dupe of http://videosift.com/video/A-special-animated-look-at-the-2010-US-midterm-elections

Netrunner - I'd much prefer this info come from a mainstream source but I couldn't find it.

That said, the narrative seems - to me - straight-forward and uncontroversial.

-A corporate friendly supreme court opens the floodgates to unlimited, anonymous corporate influence over our democracy.
-The midterms are the most expensive in history by a good margin.
-A corporately funded, rage-based movement, heavy on rhetoric, but light on policy specifics sweeps into office.
-The morning after, corporate tax cuts are at the top of the agenda.

Quid pro ... shut yo mouth ....

I don't see anything to quible with here, fact-wise. If you can find more on this from a more widely known source, you let me know and I'll promote it.

>> ^blankfist:

I voted Republican and sold my soul to the devil. Why? Because I remember. I remember how awesome it is to have a Republican majority so we can all hate them together.


There is a certain amount of truth to that. I must admit. I felt a little bad tearing into some of half-bright conservatives on this site while the dems held the executive and legislative branches of government. But now that the conservatives have the judicial branch and half the lege, the kid gloves come off. Let the disembowelings begin!

Seriously. Can I move over there please? Our midterms have squashed any glimmer of hope I had left.

>> ^Jinx:

Oh, and of those 71% Christians I expect the vast majority are basically agnostic or deist. As for seperation of Church and State...well it might be in your constitution but I think we do it more justice. Some irony huh.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^Crosswords:
these tea-party libertarians they elected are really ultra bat-shit conservatives

I'm pretty sure - 100% actually - tea partiers are not libertarians. When did this rumor start? Because I've been hearing it a lot from the Democrats.


If memory serves correctly the original tea-party movement was primarily a libertarian movement, however it was quickly subverted and taken over by the ultra conservatives. Basically so they could scream bloody murder over the economy, the bailout, and the democrats without the taint of being a rank and file republican. Or to put it another way, its a different puppet but with the same hand up its ass.

Republicans love to prop-up libertarian ideals when its convenient, its just inconvenient to actually be because then they'd have to cut defense spending, bloated contracts to private sector, and respect the separation of church and state.

>> ^peggedbea:

^ my tea party family members say they're libertarians.

Interesting. I've heard this a lot recently. But libertarians are for pure equality, civil rights and open borders and much of the things the typical conservative dislikes. Libertarians and conservatives only agree on limiting government and shrinking taxes, but even then it seems to be conservative rhetoric. Last time I checked spending trillions on the military industrial complex and creating bureaucratic agencies (i.e., Homeland Security) wasn't limiting the power of government.


Yeah, and I have tea party family members, too, but they dare not call themselves libertarian around me lest they hear an earful of my bullshit for an hour.

>> ^Crosswords:
these tea-party libertarians they elected are really ultra bat-shit conservatives


I'm pretty sure - 100% actually - tea partiers are not libertarians. When did this rumor start? Because I've been hearing it a lot from the Democrats.

@marinara you're a strange person. Go to that URL, look in the upper left corner of your screen. Click on the chart, and you get the link I had in my original post, where Nate says "our simulation projects Republicans to gain a net of 4.0 Senate seats in this November's elections, a figure unchanged since last month" and "The Republicans now have only a 6 percent chance of an outright takeover of the Senate, according to the model".

I'm more optimistic than that about the Senate, but that's partly because I have seen polling data from May that Nate's post doesn't incorporate (yet).

As for the house, here's his most recent analysis, along with a graph plotting house popular vote vs. net change in seats. Right now pollster.com has the House Generic ballot polling an effective tie (43.1% R vs 42.9% D, for a net +0.2R), and if you look that up on Nate's chart, that would foretell a 30-seat swing towards the Republicans, which isn't enough for them to take control (the dotted red line on the graph), but it's worse than my prediction.

For a midterm, we're still very early in the process. Hell, even in 2008, at about this point in time we didn't know if it would be Clinton or Obama facing McCain in the fall, just to put things in perspective.

i actually just msged nate silver from http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

if he doesn't ignore me, he might answer if he's going to do polls for the midterms.

I totally disagree with you. I get being pissed that things haven't changed enough but I think it's just that America is a slow turning ship, not that Obama has left things on Bush's same shitty course.

Specifically:

1) Obama is just as bad in military spending?

   If you're handed 2 wars your first day in office you think you can cut spending within the first year?

2) Obama is just as bad in staying in Iraq?

   Obama gave an exit deadline and plan 2 months into office. Bush just promised we'd leave over and over but refuse to gave a date because it would "embolden the insurgents". wiki. What the hell do you expect from the guy?

3) Obama is just as bad in number of dead soldiers?

   No. I'm not even going to look up stats.

4) Obama is just as bad in doing things in the name of empire?

   Bush's rhetoric was all about empire and if you looked under the surface he and Cheney's motives were allot worse. You can make a case that America has done nasty things in the name of empire from Manifest Destiny through the banana wars to the dirty wars and into the present but I've never heard the case that Obama agrees with that path much less that he could be considered in the same galaxy as Bush/Cheney in that regard.

5) Obama is just as bad in terms of don't ask don't tell?

   I doubt Bush would want to change don't ask don't tell. Obama said he will but didn't give a date. I'd assume he doesn't want to do it before midterm elections because homophobia might lose some democratic seats in congress doing gay rights no overall favors.

6) Obama is just as bad in terms of Gitmo?

   He started closing Gitmo right away: wikipedia - but Bush left a bigger mess than he thought (no records).


>> ^joedirt:

>> ^alizarin:
Great speech, whoever edited the video went a little cuckoo though - How you could hear that speech and think pictures of "Obama" instead of pictures of "Bush" is beyond me.

Because Obama is just as bad in terms of miliary spending and staying in Iraq and Gitmo and the number of soldiers dead in the name of Empire.
Go ahead and tell me how Obama did anything in Iraq different from what Bush had planned. Including Dont Ask Dont Tell. Name one timeline that Obama accelerated.


All this is way way too slow but I think this is just as fast as it gets until you convince the rest of the country to agree faster.

The irony is by heightening up the rhetoric to ridiculous proportions they made more Democrats likely to vote for the bill.

Had they not it would have cemented the perception that health care was an attempt at government takeover, death panels and Armageddon. The only choice left even for many Democrats against the bill was to help pass the bill because if they didn't then in the midterms the party they belonged to would have had much more relevancy in determining their future than what their actual position on the bill was.

I'll give you that. Election '08 needs to go.

Perhaps "Election of Insignificant Midterms '10" could replace it?

I really enjoyed Freakonomics, but I haven't read SuperFreakonomics yet, so I can't say much on the chapter about global warming. The title however suggest something about global cooling. A recent article says: Statistics experts reject global cooling claims. But he doesn't seem to be denying global warming in this interview. So I definitely have to read the book.
Maybe he means global cooling in terms of doing it through geoengineering, then I'm a strong supporter for it as a midterm solution though.
Bjorn Lomborg, the Skeptical Environmentalist, is also a strong supporter of geoengineering:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Skeptical-Environmentalist-s-Solutions-for-Global-Warming

Government doesn't care about you directly. Government is there for one reason - to perpetuate itself (re-election). They only 'care' about people insofar as they consider people to be population blocs that generate tax revenue and (occasionally) vote.

Private companies don't care about you directly either. They are there for one reason - to make a profit. They only 'care' about people insofar as they are engines that generate market share.

The THEORY is that both these entities (public/private) will ultimately behave themselves because they can't afford to antagonize the people that their 'market share' attitude so routinely dehumanizes. The real issue here is that government is FAR more insulated from the people than any private company. If you get a bum rap from a company you can sue them, or take your business to a different company, and (best) tell anyone/everyone what happened and cause lots of other people to not patronize the business.

But when you are oppressed by the GOVERNMENT you are far less able to hit them where it hurts. You can't stop paying taxes. You can't throw someone out of office except once every 4/6 years (and even THEN it isn't a given). Even if you do get ONE guy thrown out, there are hundreds or thousands of others still in that government who you have ZERO ability to influence (Senators from other states, cabinet members, appointees, judges).

Right now the polls show athat about 65% to over 70% of the people do NOT want Obamacare. If the Democrats just say, "screw you - you're getting Obamacare like it or not" then there is literally nothing that can be done about it. Even if the Dems lose the house/senate in the midterms it can't be undone. Even if Repubs take the House, PoTUS, and Senate in 2012 it is very unlikely they would repeal it. They'd just want to be the ones 'in charge' of it.

It is a FAR better choice to never let the government take over health care in the first place. They cannot be trusted with that kind of power, because they would never surrender it. American helath care is fine. People who need care get it. The problem is one of disproportionate costs. That problem can be handled far more effectively with a non-public solution that does not give over immense power to a goverment .

"O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired."

Source

The cons got us into this mess and the last thing they're going to do is either admit it or keep their fat mouths shut.