myiW Current Conditions and Forecasts Community Forums Buy and Sell Services
 
Hi guest · myAccount · Log in
 SearchSearch   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   RegisterRegister 
Time to gloat
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 6, 7, 8 ... 19, 20, 21  Next
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    iWindsurf Community Forum Index -> Politics, Off-Topic, Opinions
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17744
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2012 2:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Olympia wants to cut a deal. Obama is in a perfect position to push for immigration reform now, and perhaps the Republicans are chastened enough to embrace a moderate position.

I continue to see Obama as the smartest President we've had in my lifetime, with the possible exception of Clinton. He was naive about Congressional politics, and would have been a better president with the seasoning that LBJ had. I think he positioned himself perfectly for a long-term debt reduction with the deal that created a financial cliff--if the Republicans refuse to cooperate, in the wake of their gambling everything on making him a one term President, their military lobbyists go nuts and the entire country gets a tax increase. That won't happen. Obama did the math long ago--a tax increase for only the rich won't balance the budget in the remainder of my life. But it is the symbol he needs to deliver to bring the left wing of the Democrats to the table on entitlements and program cuts.

I think that Ryan has used up all of his credibility with the American public with his program to balance the budget with tax cuts--he not only couldn't win his state, I think he and Scott Walker helped Wisconsin elect a Democratic Senator over a former Governor. Tax cuts haven't ever balanced the budget, and most people in the real world are paying close enough attention to know that most of the deficit is the result of the recession and the Bush tax cuts. But--I do think Ryan understands the fiscal issues and can help deliver the House. Probably the best move for him to rehabilitate himself and position himself for 2016. It will be an interesting set of public talking points and private negotiations. Obama is too smart to not have learned from his first term mistakes.

What do you suppose mrgybe and matty are smoking right now? Just in anger?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
nw30



Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast

PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2012 3:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"I continue to see Obama as the smartest President we've had in my lifetime"

Yep.


Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
boggsman1



Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9118
Location: at a computer

PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2012 3:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

NW...I felt your pain, I was there in 2004. It took me 6 months to get over it, you'll be fine. Eventually you will start to think more positively and things will work themselves out. You can speed the process up by turning Fox News off, and delete the Drudge Report...which posted Scott Rasmussen's bullshit polls everyday , and gave Republicans all over the country the idea that Thurston might actually win.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2012 4:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

nw30, quoting someone in jest wrote:
"I continue to see Obama as the smartest President we've had in my lifetime"

Well, since Dubya, maybe.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17744
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Nov 09, 2012 4:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Reality deficit disorder in action:

Quote:
"I continue to see Obama as the smartest President we've had in my lifetime"

Yep.


protecting the sufferer from the harsher aspects of reality, like a drubbing in the electoral college by 303 to 197, with Florida's 29 votes expected to also roll up in the Obama column.

Apparently in some alterntive universe Romney was smarter than Obama. Too bad that he erased his etcha-sketch position so many times he became invisible in this universe.

Do not approach victims of reality deficit disorder. They are sometimes armed, and always clueless.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
windoggi



Joined: 22 Feb 2002
Posts: 2743

PostPosted: Sat Nov 10, 2012 2:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good LA Times column..

Reality crashes the Republican Party

CAROLYN COLE / LOS ANGELES TIMES



It turns out this presidential election wasn't so much about race after all, but about something bigger, more fundamental and harder to ignore. And there's a lesson here for shellshocked Republicans, still wondering how things went so wrong:

It's time to drop that "Take our country back" stuff and take your party back instead.

Barack Obama's romp took many by surprise. Even as Obama votes piled up on Tuesday night, political operative Dick Morris, who has worked both sides of the aisle, kept predicting a Mitt Romney landslide.

It's hard to argue with the demographic dimensions of Obama's victory. He won in almost every category of voters except senior citizens and white men.

That's led to lots of head-banging for GOP pundits: Romney might have won, they say, if he had eased up on illegal immigration and found a running mate who could attract Latinos or draw votes in swing states.

But this is not a matter of fine-tuning the message or rustling up a candidate with brown skin or serviceable Spanish.

The problem is a platform that staked out the far-right fringe on so many issues that it turned off immigrants, women, minorities, single mothers, young people, gays and lesbians.

The images of winners and losers on election night said it all: the Norman Rockwell tableau in Romney's sullen Boston ballroom versus the kaleidoscopic diversity of Obama's Chicago victory montage.

The America the Republicans want is not the one we have.

::

Conventional wisdom would credit the win to smart campaigning and coalition-building.

According to exit polls, support for Obama came from 93% of blacks, 71% of Latinos, 73% of Asian Americans, 76% of gays and lesbians, 60% of voters under 30 and 55% of women.

But that is not your classic ideological coalition, with shared interests and concerns. That's a collection of folks alienated, over time, by Republicans and their mission to return America to an era when some people had it really good — and whole groups of others had to settle for leftovers.

People vote their pocketbooks, but they also vote their passions. And those reflect not only their age and ethnic heritage, but the sort of personal lives that right-wingers have made clear they're not willing to abide.

Women are having babies without marrying the fathers. Gays and lesbians aren't willing anymore to stay hidden in the closet. Young people are using social media to lift their champions and bury their opponents. And Latinos and Asian Americans are staking their claim to a growing slice of this American pie.

And that affects the rest of us. If you don't have a family member who's gay, you probably have a friend or co-worker who is. If you have teenagers at home, you've probably learned to accept their bands of multiracial friends.

And if you are, like me, a single mother, you don't want to be made to feel that you are shortchanging your kids. And I'm not willing to allow my daughters' reproductive options to be controlled by a bunch of narrow-minded, self-righteous men.

Voters carried those slights and insults to the voting booth, tired of being treated with contempt by a party that doesn't seem to understand their realities.

We're rejecting hypocritical rhetoric: Newt Gingrich, with three marriages and a string of infidelities, arguing that allowing gays to wed violates the sanctity of marriage.

Women heard a wake-up call in Todd Akin's remarks about rape shutting a woman's body down. That kind of idiocy is frightening, and it brings clarity to what's at stake in the debate over abortion.

And young people rebelled at being written off as society's leeches. They are working full time for poverty wages or desperate for jobs that don't exist, part of that sponger demographic — the 47% — that Romney privately mocked.

I don't know if it's mean-spirited, shortsighted or simply wishful thinking, but the Republican Party is pandering to a base that is rapidly shrinking in a country that's learning to tune them out.

::

It would be nice to think that this botched campaign reflects the pull of the party's fringe, and is easily correctable.

But the GOP has been tacking right for decades. Obama's ascent to the presidency just escalated the phenomenon by helping to launch the tea party wing, whose mission was getting him out of office.

According to Emory University professor Alan Abramowitz, who has studied the tea party for years, that ultra-conservative activist segment now dominates the Republican Party.

Tea party folks donate more money, attend more meetings and rallies, and pester elected officials more than other party regulars. They are rabidly against abortion and gay marriage and tend to hold hostile attitudes toward blacks and gays.

And more than half of Republicans — 63% of party stalwarts — consider themselves supporters of the tea party movement.

That explains why the muscle-flexing of the "new America" in this election drove party leaders bonkers.

There was Karl Rove on Tuesday night, having a temper tantrum when Fox News called Ohio — and the race — for President Obama. Rove had funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Republican candidates and had very little to show for it.

And there was Bill O'Reilly whining that this country is "not a traditional America anymore," implying that Republicans value hard work and fair play, and those other people just "want stuff."

And Morris, excusing his roundly mocked projection of a Romney landslide by admitting that the "new America" caught him by surprise.

He thought that the election four years ago was nothing but a "one-off," that voter-turnout demographics would "go back to 2004," he said.

I guess he figured the groups that cinched Obama's first term — minorities, women, young people — were only there for the party.

Which means Republicans weren't beaten only by arithmetic this time. They lost through willful blindness.

_________________
/w\
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17744
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 12:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great post windoggie. But I'm not sure that reality has intruded. I've spent some time listening to conservative talk radio to see if the more rational voices of the party are being listened to. Not much; George Will and anyone to the left of Atilla are still outcasts, and Obama blaming remains the order of the day. The nonsense about Benghazi that we are getting from NW and Isobars are still the essential talking points.

The more moderate arguments that are being made, about an issue, the deficit, that there is actually some common ground between the parties, kind of run like this:

1. We should have acknowledged that it was all Bush's fault and had Romney run against him even harder than Obama did. We would have had a rapid recovery if we had just let the banks and the auto companies fail. (Is that how they won Ohio?)

2. The Democrats were lying about the Republicans attack on Social Security and Medicare, and we should have gotten the truth out about what Romney would do. (Of course, this runs counter to the reality of the Ryan and Romney budget ideas as actual written down proposals. It is highly amusing that the party that cleaved to Karl Rove and scare tactics now blames their losses on scare tactics.)

3. I didn't hear a word about the mistakes they made in prioritizing the hateful social agenda of the whack-a-do evangelicals. They're being kind of quiet about gay and women rights, but they can't help but still talk about kicking the illegals out. "What part of illegal can't you understand?"

What part of demographics can't they understand? Pretty much all of it; math is a foreign concept to the hard right. Much of our immigrant population was originally invited into the country to work on farms because the Republican farmers weren't willing to pay enough to attract poor people from inside this country. Those Republicans were the drivers on the last round of immigration legislation, under Reagan, and the current nut-cases were those that castigated Reagan for his amnesty program. Now the children of those immigrants, most born in this country and now citizens and bilingual, are voting. They are deeply offended by the nasty messages of the right, and unwilling to send their parents back to Mexico. The right ignored the approach of Bush II, and other Republicans in rapidly changing state's like Florida and Texas, believing that Hispanics (and the young) wouldn't vote, based on the 2010 results. Oops.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 6:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

isobars wrote:
Gloating ... over an event that knocked 312 points off the stock market within hours? 41 more days like that and the entire stock market's value will be zero point zero ... and the value of my Krugerrand will be infinite.

Anything for your ideology, though, huh?


what was the market at when Bush entered and when he left? don't let them facts get in your way at anytime...

same with the right wing polls that were all wrong.... It all depends on where you get your data.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 6:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mac wrote:
CB--I serve on several boards with political appointees, including a substantial number of Republicans, and all of them get along. There is a key to that--we listen carefully to each other, and try to craft solutions that incorporate the good ideas of everyone, and our areas of agreement. That accepts that the sincerely held values of those who are involved in public service are legitimate, and deserve a place in the outcome. That suits me fine--I grew up in an era before trash talking, and my football coaches would bench us if we mouthed off--so we didn't. But both the listening and the accommodation have reached new lows at the National level during the last four years.
......


I believe the hate in washington started with Ronald Reygun with his running on hate of washington. He also helped with his removal of the fairness doctrine elevating Rush to the center-stage of hate for how many years. Remember Rush attacked Not only clintons underage daughter on the national airwaves but Carters too. That is what the right wing started way back in Carters time, attacking the underage girls appearances. Ruch loved to also degrade Janet Renos appearance over and over. Just look at Michael Savage and many other right wing. Even A so called officer and gentleman Senator McCain told a disgusting joke about a presidents daughter at a campaign fund raiser well before he ran for president. With it came Newt and his hate style in the congress. and now permeating the majority of the right wing called tea party like Sharon Angle stating if we do not win at the polls to take up second amendment rights. For her statement like that out of state right wing money flooded her for her hate talk. Again hate talk sells and is loved by the right, that is why talk radio is has been so successful and same with fox.

This hate talk is very successful only about 1/2 of the eligible voters in the USA vote. It does have a effect to make them believe government is bad because they hear it by the right wing owned media in ever direction.

But because of the present hate talk by the right wing which is so obviously a latent lie even the moderates could not stomach it. So the right wing paid a price. And we need these loonies that even post here with their lack of the ability to accept reality and truth justice and the true american way. For these wackos have pushed the moderates to the left. We need these wackos of the right wing to continue with their hate (yes hate and there is no other name for a 400% increase in death threats to the president of the USA).

we can thank the isos of this forum for the record setting landslide considering no president had ever been elected when the un-employment was so high and blamed by the other party on him. Again every single branch of the fed increased dems...

thank you isos of this forum and the other parts of that righty world of hate.... with your positions and the way you trash talk we could see the mid-term elections destroy even more of the hold on congress....
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14838
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Sun Nov 11, 2012 6:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

isobars wrote:
coboardhead wrote:
I read this forum largely for Mac's comments.

That doesn't surprise me, as his comments are exactly why he was one of the very first people I killfiled. Incessantly personal without basis, seldom on topic thus very often confusing, sidestepping an issue the instant he can't support his claims, VERY often flat-out lies about what others posted, and all 52 of his cards are either the race card or the hate card. He once wished I would get sick and die or something like that ... nice thing to say to a terminal cancer patient.

Typical debate with mac:
Conservative: "The WSJ reported that apples are red."
mac: "Our resident racist neocon is lying that bananas are purple" ... then posts a page or two about nutrition, pest control, the Bay water level, Zambeesian polar bears, and cults ... followed by his conclusion: "And thus it is proved that wrenches are powdered you knuckledragger".
Any rational reader: "Huh?"

Now, that's an oversimplification for brevity's sake, but it is not an exaggeration. Despite my writing skills having garnered accolades, awards, and/or nationally important achievements from grammar school plays to the Secretary of Defense to federal court to life-threatening medical differential diagnoses, I can seldom make much relevant sense out of his rambling posts. Nothing personal, but he makes a great liberal and appeals to many of his kind. Your writing is SO superior to his that I'm surprised at your statement ... you lying hating racist poltergeist.

See what I mean?


Hey, what were you tested to in English? Can you match me in math logic of upper 1%? Exactly where did you fall in math testing, see I see such a lack of logic in your posts I would bet you could not pass basic college stats if the world depended on it. No offense just stating the truth. Just as I do not take offense to my grammar, spelling, hey I know it sucks and can admit it. But can you admit how your lack of ability to understand facts, stats, logic makes you look like a idiot in so many cases.

Yes I have won national and international awards as well as many awards by the US government... Gee as a child even tied the champion of a national lab in chess.

I know not understanding math/physics/science appeals to those on the right, just look at the right wing polls, and to the end game rummy believed in right wing poll idiots.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    iWindsurf Community Forum Index -> Politics, Off-Topic, Opinions All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 6, 7, 8 ... 19, 20, 21  Next
Page 7 of 21

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum

myiW | Weather | Community | Membership | Support | Log in
like us on facebook
© Copyright 1999-2007 WeatherFlow, Inc Contact Us Ad Marketplace

Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group