Humorless Politics Thread

[Steve of Bloomington]

I voted in the Indiana Republican primary yesterday, mainly to vote against the Tea Party challenger to Lugar, Mourdock (actually I like Lugar on his own merits). A lot of good that did, the Indiana GOP dumped Lugar, perhaps swayed by Mourdock attack ads pointing out that disco was popular when Lugar was first elected.

I voted for Ron Paul for president, too, which was kind of fun. Now I get to vote against Romney twice.

I left every other box unchecked. I could have voted for a Jake 'the Snake' for one of the offices, but opted not to.

[buffcoat]

I had early-voted agin' our famous Amendment.  It ended up passing 61-39, which is pretty vast.  You can't overcome that sort of gap by comfortably thinking to yourself "well, they didn't know what it meant" or "we'll reverse that in 4 years."

At the same time, my own region was the only significant region to vote against, along with the counties that have major college presences.  The single most statistically relevant factor in predicting how a person voted on the amendment was level of education - more than age, more than party, more than religious preference.

I don't correlate education with intelligence, necessarily.  I correlate it with experience of worldviews beyond your own, and with mixing with all types of people.  There were no "gay people" at my high school in the early 90s (like there are no gay people in Iran), and I went to high school in a relatively progressive community.  Now there are plenty of gay people there and it's no big deal.  I bet there are "zero" gay people in a lot of the towns that voted overwhelmingly for the amendment.

I'm convinced, based on demographic trends, that we will all get there eventually.  Although Alabama just took its anti-miscegenation law off the books in the 2000s.

[dave from knoxville]

Plus, you are still allowed to pick up road kill off the street in Tennessee and take it home and eat it.

[Flood]

I am angry at people who are angry at people for being angry with other peoples' politics.

Just FYI.

[GregOrr]

I'm a fan of the show, and I thought I'd share that I just launched a website called http://the99percentvotes.com for people to propose, discuss, and submit on public policy ideas.

If it catches on, I think it can make a big difference in getting government to work for the people. Check it up, sign up, and let me know what you think.

Thanks,
Greg

[BadGuyZero]

Holy hell...my head hurts from watching this.
Bigoted Church Member Defends Pastor Worley

[buffcoat]

There is a certain price you pay when you turn your beliefs and your mind over to someone or something else.

I wonder - seriously - if it's worth it.  It must offer something for so many people to do it.

[dave from knoxville]

There is a certain price you pay when you turn your beliefs and your mind over to someone or something else.

I wonder - seriously - if it's worth it.  It must offer something for so many people to do it.

It's so much easier than thinking

[fonpr]

There is a certain price you pay when you turn your beliefs and your mind over to someone or something else.

I wonder - seriously - if it's worth it.  It must offer something for so many people to do it.

It's so much easier than thinking

Ya think?

[Flood]

Is there anything that the modern conservative movement has to offer regarding politics & policies to take on today's problems?

Serious question.

[Flood]

However, in all fairness, all this is driven by the GOP takeover in 2010.  The NC Democrats picked the worst year ever (redistricting, a weak governor) to give up decades of one party rule.

I've been surprised to find that a lot of the Southern States have been Democratic until not very long ago. A lot went Republican from the late 1990s on out.

That's because the Democratic Party was the Party of Horrible Racism in the South until the 1970s - because of Lincoln.  Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond were Democrats until the 70s.

North Carolina is still more conservative than, say, the Northeast, but 1) an influx of people from around the country and the world, 2) rising urbanization, and, 3) let's face it, the daily dying off of people who were once segregationists and birth of people for whom gay rights is just common sense have moved us in a more moderate direction.

Also, North Carolina in specific was more chill than the other states throughout the Civil Rights era - NC is associated with (successful) lunch-counter sit-ins rather than fire hoses.  Even the angry oldsters are mostly on-board with maintaining some of that reputation.


Still...

Yeah, I knew this. Still astounding that the transformation that started in the late 1960s with Dems vis-à-vis the GOP with respect to changing places in being champions of liberalism/conservatism took about three decades to complete in the South. A lot was still Dem land in the South until the late 1990s.

In that vein, that history is still rewritten: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/05/national-review-civil-rights-williamson

[Flood]

Holy hell...my head hurts from watching this.
Bigoted Church Member Defends Pastor Worley

Bless her tiny little heart.

[dudep]

Mitt Romney Is Amazed By WaWa

[cutout]

Hate Romney, but that WaWa thing only proves people's point about how the media creates their own narrative by selective editing. There are so many things to hit Romney with, this isn't one of them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/msnbc-faces-pressure-on-romneys-wawa-moment/2012/06/19/gJQApHH0nV_blog.html

[cavorting with nudists]

True enough, if there's a story there it should have been the congenital liar's bullshit story about an optometrist having to fill out a 33-page form to change his address. That doesn't even pass the laugh test, but Mediaite went ahead and checked. The form is two pages long: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/msnbcs-andrea-mitchell-doesnt-apologize-for-romney-wawa-editing/

But big media would much rather get snarky about a candidate's eccentricities than come out and call him a liar.  They think that gets them credit for being "plucky" without having to deal with the blowback that would come from actually affirming facts.