Tendo City

This whole faux-outrage over the Benghazi attack perfectly encapsulates why I gave up on the Republican party. After 9/11, it would have been easy for Democrats to jump atop the rubble and condemn Bush for allowing such a terrible attack on American. For not knowing that something this big was coming, for not putting more effort on fighting terrorism in his first 9 months, for not doing MORE. But they didn't. In part, obviously, because they didn't feel like committing political suicide, but also because I think they respected the President's right to respond to this crisis, with both words and actions. They let the President be the President.

Fast-forward to 2012 and you have the Republican candidate for President harping on the current president in the zero hour. It's been followed up by a conga line of outrage and consternation that Obama didn't use the right verbiage or that maybe he actually sympathizes with the killers and doesn't want this latest incident to turn the public eye on the campaign to slaughter Americans abroad [no one's said this, of course, but does anyone doubt the implication is there?]. Fox News and Tea Party doesn't respect the President and they don't respect his right as the duly-elected leader of this nation of respond to incidents like this. That's hardly anything new, as this has been their modus operandi for 5 years. They have the nerve, after two years of publicly-declared obstructionism, to pin the problems of the nation, the slow speed of the recovery, on the President and his party, who "just aren't willing to cooperate."

It's not enough to disagree with the President, it's not enough enough to dislike him. They hate him, hate him all the way down to his guts. He's a terrorist-sympathizer, an unworthy foreigner, a disgusting Communist, who doesn't understand what's so great about America and is doing his hardest to push through bills that will tear this country apart for his own amusement. He's not just wrong, he's EVIL. Mitt Romney's first day will included repealing every single piece of major legislation that Obama passed over 4 years in office. They want him gone yesterday, they want every shred of his existence expunged from history as soon as possible. They want everything he did to be either swept away or poisoned. And it makes me sick. I'm tired of hearing this on TV, I'm tired of my family spouting these lines they heard from Rush, Hannity, and whatever blubbering gob of flesh the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch are pushing in their faces and their ears in as many venues as possible every second of every day.

In a better world, responsible mainstream media would point this out for what it is: a barely-concealed propaganda campaign to use whatever line of attack, whatever outright lie or misconception of the truth to undermine the President and make you, too, hate his guts just as much as they do. It's painful to watch this actually WORK, especially when a quick search on Google shreds these lines to bits with ease. But they won't do that, because the popularity and power of Fox News and right-wing media has forced an absurd "fair and balanced" approached to every story. You can't call out lies and hypocrisy from one individual, it's got to be a problem with both sides. Every story has to be couched in illogical mealy-mouthed PR-speak. "Some say this, but other say that." And it makes me sick. I hear it every single day, those little lies that dig under the skin of some members of my family and propagate the hate against the President. It does no good to bring up those easily found facts, because then I just become the Democratic mouth piece who doesn't understand what's wrong with the President and why he ought to go away as quickly as possible. It doesn't work, it never will, and it makes me sick.

I hate the Republican party, the Tea Party, Fox News and right-wing radio for what they've reduced members of my family to. And I won't vote for a Republican in a national election until it finally stops. But it won't stop, and thinking that quietly weathering the 2012 storm, will finally put an end to this madness is foolish. It won't stop, it'll only be that much more shrill the next time. Think 2012 is bad? Just wait until 2014 if the Democrats win in Congress or the Presidency. I want it to go away, I desperately want a return to at least some manner of decorum, at the very least, but I don't really believe it will. So having said that, I'm stocking up on Pepto Bismol, because it looks like I'm going to be feeling sick for quite a while.

Well said! I first will say that for the good things he's done, Obama DOES have a lot to answer for. In a different time, some of the things he's done would disgust a lot more people, but here's the thing, NONE of those things have touched republican lips. Not one republican has called out Obama on drones killing US citizens on foreign soil. Not one has called him out on expanding warrentless observation of US citizens, or his failure to close certain torture camps. There was a short period where they called him out on starting a war with Libya without going through congress, but they've swept their complaints under the rug now and the public consciousness has forgotten it happened.

ANY of these things, if they railed on Obama for it, could cost Obama the election. They could sail to victory on these issues by casting doubt on some people merely "leaning" democrat. However, they don't. Romney, near as I can tell, is NOT going to call Obama out on these things, as powerful as they could be. That should frighten people as much as what Obama's done, because, in my interpretation, it can only mean that the republican party approves of all these things and intends to do all of those things if they ran the executive branch. So combine that with the things Obama does that I DO support, which Romney repeatedly states he's against (whenever he's not saying he's for them, so at the very least his position is unclear, and at most dishonest), it pushes Obama as the clear choice to me.

So instead of calling out Obama on that, they instead take their time inventing entirely fictional problems with Obama. It really is disgusting that it works on so many people.

Fox News is NOT fair and balanced, but you are right, it has forced CNN to stay as neutral as they possibly can in an attempt to seem "fair and balanced". Got someone talking about evolution? Invite some random nut who thinks Shiva pulled the universe out of a ball of twine as "counter point". Most of their interviews these days consist entirely of establishing WHAT two viewpoints are, WHAT their claims are, with not a single attempt at any point to look INTO their claims for accuracy, because fact checking might offend someone.

Look at the recent debates. Put aside the fact that these debates are pretty useless to begin with, with "winning" them being determined in rather arbitrary ways like "eyeball time" and other pointless metrics. The first one was moderated with a series of questions that amounted to "I just want to make sure we know there are two people, and I can't tell what the difference between you two is" (that guy apparently should be checked to be sure he isn't putting socks on his hands every morning). The next one was actually fact checked, shocking me completely, and BOTH parties sent what amounted to a cease and desist warning for the 3rd debate that the moderator should just be a "traffic cop" (maybe traffic cone). Third debate comes along and again, to my utter shock, some fact checking actually occurred with the moderator correcting false statements. Fox is all over it saying that the moderator should "be furniture". With that statement, it becomes clear. We've reached a point where checking to make sure the people running for most powerful position in the entire country are telling the truth is seen as a problem, where narrative should be allowed to be spun freely and checking people on that is the wrong move.

Jefferson knew what he was talking about when he warned that the greatest enemy to a democracy is an uneducated public. Politicians these days have finally found a way to glorify ignorance, at least at certain times, namely when people are actually paying attention.

"Is this the time to focus on fact checking?" Yes, it is ALWAYS the time to focus on fact checking, every day, every way, forever.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Well said! I first will say that for the good things he's done, Obama DOES have a lot to answer for. In a different time, some of the things he's done would disgust a lot more people, but here's the thing, NONE of those things have touched republican lips. Not one republican has called out Obama on drones killing US citizens on foreign soil. Not one has called him out on expanding warrentless observation of US citizens, or his failure to close certain torture camps. There was a short period where they called him out on starting a war with Libya without going through congress, but they've swept their complaints under the rug now and the public consciousness has forgotten it happened.

ANY of these things, if they railed on Obama for it, could cost Obama the election. They could sail to victory on these issues by casting doubt on some people merely "leaning" democrat. However, they don't. Romney, near as I can tell, is NOT going to call Obama out on these things, as powerful as they could be. That should frighten people as much as what Obama's done, because, in my interpretation, it can only mean that the republican party approves of all these things and intends to do all of those things if they ran the executive branch. So combine that with the things Obama does that I DO support, which Romney repeatedly states he's against (whenever he's not saying he's for them, so at the very least his position is unclear, and at most dishonest), it pushes Obama as the clear choice to me.

So instead of calling out Obama on that, they instead take their time inventing entirely fictional problems with Obama. It really is disgusting that it works on so many people.

Fox News is NOT fair and balanced, but you are right, it has forced CNN to stay as neutral as they possibly can in an attempt to seem "fair and balanced". Got someone talking about evolution? Invite some random nut who thinks Shiva pulled the universe out of a ball of twine as "counter point". Most of their interviews these days consist entirely of establishing WHAT two viewpoints are, WHAT their claims are, with not a single attempt at any point to look INTO their claims for accuracy, because fact checking might offend someone.

Look at the recent debates. Put aside the fact that these debates are pretty useless to begin with, with "winning" them being determined in rather arbitrary ways like "eyeball time" and other pointless metrics. The first one was moderated with a series of questions that amounted to "I just want to make sure we know there are two people, and I can't tell what the difference between you two is" (that guy apparently should be checked to be sure he isn't putting socks on his hands every morning). The next one was actually fact checked, shocking me completely, and BOTH parties sent what amounted to a cease and desist warning for the 3rd debate that the moderator should just be a "traffic cop" (maybe traffic cone). Third debate comes along and again, to my utter shock, some fact checking actually occurred with the moderator correcting false statements. Fox is all over it saying that the moderator should "be furniture". With that statement, it becomes clear. We've reached a point where checking to make sure the people running for most powerful position in the entire country are telling the truth is seen as a problem, where narrative should be allowed to be spun freely and checking people on that is the wrong move.

Jefferson knew what he was talking about when he warned that the greatest enemy to a democracy is an uneducated public. Politicians these days have finally found a way to glorify ignorance, at least at certain times, namely when people are actually paying attention.

"Is this the time to focus on fact checking?" Yes, it is ALWAYS the time to focus on fact checking, every day, every way, forever.

Do you hear yourself when you talk DJ?

Or do you hear a little man who tells you, your doing a good job instead? You say you agree with Black Falcon but then you go on to act just like the thing you supposedly despise. Let's recap, Black Falcon makes a passionate plea for republications to stop acting like 3 year old's and get back to running the country instead petty bigotry. Which, I might add I couldn't agree with more. And your response is, I agree with you Black Falcon, if were going to hate him let's hate him for the right reasons. Then you go on to spout the republican agenda like a true republican. Honestly, did anyone here the Benny Hill theme song after's DJ's rant? This needs to stop! Stop bashing the president and get back to running this country or so help me god, I'm going to go to congress and put all those Republican 3 year old's in a fucking time out! Right after I take a tire iron, and bash their little, winy, crying, racist, sexist, dumb redneck heads in!

^^ What? No. What? That never happened. Go read his post again.

Most likely, Obama is going to win his re-election. And most likely, he'll get even less done during his second term. He had more of a mandate the first time around. Of course, the Democratic Party's power was still pretty limited, with the Senate Supermajority being pretty much a myth. He got done a decent amount, and it's nice to hear that the discourse shifted a bit more to the left than in the previous administration. Still, he wasn't a great negotiator, either by being spineless or naive. The Republican Party has gone into full batshit crazy mode, loudly and proudly digging their heels into the dirt and refusing to cooperate on principle. Obama's center-right policies should be an easy enough pill to swallow, but their demands won't fall short of the complete implementation of the nutbag Republican Agenda.

So, even though he's been down in the polls, I think Obama still has a fair chance of winning. Get ready for 4 more years of frustrating political gridlock, willful and proud Republican obstructionism, and right-leanning pundits/politicians all doing their best to blame the stagnant state of things at Obama's feet. Our only hope is that, with the inevitable improvement of the economy in the next four years, more people will feel favorable towards Democrats, and we can get a new one in the white house in four years. Nothing wrong with Obama, but Republicans won't cooperate with him no matter what. Maybe with a new administration, we could get more things done... Of course, if Obama is re-elected, I doubt you'll see another Dem president in 2016. The pendulum will swing back to the right, and with any hope, they'll elect someone centrist.

There's always the small hope that with no prospects of re-election, Obama will actually grow a pair and stand up to Congress. Appoint actual left-leaning people to his cabinet, skipping bipartisanship and putting forth more liberal policies (instead of concotions of the Heritage Foundation). Don't hold your breath, though.

Firstly, this is Great Rumbler's thread, not GR's.

Secondly, my entire post was about real problems with Obama, not the invented problems the republicans spin up. I'm not making republican arguments, and personally can't stand that party as it is now. I'm no republican, but I'm also not going to ignore the real issues. Obama is the better of two options, but needs work. That was the gist of my post. Reread it please.

Yeah, etoven seems to be very confused, both in facts and in who is who...

But anyway, as I've always been a liberal Democrat, I don't have quite the same perspective as you describe in this thread, GR; I've always voted for the Democrat in every race where party labels are on the ballot, for instance, never watched Fox News for more than a few minutes, etc. I grew up with my parents talking about how they couldn't understand why people had ever liked Reagan, for instance. Quite a different environment.

But yes, on the facts, you're quite right, GR and DJ both. It is true that political polarization is worse now than it has been since the 19th century. It's not as bad as it was in the mid 19th century, of course, but it's worse than it was at any point in the 20th, particuarly because of how crazy-intransigent the Republican party has become. The extreme excesses of irresponsibility and insane stupidity that they've gone to really are somewhat baffling in some ways... how can they think that what they're proposing actually is good government, or might work? Why do they always ignore the historical prescedents; like, never mind that this plan failed the previous times when it was tried, just try again and it'll work this time! Really, it's crazy.

And they won't allow bipartisanship, either. Obama entered office as a centrist very willing to compromise -- too willing, I would definitely say, as he often started negotiations by compromising away half of his position before he even started, as if he thought that starting from a reasonable, centrist position of often old Republican position-derived policies would somehow actually get today's insane Republican party to support him, which of course he should have known it would not -- but that's who he is (and part of why I supported Hillary over Obama...). Of course somehow in Republican minds this translates to our most liberal socialist president ever. It's unbelievably delusional, particularly when so much of what he's actually doing are old Republican ideas.

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Well said! I first will say that for the good things he's done, Obama DOES have a lot to answer for. In a different time, some of the things he's done would disgust a lot more people, but here's the thing, NONE of those things have touched republican lips. Not one republican has called out Obama on drones killing US citizens on foreign soil. Not one has called him out on expanding warrentless observation of US citizens, or his failure to close certain torture camps. There was a short period where they called him out on starting a war with Libya without going through congress, but they've swept their complaints under the rug now and the public consciousness has forgotten it happened.

Republicans may be very skilled liars, but even they would have a hard time running on a program like that, when they're supposed to be the strong-national-defense party... no, I can't see it.

Quote: Look at the recent debates. Put aside the fact that these debates are pretty useless to begin with, with "winning" them being determined in rather arbitrary ways like "eyeball time" and other pointless metrics. The first one was moderated with a series of questions that amounted to "I just want to make sure we know there are two people, and I can't tell what the difference between you two is" (that guy apparently should be checked to be sure he isn't putting socks on his hands every morning). The next one was actually fact checked, shocking me completely, and BOTH parties sent what amounted to a cease and desist warning for the 3rd debate that the moderator should just be a "traffic cop" (maybe traffic cone). Third debate comes along and again, to my utter shock, some fact checking actually occurred with the moderator correcting false statements. Fox is all over it saying that the moderator should "be furniture". With that statement, it becomes clear. We've reached a point where checking to make sure the people running for most powerful position in the entire country are telling the truth is seen as a problem, where narrative should be allowed to be spun freely and checking people on that is the wrong move.

Yeah, I was on the debate team for two years in high school. Clothing, looks, and style did matter, but your actual positions and facts mattered more. The win or loss in each debate would be primarily based on what the judge thought of the actual debate content. Yet somehow in presidential debates, facts are peripheral, and those style elements are the only ones that a lot of people care about. It's pretty sad.

Great Rumbler Wrote:I hate the Republican party, the Tea Party, Fox News and right-wing radio for what they've reduced members of my family to. And I won't vote for a Republican in a national election until it finally stops. But it won't stop, and thinking that quietly weathering the 2012 storm, will finally put an end to this madness is foolish. It won't stop, it'll only be that much more shrill the next time. Think 2012 is bad? Just wait until 2014 if the Democrats win in Congress or the Presidency. I want it to go away, I desperately want a return to at least some manner of decorum, at the very least, but I don't really believe it will. So having said that, I'm stocking up on Pepto Bismol, because it looks like I'm going to be feeling sick for quite a while.

Today's Republican party has well earned this, I think...

As for elections though, unfortunately, I think that while Obama will probably win this year, and the Democrats are almost certain to hold the Senate and gain in the House, it'll be very, VERY hard for the Democrats to hold the Senate in 2014 -- they've got candidates up for re-election in Alaska, Louisiana, and more, and they're probably going to lose. Sure, this year has gone well (that the Democrats are so likely to hold Missouri's Senate seat is a nice surprise, for instance), but still, 2014 is not looking good, just based on the map... So yeah, the Republicans have a good chance of holding all of Congress then, unless the Democrats can manage to retake the House... that needs to happen. It can, but it'll be tough.

But you're right, it won't stop. Today's Republican party and conservative movement have driven themselves into such a crazy position that only more and more crazy will satisfy their base... it's made actually legislating nearly impossible -- look at how almost nothing has happened in congress these last two years thanks to the Republican majority in the house -- but they don't seem to care much about that, they only care about absolute purity to their incredibly extreme agenda.


And on that note, yeah, the US political system has been changing over the past 50 years. Essentially, what has happened is a long, slow re-alignment of American politics. The old system, in place up until the mid 20th century and slowly changing since then, had two parties, both with strong divisions within them. Neither party was a European-style party which all voted the same way on everything; the American political system was distinguished with two parties which both had liberal and conservative wings. Conservative, racist Democrats held the South, and liberal Republicans were popular up North.

But, thanks to the Civil Rights bills of the 1960s (during the Johnson administration, particularly; his foreign policy was horrible, but his domestic policy was good...), and after that Nixon's "Southern Strategy", American politics began to shift, as racist Southerners abandoned the Democratic Party that now was in favor of civil rights for minorities in favor of a Republican Party that reversed its old positions on those issues in order to get Southern votes. It was a pretty corrupt bargain Nixon struck, but it's held ever since, and has led the Republicans to a strong position of power, after some struggles with that for a while (remember, between 1932 and 1964, only Eisenhower got elected as a Republican for President)... based on racism and opposing minorities. Great.

That shift now is nearly complete. Now the Republican party is so dominant among Southern whites that the whole region is pretty much a one-party state, federally. Sure, there are black and hispanic minorities that vote for Democrats and thanks to Civil Rights laws they have a seat or two in each area, but conservative Republicans have everything else. Some state-level offices are still held by Democrats, but even there, in the South, the shift towards Republican-only governance is well underway. Of course this has exposed some splits in the Republican party, most notably between the business wing and the religious wing, but there is only one party that wins.

And federally, at least, today's Republican Party holds a close rein on its members -- Republicans usually vote as a block, period. Republicans vote as they are told. As I said earlier, it's more European-style stuff than American (in Europe, parties always vote as a block; members can't really vote as they want.).

In the North, on the other hand, the switch went the other way, from a long period of Republican dominance, to the current Democratic dominance. And while the Democratic party is MUCH, MUCH more diverse and open to dissention than the Republicans are, there is at least a degree of unity among the Democrats too. The Democrats do still have several wings which do not agree on things, and the Democratic Party today is a more classically American party than the Republicans are in that respect, but still, there are efforts on the Democratic side too to replace people who are too centrist with people who are more ideological. I think we need this -- the US today essentially has a far-right party and a centrist party, with nobody really representing the left, and I don't like that fact -- but it is true, and when combined with the rightward turn of the Republican party, it combines to make governing hard. Democrats do keep trying to negotiate, though, but the Republican party has just gone so far that they won't even accept '90s Republican ideas anymore, if the words are coming out of the mouth of a Democrat... and we thought in the '90s that things had gotten too partisan! Well, they were very bad then, but it's only gotten worse since.

In conclusion, if only the Republicans could act like a responsible party, we would not be in this mess. But they won't.

The only thing that pisses me off more than the modern Republican party is the hoards and hoards of brainwashed idiots who believe their blatantly obvious lies. Yes, Obama will probably win reelection, but that's not going to stop Republican obstructionism (under the guise of patriotism) from tainting the rest of his presidency.

Quote:Republicans may be very skilled liars

They are not skilled liars, and they do not have to be; there's a significant enough number of Americans who simply want the red team to win, no matter what their politicians say.

They will not succeed in the end, though. There is a huge backlash against "RINOS". Solid Republicans despise the moderate elements of their party. And, look at this place. A few years back, there was a pretty clear plurality between left and right in our tiny membership. Do we even have a single person left who has not abandoned the Republican party in disgust?

Admittedly, our's is far too tiny a sampling to mean too much, and we're all internet nerdy types who tend towards reason to begin with.

Anecdotally, I can say that a number of people I know in the real world are also growing disgusted with the republican party. However, poll numbers show that at the very least, those that remain are mobilized. Those that have left may still disagree with the democrats enough to "abstain" come election day. Then there's those who for various reasons simply either lack any interest in politics ("they're all liars") or simply feel that no current politician has their interests at heart (namely, issues like civil rights). Combine that with the "platform" who only take an interest in any candidate who might "legalize it", and you get voter turnout of a little over half the population, and that was considered "amazing turnout" last year. America is among the lowest voter turnout of the industrialized democratic nations. It's no wonder every politician out there focuses so very much time on just getting people emotionally invested, hoping so hard that maybe some of them might actually take a little time during a work break to get to a polling place.

(Oh, and it doesn't help that some companies are indirectly threatening their employees to vote their way.)