I'm proud of the Tea Party for firing, and distancing themselves from this guy. As much as I disagree with almost everything they do, this was unquestionably the right call to make.Thanks for being the first one to jump in and say this clearly and simply.
"Christine O'Donnell is the Tea Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in Delaware and wants all of you to stop jerking off right now.posted by ericb at 2:35 PM on September 7, 2010 [3 favorites]'The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust,' she said. 'The reason that you don't tell [people] that masturbation is the answer to AIDS and all these other problems that come with sex outside of marriage is because, again, it is not addressing the issue. You're just gonna create somebody who is, I was gonna say, toying with his sexuality. Pardon the pun.'"Have we ever seen an anti-masturbation candidate before? Delaware's primary is next week and O'Donnell is essentially tied in the polls with the GOP candidate she attacks in the ad below. O'Donnell's campaign has also been spreading rumors that her opponent is 'cheating on his wife with a man.'" *
I'm a special snowflake and I'm voting for Nader! There's no difference between Republicans and Democrats! Both parties are hypocrites! Maybe I won't even vote!Spare me this bullshit. The lawyer that argued against prop-8 (and won, so far) was a republican too. And Obama hasn't exactly done much for gay rights. There are probably more anti-gay bigots in the Republican Party, for sure. But I bet there are some homophobic democrats. And the Democratic Party hasn't exactly covered itself in glory here.
Yes, that's true. But the best is the enemy of the good, and politics is the art of the possible.People usually say 'perfict'. But it's become almost like an incantation that people chant, like it was a magic spell you can just say to take away the ethical problems posed by the democrats.
Given the choice of: gays in prison and Iraqis bombed, and gays not in prison and Iraqis bombed, I'll take the latter.No one is putting gays in prison, dipshit.
The heart of Nader's (and supporters) villainy wasn't measured in number of votes that he actually got, it was in the general acceptance of the meme that Gore and Bush were interchangeable.Vice president Lieberman. Of course, as VP he would have been the establishment candidate in '08. Wouldn't that just be wonderful! I have to say I have a lot more sympathy for Nader circa 2000 after seeing the democrats bollox things up nowadays. It wasn't Nader's fault people didn't see much of a difference between Gore and Bush. It was Gore's. He ran a crappy, and ultimately cowardly campaign. He tried to run as a boring centrist, and the result was that he bored people.
Capt.: You think it's a "hell of an assumption" that Green Party voters would prefer the guy behind An Inconvenient Truth to an oil company CEO? What are you smoking?You realize that he didn't do An Inconvenient Truth before the election, right? He didn't spend much time talking about Global Warming during the campaign either. Post-election gore was a lot more liberal then pre-election Gore. People can't make decisions based on future events.
No it couldn't.You're so sure your right that you're not even going to bother to explain why, let alone link to any evidence? Well, it's easy to find evidence to show how it could have been.
Over the past week, the public option has made an unexpected comeback. As of this morning, 23 Democrats had signed a letter asking Reid to add it into the bill during the reconciliation process. The White House and the Senate leadership both said that if the public option had the votes, they wouldn't oppose its inclusion. But privately, most of the offices were saying the same thing: We don't want to oppose the public option, but we don't want to reopen the public option debate.
I dunno, when various Democrats were sitting on the fence over health care reform because they could see that they might be kicked out of office for supporting themIt just boggles my mind that democrats feel like they should be supported even when they don't accomplish anything. They would have lost votes no matter what they did because of the crappy economy, which they're not doing much to fix (needs more stimulus, which they're not doing)
You said that whatever health care reform came out of a Republican administration would be no better or worse than the HCR that passed ("different flavors of inedible").The reform bill is nearly identical to what Mitt Romney did in Massachusetts, and similar to what the republicans proposed in 1994, and less Liberal then what Nixon proposed. Of course the republicans never bothered trying to actually do any kind of HCR when they were in power. It wasn't a priority for them, obviously.
They can't keep this up. They can't. What I don't get is if this lead is so damned big, why are they acting so desperate? Long-term, they've got nothing.Just like the democrats! (Also this guy was some random guy running for state senate)
Can you really imagine a worse time under any Democratic leadership than the eight years under Bush the Younger? You didn't get your pony/HCR/this-or-that, I'm sorry. But shut the good god damn up and do anything you can to prevent the Republicans from ever, ever taking power again or you are just as guilty as the most racist teabagger out there.I'm sorry, but that's just idiotic. There are horrible democrats out there too. I don't think the average republican voter wants to hang gay people. If the democrats have literally nothing to offer beyond fear of the republicans, then what's the point?
So here you are, trying to spot that fine hairsbreadth of difference between the sanctimonious Gore and the clueless Bush, ready to damn both of them in favor of a straight shooter like Nader.
Here's the problem: Government matters most to people on the margins. If I may be blunt about this, we live in a society where the effluent flows downhill. And the people on the bottom are drowning in it.
And it is precisely those citizens — whose lives sometimes literally depend on the difference between a politician who really does have a plan to help with the cost of prescription drugs and one who is only pretending that he does — whose lives can be harmed by your idealism.
The size of a tax cut doesn't matter to people in the richest 1 percent. They're in Fat City now; they don't need more money. But the size of a tax cut makes a real difference to Bush's oft-cited example of the single mom with two kids making $22,000 a year.
When you are barely making it in this society, hanging on by your fingernails, with every unexpected expense a crisis, it matters which is the lesser of two evils.
I know it's hard for young people to envision age or illness, or the sick feeling of frantic despair when your old wreck of a car finally dies (it always does this in traffic) and will not start again. People who work two and even three jobs to support their kids get so tired — you can't imagine how tired — and guilt and depression and anxiety all pile on, too. The difference between Gore and Bush matters to those folks.
This is an old argument between radicals and liberals; sometimes I'm on one side, and sometimes I'm on the other. In the primaries, I vote to change the world; in November, I vote for a sliver more for programs that help the needy.
I do not believe that things have to get worse before they can get better. I think you will find that most mothers object to the idea that you would deliberately do something to make a child's life worse in order to bring about some presumed greater good in the long run. I believe that the best can be the enemy of the better. I believe in taking half a loaf, or even a slice.
And how do we ever change the whole rotten system at that speed? Brick by brick, child by child, slowly, toward liberty and justice for all. The urgent, crucial need right now is to fix the money in politics. It can be done, it will be done, it is being done, and we will get better politics.
In Texas, we'll vote for Nader and a perfect world. You swing-state progressives need to make the hard choice — but you're not making it just for yourselves. Good luck to you all.
"Christine O'Donnell is the Tea Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in Delaware and wants all of you to stop jerking off right now.
I have friends who would probably barely recognize the name Matthew Shepard if he were mentioned, and I bet they wouldn't make the connection between him and Wyoming unless it were explained outright.Matthew Shepard is a notable name, and anyone who follows the news, even vaguely, would be aware of that name, and the circumstances of his death. The young man has a law named after him. Let's do a search with google for articles mentioning his name just on foxnews.
People tend to be peculiarly tunnel-visioned about historical events that don't concern them directly.
And it is precisely those citizens — whose lives sometimes literally depend on the difference between a politician who really does have a plan to help with the cost of prescription drugs and one who is only pretending that he does — whose lives can be harmed by your idealism.Vote for us or the
The size of a tax cut doesn't matter to people in the richest 1 percent.
After eight years of Bush & Co you still believe that the lessor of two evils is no choicel? What more demonstrable proof do you need!? Another country invaded? Another civil liberty stripped away?Or not assassinating U.S. citizens. What exactly is the difference between bush and Obama on civil liberties from your perspective? They seem nearly identical. And again, lots of democrats voted for the Iraq war, and it authorization resolution wouldn't have passed without their support.
A civil liberty such as voting for whomever one chooses?
Except they weren't stories; it actually happened. We invaded two countries who did us no harm, let the oligarchasdate rape our economy and gave away more civil liberties than enumerated in the Bill of Rights.If by "We" you mean "republicans and democrats". And "two countries"? I'm not a fan of the war in Afghanistan, but did you pay attention to the campaign at all? Obama promised to increase our troup presence. He claimed Bush Do you watch the news? Obama followed through on his promise and actually did put more troupes there!
I was so excited when Clinton was elected I almost wet myself. Cut to two years later, when Clinton dismantled federal entitlement programs for the poor -- I tried my hand as an amateur lobbyist and got myself thrown out of a senator's office.That's another good point. Clinton "ended" welfare "as we knew it". Which definetly fucked over those 'marginal' people. The idea that voting for democrats is going to help the poor and struggling wasn't the case with Clinton, and if Obama's deficit commission goes the way it appears to be headed then it will have been Obama, rather then a republican who screwed social security.
I'm also disturbed at the ease with which the right wing media machine has convinced many here that HCR, Financial Reform, Energy Legislation and other significant work from this President and Congress have been anything less than a liberal triumph.Please. The right wing noise machine was working to portray those things as EPIC TRIUMPH for LEFT WING SOCIALIST TYRANNY. Also, what energy legislation are you talking about? I don't think they passed anything at all, so how could it be a liberal triumph?
It wasn't Nader's fault people didn't see much of a difference between Gore and Bush.
DONALDSON: Well, you said repeatedly that you don’t think you would throw the race to Bush. You don’t think it matters. You’ve said it doesn’t matter to you who is the president of the United States, Bush or Gore.-- Ralph Nader Interview With Sam Donaldson
NADER: Because it’s the permanent corporate government that’s running the show here. What do you think 22,000 corporate lobbyists every day and 9,000 corporate PACs do? The two parties are becoming increasingly insignificant that way, and you can see they’re morphing more and more, on more and more issues, into one corporate party.
The right wing media uses a combination of strategies. To their audience on the right every step is ultraleft. Then on the left they flood the zone with not good enough outrage. Classic divide and conquer.Do you have any evidence whatsoever that anyone criticizing Obama for being ineffective are right-wing operatives? Are Glenn Greenwald and Paul Krugman right-wing operatives now? Who specifically are you talking about? What actual evidence do you have?
2- financial regulatory reform including federal oversight of insurance industry, the Volker rule and hedge fund regulations.By insurance industry, do you mean derivatives? Anyway, the consumer protection is good but the rest of it was pretty watered down. And a lot of that stuff (such as the volker rule) is actually going to be implemented by people at the treasury, who will let the banks get away with whatever they want. It will be interesting to see who gets put in charge of consumer protection. A lot of people want Elisabeth Warren, but the banks (and Chris Dodd) hate her.
3- energy and transportation bills-- the biggest investment in public transportation and clean energy in our countries history. Potentially the biggest change since the interstate highway and the TVA.What bill are you talking about specifically? ARRA? How big is "the biggest in history"? $10 billion, $100 billion? You may not believe it, but these numbers actually matter. Superlatives like "the biggest in history" are totally meaningless. Anyway, I asked about energy, not transportation. Again, what energy bill are you talking about? A few billion for clean energy funding (I guess in ARRA?) isn't going to do much of anything stop AGW. And it'd doesn't count as an energy bill.
Oh yeah and we saved the auto industry got back half the tarp money already and extended unemployment benefits.You mean the banks chose to give back tarp money because they were able to replace it with interest arbitrage on free money loaned to them by the fed. (So they could get the TARP oversight panel off their backs)
No. On the other hand, I clearly remember a lot of Hillary Clinton supporters who were infuriated with the disrespectful way they and their candidate were treated by their own party. I also clearly remember how despicably they were shunned, censored, mocked and shouted down by the community over at Daily Kos.To be fair, they treated Obama supporters the same way. Don't you remember the pit of insanity that was Hillaryis44.org? That's just how people act. Really, the primaries were a perfect example of political fanboyism overcoming common sense. On both sides. You had two candidates who were nearly identical on most issues, but their respective sides too every slight or comment to 11 and hated each other. Regardless of which side you were on, it clearly seemed like the other side was insane.
Jesus. This is so ... Christ, I don't even know where to begin. This is the kind of childish nonsense that almost makes me wish for a Palin presidency and a Republican Congress just so I could watch them kick the shit out of nitwits like you. Almost, I say, because while they were kicking the shit out of you, they'd be kicking the shit out of me, too.I don't even know what that means. The dems would have control of congress and everyone would be blaming McCain/Palin for the economic problems. Anyway, there was no way McCain could have won. And getting so emotional about this crap is exactly what I'm talking about: totally insane delusional and democratic fanboyism. It's more important to you that people say nice things and like the democrats then it is to move the country forward.
That particular ecological resume bullet point was chosen for recent salience. In case you weren't just being pedantically GRAR-y, and you actually dispute the substance of the idea that Gore was a vocal ecologist before the 2000 election, I present to you the following timeline:I was responding to a comment about the greens wanting to vote for the author of An Inconvenient Truth in 2000, which obviously would have been impossible.
Howard Dean should have stayed on as DNC chair, tbh. Somehow, taking both houses of congress and the white house gets you fired in the democratic party.Actually, he left at the best possible time -- for himself. He became DNC chair and 2 years later the dems sweep congress, with lots of extra seats thanks to the '50 state strategy'. He's on for another 2 years and the dems pick up more seats in congress and the whitehouse.
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posted by Daddy-O at 1:17 PM on September 7, 2010