MetaFilter posts tagged with usa and politics

"If people were more concerned, I wouldn’t have to be there."

zarq — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:29:45 -0800

Her encampment is 'an old patio umbrella draped in a white plastic sheet secured with binder clips. It is flanked by two large boards with messages in capital letters: BAN ALL NUCLEAR WEAPONS OR HAVE A NICE DOOMSDAY and LIVE BY THE BOMB, DIE BY THE BOMB. This rudimentary shelter has been positioned outside the White House for more than three decades. It is a monument itself now, widely considered the longest-running act of political protest in the United States, and this woman, Concepcion Picciotto — Connie, as she’s known to many — is its longest-running caretaker.' Accompanying Photos: Keeping a Vigil From 1988, Toledo Magazine: A Life of Protest

Trans 100

divabat — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:34:23 -0800

The Trans 100 is a list curated by We Happy Trans based on nominations of 100 key trans people breaking ground in American culture, arts, social justice, and politics. Autostraddle provides more information on the 51 trans women on the list, and Dyssonance, one of the curators of the list, talks about the deliberate focus on American trans people for this iteration as well as support for international-based lists.

Smaller Wallets, Larger Households?

The Whelk — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:54:43 -0800

A dozen ultraleft voluntarists arguing about shower schedules is a noise complaint; 120,000 downwardly mobile yuppies doing it out of necessity is a substratum. The material realities of declining wages, ballooning debt, and skyrocketing rents at the core of the neoliberal city have conspired to herd young people into unprecedentedly dense, poor, and precarious kinds of living arrangements. - Andrew Fogle on how the economic crisis is changing how people live together.

Academic freedom under attack in NYC

mek — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 17:42:42 -0800

The Political Science Department at Brooklyn College is co-sponsoring a panel discussion about the BDS Movement (boycott, divestment, sanctions) against Israel this Thursday Feburary 7th. The event features Omar Barghouti, BDS co-founder and Judith Butler, prominent philosopher. The college has come under widespread attack for its hosting of the event, with a coalition of New York City councillors threatening to defund the school. Green Greenwald has posted an exhaustive analysis of the controversy and identifies Alan Dershowitz as its orchestrator. Chris Hayes discussed it this morning (starts at 1:30). Corey Robin, professor at Brooklyn College, compares the current controversy to the historically prominent anti-zionism of BC professor Hannah Arendt way back in 1942. Brooklyn College president Karen L. Gould insists the event will go forward.

The Cyber-Ombudsman

zarq — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:24:03 -0800

TruthTeller is an ambitious new automated application built by the Washington Post, which fact checks political speeches, ads and interviews "in as close to real time as possible." The prototype is intended to be a complement to the paper's Fact Checker Blog. More on the project from TechCrunch and Poynter.

Abortion in America

Artw — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 07:22:32 -0800

The Geography of Abortion Access - Forty years ago Tuesday, the Supreme Court ushered in legal abortion for American women when it decided in Roe v. Wade. Today, states—particularly in the South and Midwest—are eroding that right by legislating hundreds of provisions intended to impede access with burdensome obstacles. To understand more fully the complex state of access to abortion services in America, The Daily Beast identified and confirmed the location of the country’s remaining 724 clinics and calculated the distance from every part of the country to its closest clinic. (more)

Wonky graphs of 2012

Artw — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:17:46 -0800

2012: The year in graphs - as picked by the Washington Post Wonkblog's favorite economists, political scientist, politicians and other wonkys.

Nonvoters in America

cthuljew — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:38:15 -0800

In 2012, 40 percent of Americans didn’t vote. The research on this website is an attempt to determine why so many citizens opt out of this fundamental civic duty, using extensive survey research as well as interviews with nonvoters to give a voice to those who are often ignored or marginalized by politicians and the news media. [via this phys.org article that provides a nice summary]

The New York Times - Complaints Aside, Most Face Lower Tax Burden Than in 1980

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 10:43:59 -0800

The New York Times examines how American taxes have changed since 1980

Deepwater Horizon, 2 years later

Lemurrhea — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:07:32 -0800

Earlier this month, British Petroleum agreed to plead guilty to 14 violations of law, including negligence causing death and the Clean Water Act. The formal guilty plea agreement. A hearing is scheduled for December 11 to get approval by a judge. The plea agreement includes a penalty of approximately $4.5 billion. In the meantime, the EPA has suspended BP from new contracts, although it is unclear for how long this suspension will last.

THR & The Blacklist

Artw — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:36:14 -0800

After 65 Years The Hollywood Reporter addresses its role in the hollywood blacklist, including an apology from W.R. Wilkerson III, son of THR founder Billy Wilkerson whose "A Vote For Joe Stalin" editorial named writers such as Dalton Trumbo, Lester Cole, Howard Koch and John Howard Lawson as communist sympathisers.

Niza Yanay - the ideology of hatred: the psychic power of discourse

flex — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 16:08:00 -0800

"The Ideology of Hatred": An interview with Niza Yanay - "Once we understand how hatred operates as an apparatus of power relations, and particularly how the discourse of hatred is motivated and mobilised in national conflicts, serious questions about misrecognition, veiled desires and symptomatic expressions arise. These questions have, to a large extent, been left unaddressed in studies of hatred between groups in conflict." Niza Yanay teaches in the Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. She has written on the ideology of hatred, national conflicts, and prejudice and stereotypes; her new book is The Ideology of Hatred: The Psychic Power of Discourse (an extensive sample of this book is available on Google Books). More from Gordon's interview with Yanay:

YANAY: ...After 9/11, the word hate began colonising new spheres, operating as a social and political force that can both manipulate and mobilise an entire public in very specific ways. People began using the word hatred in the context of terrorism, particularly referring to Islamic groups who had expressed anger and criticism towards the West and the ravages of capitalism. The word hatred was thus transformed, becoming a signifier for danger, mostly the danger of Islam. In President Bush's rhetoric, the world was schematically divided between Muslims who hate on the one hand, and the West which had become the target of irrational hate on the other hand. I found it interesting that the West does not hate. This distinction between hatred as an experience and hatred as ideology underscored the need to ask new questions about the relation between politics and hatred. And these new questions, I believe, need to focus on power relations between different groups, such as coloniser and colonised, ruler and subject... GORDON: Can you give me a concrete example of this ideology at work? YANAY: Most people consider "suicide bombings" as motivated by hate, while very few people consider air strikes on populated areas to be hate crimes. The media often describes the suicide attack as a hate crime, but I have never come across a report describing the US drone attacks in Pakistan - that have killed over 3,500 people - as hate crimes. This suggests that hatred as ideology is at work. And this ideology helps determine who is blamed for being the initiators of hate, who becomes the target of hatred, and, in fact, when hatred counts as hatred at all... YANAY: The point I want to make is that we need to start thinking about the ideology of hatred as a symptom of desire. This might sound contradictory to many people, but actually hatred is always constructed within an already inevitable bond between two unequal groups or sides of rival power. Intense hatred assumes a prior and intense relationship. Consider the famous speeches of President Habyarimana of Rwanda between 1973 and 1994. He continuously attacked the Tutsi for being counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie traitors; but at the same time, he constantly referred to them as brothers. This, I argue, is typical and symptomatic. The use of intimate familial language to characterise the so-called traitor is a common practice in many ideologies of hatred. So, when we hear, speak of, or examine hatred, we must pay particular attention to issues of proximity, attachment, intimacy, desire and even love. Of course, these forces are not obvious when we think of hatred. But, if we want to understand how people become our hated enemy we must study the conditions of closeness and proximity. GORDON: Someone might say that this is counter-intuitive. Don't we commonly understand hatred in terms of distance, difference and enmity? YANAY: You are right to say that the ideology of hatred produces and means to produce separation and estrangement. But this is exactly my point. The paradox of hatred is that hatred aims to produce distance precisely because the two rivals are considered to be too close, too intertwined. Think about the Hutu and the Tutsi, the Serbs and the Croats, the Turks and the Armenians, the Israelis and the Palestinians, and so on. I am not simply saying that love can turn into hatred or vice versa, but that hatred is always an ambivalent experience and a hyperbolic concept. One cannot hate an individual or a group without attachment and closeness, without love. Lack of attachment tends to produce indifference, not hatred.

*Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian - New research shows the terrorizing impact of drones in Pakistan, false statements from US officials, and how it increases the terror threat *Mark LeVine in Al Jazeera - Why 'they' still don't hate 'us': the myopic nature of the 'us' versus 'them' worldview *John Miller in e-flux - Politics of Hate in the USA, Part I: Repressive Tolerance (followed by part II and part III) *Llezlie L. Green - Sexual violence against Tutsi women in Rwanda in 1994 - specifically, point #2 "Gender propaganda" (trigger warning) *Michalinos Zembylas - The affective politics of hatred: implications for education (PDF file) *Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic - What High School Taught Millennials About the War on Terrorism

Is America ready for a white, male Secretary of State?

flex — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:16:40 -0800

Erin Gloria Ryan asks: Is America ready for a white, male Secretary of State? She's not the only one satirically contemplating this question - John Norris over at Foreign Policy magazine has also wondered: Is America ready for a male Secretary of State? Ryan: "In January, Hillary Clinton will be stepping down as President Obama's Secretary of State, and rumors are already swirling over who will replace her... While Huntsman and Kerry have both demonstrated that they have foreign policy chops, the US hasn't had a white male Secretary of State since 1997..." (wikipedia: Madeleine Albright, 1997-2001; Colin Powell, 2001-2005; Condoleezza Rice, 2005-2009; Hillary Rodham Clinton, since 2009)

An extraordinary coincidence?

memebake — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 07:54:41 -0800

And think about it for a second: this is bizarre. If Americans are in fact divided between two extremely different political ideologies, it would be an extraordinary coincidence if each of those philosophies were to hold the allegiance of nearly equal blocs of support. The Economist ponders how American politics can have a "divide [that] is simultaneously very narrow in numerical terms, and gaping in ideological or partisan terms."

Realistic arguments over policy take place on relatively narrow terrain: they are arguments over a top marginal tax rate of 35% or 39.6%, over a health-insurance system with guaranteed coverage for pre-existing conditions but with or without a mandate, and so forth. But in ideological terms, this is not what the political divide looks like. Republicans construe the Democratic positions on these questions as socialism and international decline. Democrats construe the Republican positions as social darwinism and militant imperialism. How you do end up with a populace split evenly between these radical belief structures?

Voter ID - Jay Bookman - The Atlanta Journal Constitution

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 15:46:42 -0800

Beautiful Georgia, my adopted state as I finish life’s journey ... my last year ever to vote in a presidential election. I wanted to feel part of this great privilege, wanted to again walk out of my precinct tapping my Georgia Peach voter sticker. Even if the day were dark, gloomy and cold, the sun would be shining. One Georgia nonagenarian's quest for voter ID

Oh to live in Florida now that fall is here.

adamvasco — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 16:24:51 -0800

Can the company fire you for the way you vote? When workers are forced to go to rallies in communist countries, we call that Stalinism. Here, we call it the free market. Featuring David Siegel, CEO of Florida's Westgate Resorts; and Florida-based ASG Software CEO Arthur Allen.

Why Obama Now

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 08:32:02 -0800

Why Obama Now - from Simpsons/Family Guy animator Lucas Gray It's a sequel to this from four years ago

United States of Clusterfuck

desjardins — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:02:37 -0800

What if the Presidential election is a tie?

Makers

zarq — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 12:24:51 -0800

In February, PBS and AOL launched Makers, a video archive containing personal stories and anecdotes told in the first person by women, many of whom have sparked groundbreaking changes in American culture. The project aims to become "the largest and most dynamic collection of women's stories ever assembled." A three-hour documentary is being prepared for PBS from selections of the site's footage, which will air next year. * Blog * Search the site * Browse (Link goes to their entire archive. You can also review by category.) * Short video promoting the site. * Trailer for the documentary, which will be called "Makers: Women Who Make America"

Buying useful things, like roads and universities and health care and solar energy and spaceships, should be better stimulus than fighting wars.

The Whelk — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 08:34:17 -0800

"Liberals have not always been very good at communicating why liberalism works. There’s many reasons for this, but part of it is that it can be hard to defend the obvious from an absurd and deceptive attack. For half a century you had to be a crank to oppose what Roosevelt accomplished; liberals got out of the habit of arguing for their beliefs. I hope this page will help. Liberals don’t need to apologize for their vision of how American society should work. Liberalism saved American capitalism and democracy, defeated Naziism, created a prosperous middle class, and benefited every sector of society, from the back streets to Wall Street. " Mefi's own Zompist (previously) on Why Liberalism Works.

America’s capital is briefly moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania

The Whelk — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 17:16:54 -0800

A Conservative History of the United States - Jack Hitt for New Yorker's Shouts & Murmurs, pieces together America's storied history from quotes by Rick Perry, Dick Armey, Mike Huckabee, Dan Quayle and more.

"Republicans stand the chance of controlling Congress for the rest of the decade if they don't screw it up."

mediareport — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 00:57:00 -0800

"The Republicans’ dominance in races throughout the country in the 2010 elections eviscerated the Democrats’ farm teams in state after state." Former Bill Clinton political director Doug Sosnik offers an 8-page analysis of the U.S. election that discusses the likelihood of an Obama win, the chances of a complete Republican takeover of Congress, continued Republican dominance of governorships and state legislatures for the rest of the decade, and more. There's also a related slideshow. [via peacay's comment at the end of the long DNC thread]

Clinton (18)12!

Cash4Lead — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 09:16:00 -0800

Who would you vote for in historical American presidential elections and why? Jeremy Young writes: I’m making my calculations based on a combination of which candidate I like the most and what I think candidates’ chances are of winning. I’m also not counting strategic voting (voting my conscience for a minor candidate in a state where my vote doesn’t matter). Nor am I considering regional “favorite son” status (i.e., the 1836 election). To play along, check out the US Election Atlas.

"...the 2012 campaign still looks like a titanic collision between the economy and demography."

zarq — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 06:30:16 -0800

In 2008, the National Journal released The Hidden History of the American Electorate, an analysis of exit poll demographics conducted by multiple news organizations from US presidential elections between 1988 and 2004. The study looked for "pressure points in the electorate": trends which were likely to decide the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. They've released an update for 2012, by adding exit poll results from the 1980, 1984, and 2008 presidential elections. It gives a more comprehensive look at voting trends over a 32 year period of the groups whom they believe are likely to influence the outcome in November. Charts: Voting Preferences of the American Electorate, 1980-2008

A Wanker Whipping Up Fear

gman — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:32:34 -0800

In May of 2010, Michael D. Higgins (now President of Ireland) had an exchange on an Irish radio station with Tea Party supporter Michael Graham, about the state of politics in the United States. Here is the entire debate, which focused a fair bit on the situation in Gaza, and gives you a background for what led to the heated exchange above.