marceline

This is very true which is why I'm hoping the irrational exuberance peters out soon and people get to work. The corruption of the Koch/ALEC sect goes much, much farther and deeper than campaign advertising. I was talking to a friend who was saying that she wonders what we can do to up turnout for the 2014 and I told her one word. "Pot." If the Dems want to turn the base out for the midterms then there needs to be a marijuana bill in at least every swing state. Personally, It's very important to me that in 2014 we manage to get rid of our governor and especially our Secretary of State. It would also be nice to turn the statehouse a little bluer so that we can stop getting an abortion bill every week. The best way to do that is to put a pot initiative on the ballot. The right wing has been using gay marriage and Sharia Law to turn out their base for years. For the left, weed is our Sharia law.

If it were remotely possible that Mitt Romney would be in a position to hug Paul Ryan then lower himself into a vat of molten steel in an abandoned foundry while others look on I might agree with you. (Although that's pretty much what his campaign was. It looks to me like you didn't recognize the clip or where it was from. I get that. I don't recognize most of the reality-TV based gifs on this board. But please don't pretend that this rip off of a 20-year-old sci-fi movie is the same as pictures of bullet holes on the face of a president who has had an unprecedented level of threats against him and his family. Let's look at this a different way. Do you believe that this image means I am questioning Mitt Romney's parentage?

LMAO! That's amazing! T2 is one of my favorite movies of all time! Now I want to see a Sarah Connor/Michelle Obama gif. ETA: Oh yikes. I'm looking upthread and seeing outrage about this image. It's a sci-fi thing. Nothing more. Although the idea of Paul Ryan in the role of John Connor is offensive on a lot of levels.

Don't forget the "found" video of Obama's mother giving birth. That was the first time I was able to laugh at any of this [!@#$%^&*].

Until someone verifies the name of this business owner or the business he supposedly runs then I'm not interested. Any crackpot can call up a talk radio station and say that they fired a bunch of people and Lord knows these people have no problem making things up when reality doesn't work for them.

No. The stock market goes up AND down.The stack market was at 8,000 when Obama took office. It's over 13,000 now. If you are going to freak out over one day drops and gains you shouldn't be in the market. The markets dropped, in part, because the banks know that a lot of this new regulation is going to stick. Good since when they weren't regulated they crashed the economy. Also the market is affected by more than one factor and part of what drove the drop was Europe. http://finance.yahoo...-160911325.html If that's true then he's either a bad businessman, using the election as a cover for his own incompetence, lying or I suspect: all of the above. Boeing has been cost-cutting for a while due to Pentagon budget cuts. http://www.nytimes.c...hita-plant.html The fact that we aren't going to be a perpetual war is cutting into the profits of defense contractors. As it should. War as business isn't a good long term economic strategy. Are you really trying to tie that to Obama? Not saturation of fast-food market or increased competition or even just a change in the consumer base. "McDonald's Corp. reported its first decline in monthly U.S. same store sales in nine years Thursday, as the chain began to suffer problems plaguing the rest of the fast food industry for several years." http://www.chicagotr...,0,565967.story What going here is that you are pulling together lots of unrelated news in the effort to create a narrative. Correlation is not causality.

Exactly! This election showed that it wasn't Mitt Romney that was rejected by the American people, it was the Republican agenda. Everything about the Republican party got rejected yesterday: the rape fixation, the racism, the homophobia, the class warfare, the lies, the corporate money, and especially the voter suppression. All of it added up to one big fail. ‎"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." - Mitch McConnell Anytime someone mentions Obama's "failed" policies, I intend to smack them in the mouth with this. The Republican Party failed at their single most important objective.

Perhaps somebody should explain to her that if God is in control perhaps he wanted Obama to win.

What I find amazing is that she seemed to be getting drunker as the broadcast moved on. Even if she was wasted when she started she should've gotten more lucid as she sobered up.

Today America is closer to the vision I've always had for it. More gays can marry and more people can get high while they do it! Oh yeah... the black guy is still president. *dances like a drunk minister at a black wedding reception*

Sherrod Brown Elizabeth Warren Thank God.

Please don't even mention that phucker's name. Please.

I know what you're saying but IMO it's really not just an issue of race. IMO, it's more an issue of location (Cleveland is the big travel/business hub of Ohio) and business (Cleveland/Lordstown auto industry and Cleveland Clinic/University Hospitals medical). Cleveland is the closest thing that Ohio has to a truly international city like NYC, Toronto, Miami, etc..

Chrysler - the company that Mitt Romney lied about and claimed was sending jobs to China - gave all of its employees the day off in order to vote. http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/chrysler-gives-workers-day-off-to-vote

I don't think the media was kinder to Obama but the historic nature of his candidacy couldn't be overlooked. A lot of the celebration of Obama was a celebration of just how far the country had come. That's why the whole "take our country back" meme is so sickening and reads as inherently racist. Obama's candidacy was also a celebration of what used to be the American Dream: that no matter who you are, where you come from, what your name is or how less-than-ideal your circumstances if you work hard you can achieve greatness and even make history. That's part of the reason the personal vitriol from the right is so disgusting. Obama exemplifies everything we were taught America stood for so apparently the right-wing has decided that America stands for something else now. I'm not sure what that is but it apparently includes tax breaks for the wealthy and legitimate rape.

If Sandy gave Obama the edge then it's pretty obvious that it was something that "God wanted to happen."

I saw this on the FB page for "A Tribute to Pine Valley." They're apparently planning more events for 2013. They're also asking what three cities fans would most like for the cast to visit next. (Because I know what comes next...this is the same company that did the Loving Llanview events so I have no doubt there will be a similar request for them later on.)

Indeed. The weakness of the Democratic Party is remarkably frustrating and it's the reason the Democrats are constantly in a position of starting from scratch. They never finish the job. Already I'm seeing Democrats say that if Obama wins then the Republicans will be more cooperative this time around. That's complete and total fuckery. The Republicans will double down on their obstruction and corruption with their eyes on 2016. There will be no cooperation. There will be no bipartisanship. The only hope is that the GOP manages to tear itself apart from the inside.

I had completely forgotten but we're in a Nielsen sweeps period and have been since last week. I'm not sure what effect the Hurricane had on numbers but that's even more motivation for the networks to string this out.

I agree. When there's violence involved that's coercion not consent. When someone is in the throes of drug addiction, then one can argue that consent is gone from there too. But people with poor options end up in a lot of bad situations. That's reality. That's why I think it's important to make sure people have options through access to quality education and health care and to find and penalize domestic and child abusers. That also happens with people who have sex for free, people who cheat, people who pick up strangers in bars. Again, dangerous, demeaning, ugly sex happens everywhere, all the time, between willing participants with no cash exchanging hands. I said above that as long as everyone is safe and consenting, I don't care what they do. What you are describing is unsafe sex so that doesn't fit my definition. It's one thing to be worried about some kid in a South American brothel. It's another to worry about someone like Karrine Steffans who kept doing what she was doing with her eyes wide open and even wrote books about it. I think her life is disgusting but she's fine with it. I'm not going to waste my time being outraged on her behalf. The world is filled with people who make choices that I disagree with. I'm not talking about some trafficked woman chained to a bed because that's not a choice, I'm talking about the Jenna Jamesons and Traci Lords. If someone is an escort or a porn star and you ask them how they feel about it and they say, "good." then my response is, "So be it." We can't force people to value themselves in a way we find acceptable. I'm not going to worry about the businessman who pays someone to spank him with a riding crop and I'm not going to worry about the woman who makes $500 doing it. If Maher wants to pay for sex and the women he pays are genuinely consenting and aren't putting their health or anyone else's at risk, why should I care? I don't question why people pay for sex. I don't really care. Trying to figure out the motivations people have for the kind of sex they want is way above my pay grade. I have friends who still pick men up in bars. I don't ask why any more. There's no point. When I travel on business, inevitably I see people who were clearly waiting for the chance to engage in some sort of behavior they've been keeping under wraps. They're hooking up with co-workers, going to strip clubs, looking for one freak show after another. As long as they leave me alone, I don't care. I don't think Maher HAS to pay for sex. I think he CHOOSES to. His reasons are not my concern. More power to him.

That may all be true but I believe in people's right to make bad choices as long as they make them with their eyes open and are willing to accept the consequences of making them. There are plenty of jobs out there where the consequences in the long term are negative and tragic: coal miner, for example and there are plenty of people who have unfortunate, unpleasant, demeaning sex for free. If they want to do it for money then at least they're getting something for their trouble. A lot of the bad consequences and inequities of prostitution are the result of it being illegal. Make it legal and some of those elements will go away. Will that turn it into a healthy positive experience? No but when it comes to sex, people do crazy stuff. Again, as long as those involved are safe and consenting, I prefer to refrain from telling them what kind of sex they should have. Would I want someone I care about becoming a sex worker? No. But there are plenty of other jobs I wouldn't want to see someone I care about do either, like the military or the priesthood.

Personally I have no problem with people using the services of sex workers. My policy on such things is that as long as everyone involved is safe and consenting then I don't care what they do. I think Maher is often funny and insightful but there are plenty of times when I think he's dead wrong. I remember a "joke" he told on Facebook three days after Don Cornelius died where he basically claimed that Cornelius shot himself because Mitt Romney won a primary. I told him to leave that poor man's family alone and let them bury their loved one. And don't get me started on his defense of Rush Limbaugh's attacks on Sandra Fluke.

Given that Bill Maher has an affinity for sex workers, it doesn't bother me.

As much as I like some of Maher's opinions, mainly on the subject of religion, one of the best rebuttals I've ever heard to his opinions was done by Wayne Brady.

According to the numbers uploaded by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections 30 minutes ago (Yes. I can check these numbers every day.) 3,125 people showed up to vote today. That number exceeded the number of people who showed up on the comparable day (three days before ED) in 2008. I love Stevie Wonder but I'd rather see people at the polls than his concert.