voter turnout" is one of the conditions that underpinned his proposition that the nation was headed for a Romney landslide. Morris essentially said in his previous piece that Obama had produced a lot of negative ads, no one believed them, and that meant "[r]easonable voters saw that the voice of hope and optimism and positivism was Romney while the president was only a nitpicking, quarrelsome, negative figure."

But the underestimation of these voters is a bug in many a bum prediction, as are the assumptions that the 2010 voter turnout model had a meaningful relationship to the 2012 turnout, or the assumption that "independent voters" were breaking in a significant way for Romney when it was fairly obvious that the "independent voter" cohort was flooded with rebranded Republican voters.

At least I can give him credit for seeing that the new majority is here to stay. One question is going to be will they turn out in 2014. A lot can happen in two years. And many of them may feel disappointed again as they did in 2010. However, the memory of the Tea Party election will be with them.....


.....And on into the 4T we go........

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

California started to become a failed state when they passed Proposition 13. Maybe now that will reverse itself. they might even start funding what was once
the nation's best university system again.

Funding it with what?

Originally Posted by JDFP

Flip the coin: And according to Dick Morris 93% of black voters voted for Obama. I'm certain that had absolutely nothing to do with race at all either.

j.p.

88% of African-Americans voted for Kerry in 2004. Very rich white guy.

Originally Posted by JDFP

Ah man, classy! Can't fall back on anything else so you start yelling: "RACIST!!!". I saw that coming from a mile away. I still grinned all the same at the classic response knowing it was about to come. There for a moment I thought you would attempt to say something reasonable instead of throwing out the "RACIST!!!" card - but no, I guess I know you and your ilk too well.

Sure, there are racists in the GOP. And there are also just as many, if not more, racists on your end of the spectrum too. I find the veiled condescending and patronizing racism of liberals: ("No, no, it's not your fault you can't make it without government help because you were born a minority! The government has to help you!") to be just as vile as the not-so-veiled racism of racial epithets and slurs. At least outright racists are being honest about their hatred - which is more than can be said for the patronizing racists.

j.p.

Just saying "racist" doesn't say much; agreed. But I can't help wonder why so many white people in the South vote Republican, and even more so during the Obama elections. Why do so many believe your philosophy that government help is a sign of weakness or inferiority, when in fact it has always existed, and is always necessary for everyone? Why do they use your trickle-down philosophy to keep our nation mired in decline and increasing inequality and immobility, as it has been ever since it took over our country in 1980? Why did whites initially support the War on Poverty, and then withdraw their support because they saw their money going to help blacks and hispanics and not them, instead of understanding that curing poverty would be helpful to their own business and their own prosperity? In short, why do they oppose government programs that they perceive are intended to benefit people of color? If we lift the veil on this, what will we find? Economic insecurity? Divide and conquer? Racism? Hero worship of Ronald Reagan? Fear of socialism? I don't know. But the real impact of the trickle-down philosophy that you folks support is a declining economy for everyone.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger:

California started to become a failed state when they passed Proposition 13. Maybe now that will reverse itself. they might even start funding what was once
the nation's best university system again.

classic Xer:

Funding it with what?

TAX MONEY.

And maybe spending less tax money on locking up people we have failed to educate.

What happened in CA is the collapse of a party of right-wing extremist obstructionists, which Republicans are everywhere. They just happened to have passed Prop 13 at the start of the right-wing takeover in 1978, and we've had to deal with the results. Now we have a moderate-to-liberal party in power, with differences of opinion among them, some more beholden to the corporate powers than others. I hope at least we get some decent funding for our schools and colleges again. If CA had it before, why not again!

I don't think it can get away with raising taxes too high, or it will lose power again. But I hope something is done to replace the 2/3 requirement for approving taxes that crippled the legislature for so long, and replace it with a 55% or 60% requirement, so that the legislature isn't crippled again after 2 years. Even the US Senate does not require a 2/3 supermajority. CA really suffered as much as any state from the right-wing trickle-down Republican philosophy, even though it has become a blue state now. It had been a red state for quite a while; it was the state where Reagan was governor, where Prop 13 started the whole anti-tax mania, and which had voted Republican for president in all elections but one from 1952 through 1988.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Just saying "racist" doesn't say much; agreed. But I can't help wonder why so many white people in the South vote Republican, and even more so during the Obama elections.

Social and economic policies that seek the betterment of the individual in America and seeks to embrace our culture as well as maintaining our moral standards. Come on, Eric, this is an argument we've had before and we'll continue to disagree.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Why do so many believe your philosophy that government help is a sign of weakness or inferiority, when in fact it has always existed, and is always necessary for everyone?

Centralized government is not always necessary for anyone. Do you see humans as fundamentally evil? If you do then we fundamentally disagree on this issue as well. I believe the human nature is ultimately good and we seek to do good not only for ourselves but to treat others in such a manner as well. Without a centralized government people would still govern themselves according to the mandates of their nature - which I believe is fundamentally good. There is a distinction between self-governing which we are all capable of doing and centralized government which you seem to think is necessary or we'll all rape and murder one another. I fundamentally disagree.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Why do they use your trickle-down philosophy to keep our nation mired in decline and increasing inequality and immobility, as it has been ever since it took over our country in 1980?

Again, we fundamentally disagree and will continue to do so. Reagan and the resurgence of conservative ideology was a salvation from the horror the late 2T had become - we saw what road that led to with the malaise of Carter. It was an ugly time period of American disenchantment prior to the waking up from the horror of what the late 2T had become - no matter how pretty ("flower power!") it may have begun. It truly was a morning in America again.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Why did whites initially support the War on Poverty, and then withdraw their support because they saw their money going to help blacks and hispanics and not them, instead of understanding that curing poverty would be helpful to their own business and their own prosperity? In short, why do they oppose government programs that they perceive are intended to benefit people of color? If we lift the veil on this, what will we find? Economic insecurity? Divide and conquer? Racism?

Who are you addressing here, Eric? As a Catholic I certainly believe in giving help to those who need help. I try to do my share - unfortunately, with working as much as I do I don't have an opportunity to give back to my community as much as I would like to do. I honestly wish I could do more. I've offered to drive homeless people (and have) to buy food and bought food for them. I used to leave mass disgusted at the homeless around us begging for some cash and discovered very few who took me up on my offer of getting food for them to bring to them. Race did not and never will enter into this equation. I've given to myself to charities through my time and energy. Have I done enough? Absolutely not. Again, I wish I could do more. But I disagree that taking more of my hard earned money through higher taxation is the way to solve this issue of poverty.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Hero worship of Ronald Reagan? Fear of socialism? I don't know. But the real impact of the trickle-down philosophy that you folks support is a declining economy for everyone.

Again, we fundamentally disagree. Hero worship of Reagan isn't my intention just as I hope it's not with most towards Obama (though I wonder regarding some of the brainwashed Millies). But I certainly give respect to those who I believe deserve respect for their commitment and giving of themselves to this nation. And if not for his political ideology - Reagan should certainly be respected for saving the LIFE of over 70 people as a lifeguard as a young man. For this alone the man was an American hero.

j.p.

Former Bush Commerce secretary: Republicans ‘scaring the heck out of’ Hispanics

President Bush’s former secretary of Commerce on Sunday pointed out that Mitt Romney and the Republican Party made a mistake by pushing anti-immigrant policies like “self deportation” in the 2012 elections because it was “scaring the heck out of” Hispanic voters.

“I would lay the blame [for Romney's defeat] squarely on the far right wing of the Republican Party,” former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said during a panel discussion on CNN. “That’s where you get into things like immigration. If we want to be the party of growth and prosperity, we have to be the party of immigration.”

“So we should be leading comprehensive immigration reform. We should be leading the DREAM Act, not the military DREAM Act, students as well,” he explained. “We should be getting rid of things like English as the official language of government. We have to be welcoming immigrants. This is like we are competing for investment capital, we are also competing for human capital. And our party is scaring the heck out of them."

And a "conservative activist" responds by doubling down on the nativist stupidity, proving Mr. Gutierrez's point.

But conservative activist Gary Bauer quickly objected, insisting that the policies of inclusion that Gutierrez had suggested would not attract more voters to the party.

“Seventy-five percent of the American people believe that English, sir, is the language of United States,” Bauer opined. “I don’t understand why you would jettison 75 percent, and the idea that’s going to get you votes."

If the Republicans want to be taken seriously by Millies, who are the most racially diverse generation in American history, they need to drop both the racism and the social conservatism, otherwise they are going to be a regional Southern party, and the Libertarian Party will get the votes of conservative Millies, especially in the West.

Ran into this glorious rant:

When President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the once-Vice President to assassinated President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act in honor of Kennedy, the Solid South Democrats—the racist Dixiecrats—fled the Democratic Party in virtual exodus.
The Republican Party marginalized & struggling to hold onto power in the wake of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal Revolution knew that any chance they had to secure the Black vote was gone with the signing of that act.
They saw these Dixiecrats running away from the Democratic Party in leagues & got an idea.
The Republican Party opens their doors to these energetic angry racist Dixiecrats & forge a whole new coalition that can secure their grip on power while eventually allowing them to reverse the gains of FDR's New Deal Revolution.
This was the Southern Strategy.

Ironically the party that once freed the Black slaves 100 years ago is now courting the racists they once defeated.
After a few hiccups with interfering George Wallace's splitting of the Southern vote & non-racist Southerner Jimmy Carter curiously retaining the South, they locked down this strategy for good with the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan.

By doing this, the Republican Party doomed themselves to extinction.
It would take decades to show but you cannot last long without a moral edge.
They absorbed a base that hates everyone not like themselves in a country full of diversity.
It's illogical to function like this & one day the Republican Party would receive their comeuppance.
They not only prolonged that short-sighted dysfunctional bigotry by providing a political & social platform for the bigots.
They also reneged on the Social Contract by denying that the Rich were supposed to pay back into society that made them.
No moral edge. Greed & Hatred won't take you far in the long term.

Short-term we had to pay for their recklessness.
But once that recklessness had taken its toll, the Balance came in.
Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, & especially Bush II spent all the power of that short-term strategy.
The election & re-election of Barack Obama shows that it's now time for the long-term.

The bigots hate the Blacks.
The bigots hate the Hispanics.
The bigots hate the Asians.
The bigots hate the Muslims.
The bigots hate the Gays.
The bigots hate the Democratic Women.
The bigots hate the Democratic Whites.
The bigots hate the Poor.
The bigots hate California.
The bigots hate Massachusetts.
The bigots hate France.
The bigots hate China.
The bigots hate Europe.
The bigots hate. The bigots hate. The bigots hate.

Can't go nowhere with a bunch of haters & now the Republican Party is married to them.
To keep power they had to please these bigots.
By pleasing these bigots they lost ability to draw in any of those other groups that the bigots hate.
Purge the bigots, lose numbers. Keep the bigots, lose power.
They CAN'T change. And because of that the Republican Party will die.

If they picked a better set of people in the 1960s, that might not have had to happen.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

Funding it with what?

True. They undercut their own long-term prosperity there.

I have noticed something in these posts, once I went beyond the knee-jerk "It's all Party boilerplate!" reaction. Now, there was an article in the latest issue of New Scientist describing the differences that have actually been found between conservatives and liberals - which is, BTW, old news - but which then threw in, at the end, that libertarians differed from both. Not a blend of the two, but a totally third way of seeing the world.

So -- I would like a poll on how many people here would describe themselves as small-l (to eliminate arguments along the lines of Libertarians can't win/Libertarians are spoilers) libertarians?

Again - how many people here identify as:

liberal
conservative
libertarian

?

Sort of a liberal-tarian here...

And it looks like they used the Moral Foundations Questionaire that has been linked here before from http://www.yourmorals.org, so I'm actually part of this sample of self-identified libertarians... lol

My scores were in green:



About as liberal as liberals on fairness and harm reduction, and then much more liberal than liberals on rejecting tribal loyalty, authority, and purity/sanctity.

Most libertarians went the other way on fairness and harm reduction, but we shared a lack of in-group loyalty, deference to authority, and purity-obsession.

Hmm, they had a 7-variable MFQ that included economic liberty. Maybe they just broke the results down a little differently than what they show to users.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Also strange that "the majority" wants to turn a blind eye to the suffering that's still going on in NYC, because it would make their guy look bad.
THAT is the part that I would call "cognitive dissonance," a somewhat more advanced form of denial.

I don't see anyone turning a blind eye to the suffering in NY and NJ. I do see a lot of resignation that everything that can be done is being done, and it's not enough. If you have any suggestions ...

Originally Posted by JDFP

"Will become"? That's being rather optimistic. California has been a cesspool for most people for quite awhile now. It HAS failed.

Broken California: Wasting Money and Hurting Business

I'm just glad I'm no where around that place. It's a disaster only becoming worse. And there are several other states not too far behind it.

j.p.

You do realize that this originated with Proposition 13 in 1978, when funds to run the state were tied-up by consititutional amendment, I assume. I was an adult at the time, and was dumbfounded that the state decided on suicide rather than pay taxes.

Originally Posted by wtrg8

Alright, I will give you this one. Will you tell those on welfare, in order to receive your check(s), you have to work or the gravy train is over. Then this idea will work.

What I saw on the 6th defeats your very argument.

There are many problems with your argument, but let's just cover one. What jobs would you have them do? Right now, we need to create jobs, but have been uncreating them faster than we make them. Of course, we all need people to do the hard things ... things that require advanced degrees or specialized knowledge. And, of course, we need the toilets cleaned. Now all those jobs in between, we have techonology for that.

So I guess you're looking for cleaner toilets and more grocery baggers ... not that we have a shortage of either. I'm on board 100% with the work for welfare thing, but it has to be possible.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

... What happened in CA is the collapse of a party of right-wing extremist obstructionists, which Republicans are everywhere. They just happened to have passed Prop 13 at the start of the right-wing takeover in 1978, and we've had to deal with the results. Now we have a moderate-to-liberal party in power, with differences of opinion among them, some more beholden to the corporate powers than others. I hope at least we get some decent funding for our schools and colleges again. If CA had it before, why not again!

I don't think it can get away with raising taxes too high, or it will lose power again. But I hope something is done to replace the 2/3 requirement for approving taxes that crippled the legislature for so long, and replace it with a 55% or 60% requirement, so that the legislature isn't crippled again after 2 years. Even the US Senate does not require a 2/3 supermajority. CA really suffered as much as any state from the right-wing trickle-down Republican philosophy, even though it has become a blue state now. It had been a red state for quite a while; it was the state where Reagan was governor, where Prop 13 started the whole anti-tax mania, and which had voted Republican for president in all elections but one from 1952 through 1988.

California needs to get rid of the ballot-initiative system. It works against you. Show me a ballot initiative that did good, and I'll point to at least three that did serious harm.