The Democrat Thread

[Balta1701]

I'm having trouble linking on ipad, but I suggest reading nytimes article on al-alwaki assassination.

Here's a look at the article with well-deserved skepticism.

[bmags]

Here's a look at the article with well-deserved skepticism.

 

While there was 1 key passage with that, there was a bunch of bloggy crap where they wrote their thesis before they sat down and were just cherrypicking to prove their point. Their logic is basically that if the NYT language was not condemning it, they were supporting it. Glenn Greenwald school of writing.

[bmags]

life expectancy really isn't going up for the poorest Americans, who tend to rely more on Social Security.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/eco...8e2a_story.html

 

In other words, please don't raise the age for SS.

[StrangeSox]

Republican Sen. Rob Portman now supports marriage equality after his son came out.

 

Mark Schmitt has some comments on what he calls "Miss America Compassion" that we seem to regularly get from conservatives:

Second, I’m tired of giving quasi-conservatives credit for what I call Miss America compassion (I’ll explain in a minute). Smith’s son’s suicide led him to support more funding for suicide prevention and for mental health care generally. Great — my life has been affected by suicide also, so I’m all for that. Similarly, Senator Pete Domenici’s daughter’s mental illness made him an advocate for mandating equitable treatment of mental and physical well-being in health insurance, a cause in which he was joined by Paul Wellstone. Again, I’m all for it, and I have no doubt that Domenici was at least as personally sincere and driven about it as Wellstone, and watching the two of them pair up on this cause and learn to work together was a good example for the potential of democratic institutions to create understanding.

 

But what has always bothered me about such examples is that their compassion seems so narrowly and literally focused on the specific misfortune that their family encountered. Having a child who suffers from mental illness would indeed make one particularly passionate about funding for mental health, sure. But shouldn’t it also lead to a deeper understanding that there are a lot of families, in all kinds of situations beyond their control, who need help from government? Shouldn’t having a son whose illness leads to suicide open your eyes to something more than a belief that we need more money for suicide help-lines? Shouldn’t it call into question the entire winners-win/losers-lose ideology of the current Republican Party? Shouldn’t it also lead to an understanding that if we want to live in a society that provides a robust system of public support for those who need help — whether for mental illness or any of the other misfortunes that life hands out at random — we will need a government with adequate institutions and revenues to provide those things?

 

And that’s what I mean by “Miss America Compassion.” These Senators are like Miss America contestants, each with a “platform”: Mr. Ohio: “Adoption Assistance.” Mr. Oregon: “Suicide Prevention.” Mr. Minnesota: “Community Development.” Mr. New Mexico: “Mental Health Parity.” Mr. Pennsylvania: “Missing children” The platform is meant to show them as thoughtful, deep and independent-minded, but after the “platform segment” they return to play their obedient part in a degrading exercise that makes this country crueler and government less supportive.

 

And, of course, as with Miss America contestants’ “platforms,” there are a few approved topics and many more that simply couldn’t be considered. It’s not too likely that you’ll see Miss Alabama adopt “Income inequality” as her platform or Miss Colorado, “Corporate tax evasion.” Nor is a Senator likely to have a family experience with lack of health insurance, or personal bankruptcy, or Food Stamps.

They never seem to care about or understand an issue until it directly and personally affects them, and even then, the new-found compassion remains limited to that one specific thing.

[Jenksismyhero]

Republican Sen. Rob Portman now supports marriage equality after his son came out.

 

Mark Schmitt has some comments on what he calls "Miss America Compassion" that we seem to regularly get from conservatives:

 

They never seem to care about or understand an issue until it directly and personally affects them, and even then, the new-found compassion remains limited to that one specific thing.

 

I think it's the mentalitity that our bleeding hearts don't match with our bleeding wallets. You can't pay for/support everything.

[StrangeSox]

That doesn't explain issues like marriage equality, nor does it really make it any better. As soon as they've been personally affected, now they see why this one particular thing is very important. But they can't ever seem to expand that to situations other people face that they might not.

 

If anything, bringing up taxes only makes it worse, because then that means they recognize these other problems as real problems but still don't give a s*** and only agree with funding for their problems. That seems even more narcissistic than simply not recognizing those other problems as legitimate.

[StrangeSox]

CPAC has been hilarious.

 

Rubio's speech that conservatives don't need ideas, they already have one: America! and also how scientists and liberals are the true bigots because it's been scientifically proven that life begins at conception. Oh, and somehow not mentioned immigration at all?

 

Trump's bizarre rambling and huge insecurity complex speech.

 

This talk on racial outreach that quickly devolved into racism thanks to white supremacists arriving

 

Edited March 15, 2013 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

University of Central Florida student found dead in hotel room. Had weapons, ammunition stockpile, explosives, apparently planned mass shooting, killed self when he felt his timeline went off.

[StrangeSox]

Today's the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. What a dumb idea that was.

 

2) Accountability. For a decade or more after the Vietnam war, the people who had guided the U.S. to disaster decently shrank from the public stage. Robert McNamara did worthy penance at the World Bank. Rusk, Rostow, Westmoreland were not declaiming on what the U.S. should and should not do.

After Iraq, there has been a weird amnesty and amnesia about people’s misjudgment on the most consequential decision of our times. Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 primary race largely because she had been “wrong” on Iraq and Barack Obama had been “right.” But Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bremer, Rice, McCain, Abrams, and others including the pro-war press claque are still offering their judgments unfazed. In his post-presidential reticence George W. Bush has been an honorable exception.

I don’t say these people should never again weigh in. But there should be an asterisk on their views, like the fine print about side effects in pharmaceutical ads.

3) Honor. Say this for Al Gore: He was forthright, he was early, and he was right about Iraq.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/a...raq-war/273504/

 

On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, it’s important to remember that George W. Bush did not always or simply lie about Iraq and the threat it posed. He did not sell the war simply by making stuff up about the presence of WMD or exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq. That storyline is too easy. Bush and his allies did something far subtler—and more disturbing—and what they said was actually well within the canon of national security discourse, both on the left and the right.

http://crookedtimber.org/2013/03/17/bush-d...o-the-iraq-war/

 

Fibbers’ forecasts are worthless. Case after miserable case after bloody case we went through, I tell you, all of which had this moral. Not only that people who want a project will tend to make innacurate projections about the possible outcomes of that project, but about the futility of attempts to “shade” downward a fundamentally dishonest set of predictions. If you have doubts about the integrity of a forecaster, you can’t use their forecasts at all. Not even as a “starting point”. By the way, I would just love to get hold of a few of the quantitative numbers from documents prepared to support the war and give them a quick run through Benford’s Law.

 

Application to Iraq This was how I decided that it was worth staking a bit of credibility on the strong claim that absolutely no material WMD capacity would be found, rather than “some” or “some but not enough to justify a war” or even “some derisory but not immaterial capacity, like a few mobile biological weapons labs”. My reasoning was that Powell, Bush, Straw, etc, were clearly making false claims and therefore ought to be discounted completely, and that there were actually very few people who knew a bit about Iraq but were not fatally compromised in this manner who were making the WMD claim. Meanwhile, there were people like Scott Ritter and Andrew Wilkie who, whatever other faults they might or might not have had, did not appear to have told any provable lies on this subject and were therefore not compromised.

 

[...]

 

We also learned in accounting class that the difference between “making a definite single false claim with provable intent to deceive” and “creating a very false impression and allowing it to remain without correcting it” is not one that you should rely upon to keep you out of jail. Even if your motives are noble.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/five-nomination.html

 

digby looks at how the press cheerleaded the war and basically became transcribers around this time, continuing to be so today.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

More evidence that Nixon sabotaged the 1968 Paris Peace Talks in order to advance his Presidential aspirations and thus prolonging and expanding the war for five more years has emerged.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668

 

Charlie Pierce was some comments:

There were 22,000 more Americans who died in Vietnam after Nixon sabotaged the peace talks in order to win an election. That’s 44,000 more American parents. That’s thousands and thousands more American children. That’s god alone knows how many more men, women, and children in Southeast Asia, all of whom died, very likely unnecessarily, because of Richard Nixon’s treasonous ambitions. Millions of people visit the Vietnam Memorial in Washington every year. Everyone of them who comes to commemorate a loved one lost in the war after 1968 should say a silent prayer at the wall and then turn slowly, and, with great dignity and quiet grace, spit in the direction of the White House, just because Richard Nixon once lived there.

[StrangeSox]

Scalia continues his campaign to remembered as the worst Justice of the modern era, lending credence to imaginary voter fraud while rejecting documented voter disenfranchisement:

https://prospect.org/article/arizona-versus-right-vote

 

 

Scalia’s arguments are problematic for two reasons. First, whether or not Scalia thinks the federal requirements are sufficient is beside the point—Article I Section IV gives Congress the power to “make or alter” state voting regulations, so the judgment about what requirements are sufficient rests with Congress, not with Arizona or the Supreme Court. And even on its own terms his argument that the threat of a perjury conviction represents an insufficient deterrent is unpersuasive. Arizona provides no evidence that this kind of voter fraud is a problem. The problems of individual voter fraud the bill allegedly addresses are essentially non-existent, and even in theory it is impossible for individual fraudulent voters to alter the course of an election. And, in particular, it is extremely implausible to think that the illegal immigrants the bill targets are likely to risk attracting the attention of federal authorities by committing perjury on a form submitted to the federal government. It is hard to avoid the conclusion of one Arizona legislator that "was never intended to combat voter fraud. It was intended to keep minorities from voting."

 

Scalia also mocked the idea that the additional Arizona requirements represented a substantial burden. “Enclosing your driver's license number is that immense barrier?” he sarcastically asked Patricia Millet, the attorney representing the challengers. But the data proves Scalia is dead wrong to dismiss the extent of vote suppression caused by the initiative. "The district court," Millet pointed out, "found that 31,550 people were rejected from voting because of Proposition 200." This is a serious additional burden which shows that the inconsistency with federal law is not merely formal. The vote fraud Scalia and other Republicans are purportedly concerned with is imaginary, but the burdens created by the Arizona law are quite real.

[Jenksismyhero]

Scalia continues his campaign to remembered as the worst Justice of the modern era, lending credence to imaginary voter fraud while rejecting documented voter disenfranchisement:

https://prospect.org/article/arizona-versus-right-vote

 

It's asinine that in this country you have to produce a photo ID to enter certain buildings, but it's a god damn riot when people ask for photo ID's to be shown while voting.

[Soxbadger]

Because voting is supposed to be anonymous so that our freedoms arent encroached.

 

Kind of the entire reason why ballots are sealed.

 

But I guess if that isnt a good reason anymore, we might as well just be able to vote online as long as we provide our SS number, and then they can just list our votes for everyone to see.

 

That will end voter fraud, if I can check my vote make sure its right and make sure no one else voted under my name.

 

But then again, we value privacy/secrecy.

 

Guess it just depends on how much you want big brother in your life.

[Jenksismyhero]

Because voting is supposed to be anonymous so that our freedoms arent encroached.

 

Kind of the entire reason why ballots are sealed.

 

But I guess if that isnt a good reason anymore, we might as well just be able to vote online as long as we provide our SS number, and then they can just list our votes for everyone to see.

 

That will end voter fraud, if I can check my vote make sure its right and make sure no one else voted under my name.

 

But then again, we value privacy/secrecy.

 

Guess it just depends on how much you want big brother in your life.

 

Anonymous? You have to register to vote. How is that any different?

 

Btw, I have to spend [insert price of a stamp because I honestly don't know these days] in order to register. Rabble, rabble! Disenfranchisement! Bunch of raycists! Infringing on my rights! Rabble, rabble!

Edited March 19, 2013 by Jenksismybitch

[StrangeSox]

It's asinine that in this country you have to produce a photo ID to enter certain buildings, but it's a god damn riot when people ask for photo ID's to be shown while voting.

 

Probably because the impetus for these Voter ID Laws can be easily traced to efforts to disenfranchise voters for the other party and result in disenfranchisement that is many orders of magnitude greater* than the voter fraud problems they're trying to prevent.

 

*this assumes incidents of voter fraud that would be prevented by ID laws are regularly non-zero, facts which are not in evidence.

[StrangeSox]

Anonymous? You have to register to vote. How is that any different?

 

Btw, I have to spend [insert price of a stamp because I honestly don't know these days] in order to register. Rabble, rabble! Disenfranchisement! Bunch of raycists! Infringing on my rights! Rabble, rabble!

 

So you're just going to ignore the actual, documented disenfranchisement (that just happens to disproportionately affect minority voters) in order to pursue a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist?

[Balta1701]

It's asinine that in this country you have to produce a photo ID to enter certain buildings, but it's a god damn riot when people ask for photo ID's to be shown while voting.

Do you support a nationwide government-issued, government-required ID given to everyone at taxpayer expense?

[StrangeSox]

Because voting is supposed to be anonymous so that our freedoms arent encroached.

 

Kind of the entire reason why ballots are sealed.

 

But I guess if that isnt a good reason anymore, we might as well just be able to vote online as long as we provide our SS number, and then they can just list our votes for everyone to see.

 

That will end voter fraud, if I can check my vote make sure its right and make sure no one else voted under my name.

 

But then again, we value privacy/secrecy.

 

Guess it just depends on how much you want big brother in your life.

 

FWIW voting wasn't anonymous until the late 19th century.

[StrangeSox]

Do you support a nationwide government-issued, government-required ID given to everyone at taxpayer expense?

 

This still leaves many elderly people who lack the proper documentation in the lurch.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/us/polit...;pagewanted=all

[Balta1701]

This still leaves many elderly people who lack the proper documentation in the lurch.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/us/polit...;pagewanted=all

Then it's on the government to fix that problem (hence why you have to make it required).

 

Usually the response to that statement is that people want the right to choose not to be tracked by the government everywhere they go, but that's what you have to give up if you want to make an ID requirement that is actually fair.

[Jenksismyhero]

Probably because the impetus for these Voter ID Laws can be easily traced to efforts to disenfranchise voters for the other party and result in disenfranchisement that is many orders of magnitude greater* than the voter fraud problems they're trying to prevent.

 

*this assumes incidents of voter fraud that would be prevented by ID laws are regularly non-zero, facts which are not in evidence.

 

And we've been 'round this merry-go-round before: you won't ever get evidence of voter fraud because it's impossible to catch without someone being dumb enough to get caught. This isn't some make-em-up scenario, it happens:

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/11...es-in-november/

 

Let's be real here - this might be an effort from Republicans to keep certain people from voting (I don't buy that, but whatever, i'll play along) because it favors them, but the Democrat response is equally about KEEPING those votes because it favors them. None of this has anything to do with constitutional rights or some fight against disenfranchisement. You have to show an ID to early vote in Illinois. Where's the outcry? Oh yeah, there isn't any because it's not a big deal.

 

And GMAFB on ID's being a prohibitive force. Registration is equally prohibitive. Let's get rid of that too. Hell, let's get rid of any effort to control voting. Let's make it a free-for-all. You love your candidate? Vote a million times if you want to, just like American Idol.

 

 

[Soxbadger]

Anonymous? You have to register to vote. How is that any different?

 

Btw, I have to spend [insert price of a stamp because I honestly don't know these days] in order to register. Rabble, rabble! Disenfranchisement! Bunch of raycists! Infringing on my rights! Rabble, rabble!

 

Because registering to vote is so that you are voting for the right ballots, as elections are based on where you live. Drivers license is unnecessary and superfulous.

 

I hate govt in my life, I dont want to give them any unnecessary information. I find drivers license and more information about me to be completely unnecessary. The govt does not need it to prevent voter fraud.

 

Drivers license is not required of all adults in the US, therefore its unnecessary and irrelevant.

 

If you love big govt and you want to give govt more personal information, that is your call. But I dont. I dont like the govt.

 

FWIW voting wasn't anonymous until the late 19th century.

 

Society evolves, I dont want society to devolve. Anonymity is important.

[Jenksismyhero]

Do you support a nationwide government-issued, government-required ID given to everyone at taxpayer expense?

 

Sure, for those that legitimately can't afford it.

[Jenksismyhero]

This still leaves many elderly people who lack the proper documentation in the lurch.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/us/polit...;pagewanted=all

 

Lol, ugh. So again, why have any requirements at all? Some dumb person might have to deal with a "complicated" process. The horror!

[Soxbadger]

Lol, ugh. So again, why have any requirements at all? Some dumb person might have to deal with a "complicated" process. The horror!

 

Well you have to have some requirements if you are going to base voting on where people live, have districts etc.

 

Which is why registration is done by where you currently live.

 

Not by what your drivers license states. Which is why drivers license requirement is nonsensical under the current rules of voting.

 

But I guess some people just like more rules and more govt intervention.

 

Not I.

Edited March 19, 2013 by Soxbadger