The Politics Thread

[DRW50]

Another great example of how the Beltway gushes over their own. Embarrassing.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/01/ed-gillespies-first-campaign-video-is-a-political-consultants-dream/

[DRW50]

Disturbing article about all the effort put into these Olympics, including reportedly demolishing homes without knowing if anyone is in them.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/vlamidir-putin-sochi-olympics-102342.html

[DRW50]

Get ready for the media to do handstands over Cathy McMorris Rodgers as she gives the SOTU response tonight. Huckabee and his ilk have once again shown the true colors of the GOP and their hatred of women, so the media need to make her a star to hide that belly of the beast.

Here's a good article about just how badly most SOTU responses go.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/state-of-the-union-curse-102676.html

[ThePrinceOfSunspear]

Liking the SOTU so far. Glad that the President doesn't appear tired or depressed. He's almost at the finish line and I hope he knows just how many supporters he really has. Its time to ignore the haters and racist and keep moving forward.

What a very emotional ending....I don't think it could have gone better. Looking forward to hearing what you guys think though.

Edited January 29, 2014 by ThePrinceOfSunspear

[reallyhateskateonlost]

[quartermainefan]

I skipped this speech. Obama is a boring speaker for one, and then he has been saying it is time to get moving for a long time now. I realize it is not his fault but I suspect his days as an effective President are over. This is an election year, nobody will pay him any attention since he is not running again, and what he says is slowly becoming borderline irrelevant. I caught clips of the republican response. I don't know who that lady was, but Phil Carey did a better job masking his cue cards than she did. Her silly line reading that sounded like she was talking to children didn't help. I have no idea where they found this woman.

[Roman]

I really smile when you say how you know how millions and millions of people will act.

[quartermainefan]

Second terms are historically troublesome for presidents and it doesn't matter which party they are from. And as soon as the democrats nominate someone to run that person will speak for the party, not Obama. He has til maybe Feb 2015 tops to lead his party, and probably less than that to get any sort of meaningful legislation passed.

[ThePrinceOfSunspear]

It really all depends on when/if Hillary Clinton announces. If she waits till post 2014 and past 2015 SOTU then he'll have a whole year and then some. If she announces sometime in the Fall then his presidency is effectively in the end stages and not much else will matter.

[DRW50]

Yet another Republican running for governor in Illinois seems to be in a mess (the last one was a guy who got a ton of [!@#$%^&*] for being against raising the minimum wage - he actually wanted to CUT the minimum wage in Illinois). Pat Quinn is very lucky.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rutherford-travel-illinois

That complaint includes:

"You just said no to the Treasurer."

Wow.

Edited February 13, 2014 by DRW50

[DRW50]

Joe the Plumber - what can I say, beyond, what a perfect example of far right hypocrisy.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/joe-the-plumber-wurzelbacher-union-job-chrysler

[Max]

Mitt Romney joins both Arizona senators in asking Governor Brewer to veto a gay-discrimination bill.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/mitt-romney-arizona-sb-1062-jan-brewer-103943.html?hp=l1_b2

Now everyone can see that those left-wing scare tactics--implying that a McCain or Romney presidency would be dangerous for gays (because both "hate gays" so much, and because both apparently would have been puppets of the most extreme elements of the GOP)--were false.

Edited February 26, 2014 by Max

[quartermainefan]

Max, you can't see the forest through the trees at times. That's the aspect of this story you find noteworthy? That is the headline and not that every single republican in the state legislature voted to make discrimination legal? Or that the Governor just doesn't flat out say this law is repulsive but rather she has to study it? As for McCain, even he didn't say the law should be vetoed because it is odious and unamerican, no, he said it would hurt AZ economically. And why? Because everyone else finds it disgusting. This law doesn't disprove the generalizations about republicans, it proves those generalizations true--again. It wasn't left wing scare tactics that forced this law on AZ, it was republicans. This isn't the extreme wing of the republican party, these are the elected officials chosen by a majority and therefore right in the mainstream of republican thought.

Can anyone explain what the difference is between republicans in AZ and their law and Putin's law in Russia other than degrees of discrimination? When your party is mirroring the thought process of Putin isn't it time you wake up? Three places have been in the news recently for anti-gay laws: Russia, Uganda, and Arizona. I think that says it all and says everything there needs to be said about conservatives in America today.

Edited February 26, 2014 by quartermainefan

[Max]

Not every GOP legislator in Arizona voted for it. I wish there were more, but a few GOP members did vote against it, and three more now regret their votes.

It is reprehensible for her to play both sides of the fence on this issue, but the reports suggest that she is going to veto it.

He gave that as one important reason to veto the bill, but never said that was the only reason. But, for arguments sake, let's assume that McCain is only opposing the bill for that reason. If he hates gays as much as the liberal fear-mongering implied, then why would he care about the objections of business? Wouldn't he instead want to support the bill and do all he can to make gay people's lives miserable?

What the AZ legislature does isn't a general reflection of the entire GOP. If it were, then you would see identical legislation pass in all 27 states that have majority-GOP legislatures. And you would also see the House of Representatives pass such a bill on the federal level. Instead, what you are seeing is a loud drumbeat of prominent Republicans calling for a veto of the bill, because such anti-gay measures couldn't be further removed from the top GOP priorities, such as repealing ObamaCare and reducing taxes to stimulate the economy.

Furthermore, my initial comments weren't even about the GOP in general, but instead over the specific way that McCain and Romney were vilified as rabidly anti-gay during the last two presidential campaigns. Everyone deep down knows that extreme social conservatives do not have enough appeal to win the GOP presidential nomination, and that the plausible GOP nominees (if elected) wouldn't be able to force gays back into the closet. In fact, gay rights advanced even during the presidency of Bush, a man more socially conservative than either McCain or Romney. (I realize that those advances took place in spite of Bush and not because of him, but the point is that even a hated GOP president didn't cause doom for gay people.)

If all the left did would be to suggest that gay rights would advance much more further with a Democratic president, I would have no problem (and I would actually agree with such a statement). But the hysteria that implies that gays would have several decades of progress erased (if a plausible GOP nominee became president) is absurd, since that didn't even occur during the Bush presidency.

[marceline]

No they don't. The fact that the bill even passed shows that those "left wing scare tactics" as you call them were 100 percent true. People thought that a Romney or McCain presidency would be dangerous for gays because the Republican Party is dangerous for gays and this is hard evidence of that. The only reason McCain or Romney are speaking out now is because, fortunately, it has become unprofitable to be homophobic. Frankly I hope Brewer signs the bill so we can make an example out of that state and make any other legislature think twice before trying to pass this Jim Crow nonsense.