U.S. Politics - shut down, fed up, chime in

[Ser Greguh]

It's so bizarre that Republicans don't understand that it's not a "compromise" to start from a completely unreasonable and totally extreme place ("hey guys, if you don't mind, we'd like you to utterly kill this bill that is already the law and has already been validated by the supreme court") and transition to a point that is still completely unreasonable but admittedly slightly less extreme ("I suppose we'd be okay if you just didn't fund it").

I mean, we don't accept this sort of "compromise" anywhere else in life. The Cincinatti Reds recently lost a one-game playoff with the Pittsburgh Pirates to advance to the National League Divisional Series to play against the St. Louis Cardinals. What the Republicans are suggesting is quite literally as if the Reds were to say to the Pirates, "How about we say that we won this game and we get to play the Cardinals instead of you?" To which the Pirates respond, "Um, how about, no?" And to which the "compromise" is "Oh, okay, well, how about we admit that you guys won the game but we get to go play the Cardinals anyway?"

It's fucking crazypants.

[lokisnow]

It's so bizarre that Republicans don't understand that it's not a "compromise" to start from a completely unreasonable and totally extreme place ("hey guys, if you don't mind, we'd like you to utterly kill this bill that is already the law and has already been validated by the supreme court") and transition to a point that is still completely unreasonable but admittedly slightly less extreme ("I suppose we'd be okay if you just didn't fund it").

I mean, we don't accept this sort of "compromise" anywhere else in life. The Cincinatti Reds recently lost a one-game playoff with the Pittsburgh Pirates to advance to the National League Divisional Series to play against the St. Louis Cardinals. What the Republicans are suggesting is quite literally as if the Reds were to say to the Pirates, "How about we say that we won this game and we get to play the Cardinals instead of you?" To which the Pirates respond, "Um, how about, no?" And to which the "compromise" is "Oh, okay, well, how about we admit that you guys won the game but we get to go play the Cardinals anyway?"

It's fucking crazypants.

Or like going all in when you're short stack and don't even have a big blind, but then expecting that you should be allowed to win everyone else's entire stack (even if they don't bet it) because you yelled out "All in".

[Count Balerion]

now would be an excellent time for the dragons to turn up, no?

[Tywin Manderly]

Which other two names do you give a man after Cruz?

John Boehner?

[sologdin]

the neo-feudalist wing of the GOP (that's my designation for them, now) are not similar to the war criminals in aCoK, though i appreciate the analogy.

i'd advise against hiring the assassin, also, on the basis of the necropolitical management problem: once they dead, we're likely to see them again as zombies, and i don't think y'all want a neo-feudalist zombocalypse on your consciences.

[The Marquis de Leech]

once they dead, we're likely to see them again as zombies,

How would we tell the difference? Dead or alive, they eat people's brains.

[thecryptile]

Okay, I was curious if your thinking had changed...

Well not really, it was always a gun control thing, and Cuccinelli's surprising advocacy of marijuana decriminalization seems like a move in the right direction as well. But he is crazy, we all realized that when he tried to change the flag.

IIRC, if Sarvis wins a certain percentage of the vote, it would grant the LP automatic ballot access just like the major parties. That might legitimize LP candidates and get them more media exposure. Sarvis wasn't allowed to attend the gubernatorial debate, and Cuccinelli refused to go because he said it was biased. So there was no debate.

Then there is the question of how much of the gun control agenda can McAulliffe accomplish? The NRA ILA and the Virginia Civil Defense League will fight any such measures tooth and nail.

[sologdin]

yeah, the firearms industry can surely look to its interest in placing automatic rifles in the hands of toddlers.

[TerraPrime]

But he is crazy, we all realized that when he tried to change the flag.

What, his one-man crusade to prosecute a climate scientist for fraud wasn't evidence enough?

[Shryke]

Jesus, wtf is up with DC this week?

A man set himself on fire on the National Mall in the nation's capital as passers-by rushed over to help put out the flames, officials and witnesses said Friday afternoon.

The reason for the self-immolation was not immediately clear and the man's identity was not disclosed. But it occurred in public view, on a central national gathering place, in a city still rattled by a mass shooting last month and a high-speed car chase outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday that ended with a woman being shot dead by police with a young child in the car.

The man on the Mall suffered life-threatening injuries and was airlifted to the hospital, said District of Columbia fire department spokesman Tim Wilson.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/man-sets-fire-national-mall-20476899

Stay non-flammable DC-area borders.

[Shryke]

So, found this through Sullivan and thought it was kind of interesting:

http://www.nationalmemo.com/carville-greenberg/why-the-tea-partys-power-keeps-growing/

Today, Democracy Corps is releasing findings from focus groups with evangelical, Tea Party, and moderate Republicans. Our conversations with these Republicans help explain why the GOP is committed to shutdown politics — and why in the future, its leaders likely will move more deeply into intransigent far-right conservatism.

While moderate Republicans want their leaders to seek what they call “middle ground,” they form only one quarter of today’s Republican voters. The most conservative factions in the party — evangelicals and Tea Party adherents — now comprise more than half of Republican partisans. These folks do not worry that Republican leaders’ intransigence has led to this kind of shutdown politics in Washington. Instead, they worry that current Republican leaders are too compromising

These voters — a majority of Republican partisans — do not want their leaders in Washington to work for compromise. Instead, they support the kind of strong-arm government-by-threat-and-fiat that finds us now in a government shutdown — and possibly also heading for a default on the country’s debt. In the future, this majority looks to move the GOP farther to the right.

That's just sort of a quick summary, there's the full PDF at the link.

Sullivan does some interesting analysis on it:

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/10/04/why-theyll-die-on-this-hill/

The base Republican voters in these focus groups view themselves as besieged by minorities seeking free benefits, and see Obama as the Pied Piper of those hoping to abuse the system. They are not explicitly racist about the president or about the beneficiaries of the new goodies (though they had no such qualms during Bush’s Medicare D entitlement). But they believe they are losing an America that a Roanoke evangelical describes like this:

Everybody is above average. Everybody is happy. Everybody is white. Everybody is middle class, whether or not they really are. Everybody looks that way. Everybody goes to the same pool. Everybody goes – there’s one library, one post office. Very homogeneous.

This is the America they believe is being taken away from them.

But this is the core conclusion of the study and why it helps us understand our current predicament – nothing represents their sense of loss and anger more powerfully than Obamacare:

When Evangelicals talk about what is wrong in the country, Obamacare is first on their list and they see it as the embodiment of what is wrong in both the economy and American politics. In fact, when asked what she talks about most, one woman in Colorado replied, “Obamacare, hands down, around our house.” In Roanoke, it was the first thing mentioned when asked “what’s the hot topic in your world?”

To participants in these groups, Obamacare “just looks like a wave’s coming, that we’re all going to get screwed very soon. ”

The bewildering economic and social and demographic changes have created a cultural and existential panic among those most heavily concentrated in those districts whose members are threatening to tear down the global economy as revenge for losing two presidential elections in a row. They feel they have already lost and have nothing to gain from any constructive engagement with a president they regard as pretty close to the anti-Christ of parasitic minorities. They feel isolated in a more multi-cultural country. They feel spied upon and condescended to. They have shut out any news sources apart from Fox. It does not occur to them, for example, that Obamacare might actually help them. And you get no actual specifics on policies they like or dislike. It is all abstractions based on impressions.

More to the point, the bulk of these Republicans no longer believe in the Republican party. They identify more strongly with the Tea Party or Evangelical groups or Fox News than the GOP. On social issues, the defining issue is homosexuality – not abortion. That intransigence will alienate them them even further from the future mainstream. Their next big issue: denying climate change. Right now, I see no way to integrate these groups and people into the broader body politic or conversation. Their alienation is so deep it is close to unbridgeable. And further defeats will make their isolation worse, not better, their anger more, not less, intense.

This is the deeper crisis we face – and without strong economic growth, it is hard to see how it can be ameliorated in the near future. Perhaps if moderate Republicans – a mere quarter of the whole – jumped ship to the Democrats, then the electoral losses would be so great as to demand some kind of reform. But the center is not holding. And I fear it will get even worse than this until it gets better.

A sort of TLDR version is that the core of the GOP is steadily becoming an older white male minority that is increasingly isolated from the mainstream of American culture and the changes it's undergoing and feels marginalized because of that.. They are too small to win, but too large to ignore and gradually becoming too isolated to fold in to the rest of the political landscape. And there's really no way it's not going to get worse unless they start to shrink even faster then they already are and/or stop voting.

[The Marquis de Leech]

And the moderate Republicans (in so far as any still exist) can't really jump ship to the Democrats: a Grand Coalition of everyone who isn't crazy wouldn't have anything coherent to push for. You'd have a situation where Republicans can't win elections, but Democrats can't govern.

[TerraPrime]

Everybody is above average.

I wish the Bible had basic statistics. In that sense, the Book of Numbers is highly misleading.

[all swedes are racist]

So, found this through Sullivan and thought it was kind of interesting:

http://www.nationalmemo.com/carville-greenberg/why-the-tea-partys-power-keeps-growing/

That's just sort of a quick summary, there's the full PDF at the link.

Sullivan does some interesting analysis on it:

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/10/04/why-theyll-die-on-this-hill/

A sort of TLDR version is that the core of the GOP is steadily becoming an older white male minority that is increasingly isolated from the mainstream of American culture and the changes it's undergoing and feels marginalized because of that.. They are too small to win, but too large to ignore and gradually becoming too isolated to fold in to the rest of the political landscape. And there's really no way it's not going to get worse unless they start to shrink even faster then they already are and/or stop voting.

Wow, that was kind of... Unnerving. Anyone read the comic DMZ? I feel like we're looking at the beginning of that...

[The Marquis de Leech]

I wish the Bible had basic statistics. In that sense, the Book of Numbers is highly misleading.

Oh, I think these people realise that some people have to be below average for everyone else to be above average. It's just a case of those "below average" people not being seen, or interacting with anyone else. In essence, apartheid.

[Captain_Falcon]

I'm surprised so many people on this forum seem to defend the Democrats. Both parties only care about establishing/sustaining influence. Bipartisan politics is a game of chess and the American people are the pawns.

That being said, I would be happy with Rep. Senator Rand Paul in the Oval Office.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I'm surprised so many people on this forum seem to defend the Democrats. Both parties only care about establishing/sustaining influence. Bipartisan politics is a game of chess and the American people are the pawns.

That being said, I would be happy with Rep. Senator Rand Paul in the Oval Office.

Because the Democrats merely run through a spectrum of the incompetent, competent, mediocre, stellar, ideological, pragmatic, corporatist, and all the rest: in other words, they're a diverse bunch of non-angels with human failings. But they aren't crazy, and they aren't the ones trying to blow up the international economy. The Republicans are.

[Captain_Falcon]

Because the Democrats merely run through a spectrum of the incompetent, competent, mediocre, stellar, ideological, pragmatic, corporatist, and all the rest: in other words, they're a diverse bunch of non-angels with human failings. But they aren't crazy, and they aren't the ones trying to blow up the international economy. The Republicans are.

Member diversity isn't nearly as important to me as the actual causes that unite them.

And I don't think Republicans are trying to blow up the international economy. With all due respect, making statements like this and pointing fingers is what got our nation into this mess to begin with. America was founded on "we". Nowadays, there's only "you" and "me". "You" don't get ahead without "me" falling behind and vice versa. Meanwhile, "we" get nowhere.

[Horza]

Well, if they don't resolve this shutdown in time to raise the debt ceiling before it expires in twelve days there will in all likelihood be a US default and that assuredly will blow up the international economy.

That House Republicans are willing to bring this possibility much closer to reality by starting a government shutdown fight in order to disrupt legislation that 1) passed both houses three years ago and, 2) was upheld by the Supreme Court last year, is enough for me to call them a pack of destructive fools, regardless of whether they're actually trying to blow up the international economy.

[danm_999]

I'm surprised so many people on this forum seem to defend the Democrats. Both parties only care about establishing/sustaining influence. Bipartisan politics is a game of chess and the American people are the pawns.

That being said, I would be happy with Rep. Senator Rand Paul in the Oval Office.

I don't think people are defending the Democrats and criticising the Republicans because they believe only the latter is interesting in sustaining its influence.

I think they're defending the Democrats and criticising the Republicans because the latter is using totally irresponsible and radical methods to try and overturn something Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court and the majority of American voters have all ratified.