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American Politics XII


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From the last thread:

Anyone heard anything about the E-Verify system? Wondering who is being most truthful on that point.

Yes, I have. I live in Arizona, which requires employers to use it. More info on Arizona's law.

It works fairly smoothly for employers. The biggest problem is bad data that has been in the system for years. I recently started a new job, but the E-Verify system didn't have the same SSN as the Social Security office. I had to get a copy of my birth certificate and update with the SSA.

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so does Merkun include Canada, central america and south america? Or is Merkun only Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia and Georgia? Previous threads have been just US politics, though I suppose it could be all inclusive for the entire hemisphere or limited to the region that shares a bad dialect. So what's the scope of this thread, gigantic or narrow?

We need a thread title change because Merkun just looks fucking stupid.

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We need a thread title change because Merkun just looks fucking stupid.

What's really stupid is the obsessive focus** on Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remark, which was made in the context of a speech about judges understanding the lives of minority women and in which it made perfect sense and wasn't at all racist. So if I hear one more jock strapper criticize her for that I swear I'm taking hostages.

**Not your focus, Lockesnow; I'm just making a general remark.

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Look, good news! I have no idea if it's accurate news so at least it's good, right? :P

The recession is over! Let the jobless recovery begin!

Well shit! Crack a beer, everybody. :cheers:

Reasons for that conclusion are laid out in the article linked below, perhaps to be discussed by people more knowledgeable than myself. A few clips:

No, two of the best and most objective forecasters, who are not connected to investment banks or to the CNBC noise machine, have recently called the upturn. Macroeconomic Advisers, the St. Louis-based consulting firm that compiles a monthly GDP index, reported to its clients Monday that while second-quarter GDP was tracking at negative 0.1 percent (recession), the third quarter was tracking at 2.4 percent growth.

The folks at the Economic Cycles Research Institute agree enthusiastically. It's not because they've detected green pea shoots in Central Park. Rather, it's because we've seen the three P's, says Lakshman Achuthan, managing director at ECRI, which has been studying business cycles for decades and was one of the few outfits to call the last two recessions with any degree of accuracy.

[...]

It's tough to recognize transitions objectively "because so often our hopes and fears can get in the way." To prevent exuberance and despair from clouding vision, ECRI looks for the three P's: a pronounced rise in the leading indicators; one that persists for at least three months; and one that's pervasive, meaning a majority of indicators are moving in the same direction.

[...]

All three are now flashing green. According to Achuthan, the long-leading index growth rate has been recovering since November 2008, the weekly leading index has been recovering since last December, and the short-leading index growth rate bottomed in February 2009. In sequence, each turned up, "and by April the three Ps had all been satisfied." Sure, corporate profits continue to disappoint, and the unemployment rate is climbing. But for ECRI, which navigates by relying exclusively on its instruments, that's only a part of their picture. They're the Spocks of the economic forecasting crowd—unemotional, uninvested in anything but the logic of what history and their dashboard tell them. "From our vantage point, every week and every month our call is getting stronger, not weaker, including over the last few weeks," says Achuthan. "The recession is ending somewhere this summer." In fact, it may already be over.

http://www.slate.com/id/2222742/
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so does Merkun include Canada, central america and south america? Or is Merkun only Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia and Georgia? Previous threads have been just US politics, though I suppose it could be all inclusive for the entire hemisphere or limited to the region that shares a bad dialect. So what's the scope of this thread, gigantic or narrow?

We need a thread title change because Merkun just looks fucking stupid.

You forgot to include Ohio in that grouping of states! It belongs there, too (at least much of it does...)

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What's really stupid is the obsessive focus** on Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" remark, which was made in the context of a speech about judges understanding the lives of minority women and in which it made perfect sense and wasn't at all racist. So if I hear one more jock strapper criticize her for that I swear I'm taking hostages.

I do think it's indicative of a certain political mindset and is clearly racialist. If you're a believer in color blindness as an ideal for race relations, Sotomayor is definitely not going to make your short list of preferred judges. Not sure what a 'jock strapper' is, but if I qualify, start taking hostages.

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Harry Reid's balls: They may exist after all!

With a possible fight brewing in Congress over repeal of the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell†policy on gays in the military, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, came down on Tuesday solidly in favor of eliminating the ban.

“We’re having trouble getting people into the military,†Mr. Reid told reporters when questioned about whether he could support an 18-month moratorium on enforcing a prohibition on gays in the armed forces. “And I think that we shouldn’t turn down anybody that’s willing to fight for our country, certainly based on sexual orientation.â€

Mr. Reid said he would go the proposal, being considered by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, one better and support a permanent repeal of the ban.

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Reporters from Fox News, Washington Times, and WSJ editorial division caught trying to curry favor with Mark Sanford's office and decrying the behavior of other media... before Sanford's story exploded like a shame grenade.

But they also show something even funnier: an effort by the right-wing media to curry favor with Sanford's office by dismissing the story as a storm in a teacup created by the liberal media. It's fair to say that, as news judgments go, it would be hard to find one that turned out worse than this -- given the subsequent revelations about Sanford's Argentinian liaison and his abandonment of his post.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/...ing.php?ref=fpa

Strangely enough, Stephen Colbert was also caught out trying to make friends with Sanford's staff and offering excuses to minimize his odd behavior.

Journalistic groundwork for this was done by The State, the South Carolina newspaper whose reporter caught Sanford at the airport coming back from Argentina.

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I do think it's indicative of a certain political mindset and is clearly racialist. If you're a believer in color blindness as an ideal for race relations, Sotomayor is definitely not going to make your short list of preferred judges. Not sure what a 'jock strapper' is, but if I qualify, start taking hostages.

What is a "racialist" anyway?

As to this color blindness thing, I think it would be ideal for race relations...assuming of course that everyone shared that blindness. Unfortunately that is not the case, so as long as Americans take note or race in terms of housing, employment, etc. policy must follow suit. I guess one could take the attitude that policy should be color-blind in hopes that public attitude will follow, but I prefer more realistic policy, myself.

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What is a "racialist" anyway?

Racialism is an epistemological, rather than a political or ideological position.

In the widest sense, a racialist thinks that race is a meaningful concept in that it can be more or less clearly defined. For example, you might hold the view that 95% of the Human population can be unerringly placed in, say, 5 different groups. The US does this routinely, using Caucasian, Black, Asian, etc.

Moreover, a racialist would think that the behavior of individuals from these groups to some extent correlate to the group they belong to. In that sense, race is operationally meaningful.

Defined thus, the concept says nothing about the reasons for the validity and relevance of these categorizations. Many people react differently to the concept, depending on which side of a dichotomy is used to explain these differences. In particular, they might be entirely environmental, institutional, or otherwise cultural. (A good part of the academic left holds this position, and is thus racialist in the wider sense. Bookstore sections labelled “African American fiction†are a good example of this.) They might also be hormonal, genetic, or otherwise hereditary. (A good part of the academic left is appalled by that position.)

In the narrower sense, the term is often used to describe people who think that human races are a biologically meaningful concept. (In the sense that (1) most individuals can be categorized, and (2) the categories are useful.) Richard Dawkins is an example.

In the narrowest sense, it is just a synonym for racist.

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Agree. KingBread you should correct the spelling, it should be "Merkin Politics XII".

Lol. I can't believe you caught me on that.

My merkin is of course striped. Red White Blue.

Sarah Palin: Closet bulimic. Whenever I look at her I see that head bobbling on that little stick neck. A 45 year old woman who just had a kid is rarely that skinny naturally. Slate has also noticed her thinning hair. Hmm....

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I remember Ali G using the term racialist back in the day (when he was on the 11 o Clock Show, before he was Massive, so to speak), and I thought it was just a joke... Ah well, goes to show how much I know.

The idea of using race as any kind of biological indicator of anything is that it's impossible to quantify genetically. So I'm kind of surprised that Dawkins is a believer in it, so to speak. It just doesn't hold up as a scientific construct in that sense.

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Nothing noteworthy politically, just found the writing humorous.

Gov. Sarah Palin said last weekend that she’d be willing to campaign for some Democrats when she leaves office later this month.

She may not have many takers.

Interviews with a number of the most conservative Democrats in the House and Senate induced an awkward, stare-at-your-shoes unease when the prospect of appearing with Palin was posed.

Some of the members lunged for elevators, others moved to get into meetings (or at least behind closed doors), and a few just chuckled nervously and replied in a clipped fashion that reflected an immense desire to not discuss the topic at any length.

[...]

So Palin’s suggestion, floated in a Washington Times interview, that she’d stump for like-minded independents or Democrats prompted many usually loquacious politicians to respond gingerly — and often with the same talking point they would use to explain why they don’t want high-profile liberals to appear in their red-leaning districts.

“I don’t think so,†said Democratic Rep. Heath Shuler, who hails from the conservative far western reaches of North Carolina.

“You know, look,†Shuler continued, clearing his throat, “there may be things we agree on, but there’s a lot of things we disagree on. I’m satisfied by me campaigning for myself in my own district. I don’t need somebody else from, you know — to come into my district.â€

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/...0LKyU2hZI&C
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Guest Raidne
My merkin is of course striped. Red White Blue.

:lol: Hmmmm...I need a new sig. Please let me know if you object.

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No idea on the accuracy of this either, but it made me think of Scot. :)

As the economic data continues to send mixed signals about the pace and timing of an economic recovery, we've been treated to a chorus of warnings about the next danger: inflation. An early July client survey done by Credit Suisse showed that investors were "almost unanimously concerned" with inflation. Writing in The Wall Street Journal last month, Arthur Laffer announced that the very policies that stemmed the recession--low interest rates, massive government spending--will provoke an inflationary scenario reminiscent of the 1970s, or worse. Harvard economist Martin Feldstein has said bluntly that inflation is likely to pose a substantial threat to global stability starting next year. And it's not simply conservatives with an aversion to Keynes who are sounding alarmed. Simon Johnson, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, has warned that inflation could soon exceed 5 percent and quickly head higher.

These are hardly marginal voices. What's more, they are verbalizing what many central bankers fear, and that is the problem. Inflation worries are wired into the collective psyche of the banking profession--and into the fiber of the institutions that guide western economies. Central banks were designed to guard against inflation even in the face of angry public opinion that viewed higher interest rates not as a tonic but a punitive tax on their hard-earned wages. Given the legacy of the 19th and 20th centuries--with regular periods of hyperinflation arriving like the plague to sweep away gains and threaten social stability, fear of inflation is understandable. Unfortunately, it is very likely misplaced and misguided. The levers of interest rates and money supply may have worked for inflation of the 20th century but will be blunt and ineffective as tools in the 21st...

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=...ff-1c684f641a52
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