Nope, I don't. Bush lost in the popular vote but he didn't steal the election. It's just a case of an anomaly in our screwy election system.

This was a good example of why you're such a poor debater, though. If you can't make an argument you just change the topic. You've apparently got nothing to say on the topic of Net Neutrality so you start whining about the election from a year and a half ago. When I call you on your crappy source, you strawman me and start whining about the election from almost 10 years ago.

Most of your "opponents" here are just as ignorant, I know, but you'll have to step your game up if you're going to try to argue with me.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Doesn't bother me in the least. You probably think Bush "stole" the election in 2000, based on...what?
Less than this.
Feel free to google Franken, felons voting illegally
The punishment for electing a liberal is...getting a liberal

I can't imagine why you haven't listed your source. Oh, wait, it's from this anonymous WSJ opinion piece.

I don't care about the WSJ's reputation for "partisan news" (though I doubt anyone else here will let that slide), but an anonymous opinion piece? Really?

>> ^quantumushroom:

"Mr. Franken trailed Mr. Coleman by 725 votes after the initial count on election night, and 215 after the first canvass. The Democrat's strategy from the start was to manipulate the recount in a way that would discover votes that could add to his total. The Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman.
But the team's real goldmine were absentee ballots, thousands of which the Franken team claimed had been mistakenly rejected. While Mr. Coleman's lawyers demanded a uniform standard for how counties should re-evaluate these rejected ballots, the Franken team ginned up an additional 1,350 absentees from Franken-leaning counties. By the time this treasure hunt ended, Mr. Franken was 312 votes up, and Mr. Coleman was left to file legal briefs."

"Mr. Franken trailed Mr. Coleman by 725 votes after the initial count on election night, and 215 after the first canvass. The Democrat's strategy from the start was to manipulate the recount in a way that would discover votes that could add to his total. The Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman.

But the team's real goldmine were absentee ballots, thousands of which the Franken team claimed had been mistakenly rejected. While Mr. Coleman's lawyers demanded a uniform standard for how counties should re-evaluate these rejected ballots, the Franken team ginned up an additional 1,350 absentees from Franken-leaning counties. By the time this treasure hunt ended, Mr. Franken was 312 votes up, and Mr. Coleman was left to file legal briefs."




>> ^packo:

I assume you are referring to Coleman?
and how he lost, fair and square, then contested, and votes for Franken that were discounted actually got re-evaluated, and then still lost?

gotta love the understated racism (man-child)

Incorrect. It is a commentary on his lack of experience, his spoiled & selfish behavior, and his general lack of any ability to actually deal with opposing ideas with any degree of maturity. But false accusations of racism when faced with opposition is a tradition on the left - as we've seen all too often lately.

the hyperbole (radicals)

In the last 18 months these radicals have implemented a plan to ration health care, quadrupled the national debt, established huge unconstitutional increases in federal power over finance and other industries - all against the will of the people. Bailouts, industry takeovers, tax increases, cap & tax, amnesty, health care reform, and on and on and on - all things solidly opposed by a 2/3 majority of the people (or higher). This administration and congress is the most left-wing, radical, out of step clot of extremists that this nation has ever seen in positions of power. The only people that 'like' what they're doing is the 25-30% or so of the country that occupies the far left. Conservatives, Repubicans, and Independents are roundly rejecting everything these radicals are doing - and they make up 65-70% of America.

the blanket portrayals of Europeans as poverty-stricken communists

While Obama & the other radicals are doubling down with leftist economics - Europe is doing the opposite. Greece, Italy, Spain, Britain, Germany - day after day the stories pile up about how they are turning to 'privitization' in order to save themselves from fiscal disasters. It isn't that they're poverty-stricken communists. It is that they have followed the misguided principles of leftist economics, and now they turning to capitalism to pull themselves out of the hole... All while the Man-Child is doing the opposite and putting American further in debt in a time of economic turmoil & trouble. Says something, don't it?

And the rhetorical attacks on Obama (how's his polling these days?

Pretty lousy - actually...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html

Isn't there majority support for Health Care reform? Isn't there still majority support for a Public Option?

In NeoLib-Lala-Land maybe, but not on planet Earth. The only thing there is 'majority support' for is for repealing the bill.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/health_care_law
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20010453-503544.html
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/28/poll-finds-low-enthusiasm-high-skepticism-for-health-care-overh/

Folks on the left need to learn a lesson quickly. YOU ARE THE FRINGE. The left likes to walk around thinking they are mainstream and popular. You aren't. Leftist policy and philosophy is radical and unpopular. And when you try to ram it down people's throats it makes you even more radical and unpopular. Leftism isn't compassion. It is cruel. Leftism doesn't lead to prosperity or tolerance. It leads to poverty and balkanization.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Being an election thief kind of undermines your message, Al. In a non-corrupt election, when the other guy has 725 more votes than you on Election Day, you lose.


I assume you are referring to Coleman?
and how he lost, fair and square, then contested, and votes for Franken that were discounted actually got re-evaluated, and then still lost?

Did you wake up the neighbors laughing as you wrote that?

Not a bit of it. The NBP have a history - as an organization - of racism and advocating violence. This is the NEW BP organization I'm talking about - not the BP (which is different). The NBP site here is plainly motivated by race from start to finish. Just look at thier objectives. Every single one of thier objectives is filled with racial terms. Stuff like, "Black police officers are black men first and police officers second..." and "100% opposed to white takeover of the inner city" and "we affirm that governments, corporations, and white private citizens ... have enslaved, discriminated against, robbed, and disenfranchised our people in ... countless ways" sure sound like racist terms to me.

http://www.newblackpanther.com/newsite/92.html

Being a 'racist' means you look at things through a prism of race. It cannot be denied that the NBP organization is racist. 100% through and through. But I can find no Tea Party organization that makes race a major platform of its goals or objectives or even talks about race at all. Show me the quote from an official spokesperson who is authorized to speak for the Tea Party that is making these so-called racist statements. There is no such animal.

http://www.teapartypatriots.org/mission.aspx
http://theamericanteaparty.org/

Small government. Free Markets. Constitution. Fiscal responsibility. What's absent? Race. The Tea Party opposes POLICIES, not color. I don't get how so many people who otherwise seem reasonable can fall for such a blatantly obvious lie. The last time I saw this level of blind, wilful idiocy was the defense of Bill Clinton's perjury and the whole "It's only about sex" bilge.

And you need to learn to seperate the message from the messenger wulf. Just because the HuffPo is a neolib leftwing haven doesn't mean they don't get some of thier facts right. Just like Breitbart is a neocon rightwing bastion and sometimes does really good reporting alongside their screeds.

The site I linked is clearly a right wing bunch, and some of their stuff is good and some of it isn't. But the videos in the main page are what they are and show the ugly face of racism - and it ain't in the Tea Party. "Minister" King Samir Shabazz is what the link says. The NBP organization's leader is Malik Shabazz - also a known anti-semite, racist, and mysoginist. Samir talked about the killing of 'cracker babies' and the closest Malik ever got to repudiating it was saying he 'didn't agree in that context'. Nice.

The NAACP issues charges of racism at the Tea Party with no evidence but unverified comments from random, unidentified kooks. At the same time they ignore clear, blatant racism from orgs like the NBP. And then they wonder why no one takes them seriously anymore.

Square-Enix, the japanese developer of Final Fantasy are known for great CGI-trailers, true, but they are probably not involved in this game at all. The only reason this game has a Squeenix logo is because they bought Eidos last year, the game is being developed in Canada by Eidos Montreal.

I don't like the way they are branding stuff after the takeover, it's very confusing and easy to think the japan studio is somehow involved with games they have nothing to do with.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'obama, socialism, healthcare, takeover, teabagger, tea party, miracles' to 'obama, socialism, healthcare, takeover, teabagger, tea party, miracles, edward current' - edited by kronosposeidon

As much as I love jumping on the "my country sucks" horse, the more I learn about this whole event the more I'm inclined to support the Israeli side. And whoever this moron is, way to address the issue:
"Why was Israel wrong in its actions?"
"Because they evil"

The only thing I don't get about this whole thing is why the fuck someone figured the best way to deal with the situation was to land commandos on board the ship and why do it in international waters and not wait till they cross over. Following that, keep in mind these guys are the Israeli equivalent of Navy Seals, the fact they were seriously injured before opening fire pretty much convinces me they felt it was their last resort. Whether or not the use of deadly force was excessive or not I've no clue, I guess we'll never know.

Again, I'm usually the last guy to defend Israel's action, but to present this as some ruthless military takeover of a humanitarian ship is propaganda at its worst.

Yeah stick to facts....

"But an Israeli Defense official said only marines were capable of the takeover 120 km (75 miles) in the choppy Mediterranean"

So, yeah. And yes, the pepper balls they used are a chemical weapon. So is CN gas. Would you like me to google "facts" for you. You keep taking basic concepts and disputing them.

It's amazing to me how ensconsed in the bubble the right is these days.

Let's break it down:

1. Ideological subversion propagation - Radical conservatives begin pushing their ideology to all members of society through churches, schools, and supposedly independent policy research "think tanks". This begins in the early 30's, and is a systematic campaign aimed at chipping away at the credibility of embedded liberalism, America's original ideology. The "threat of communism" is conflated with traditional American values like empathy, solidarity, and equality.
   
   
2. Destabilization - The 1960's reads literally like a textbook example of a country in crisis. A presidential assassination, two proxy wars, a mexican standoff with nuclear weapons, a counterculture protest movement, race relations getting strained with protests and violence, and the then-dominant Democratic party coming apart at its seams over disagreements about the war and civil rights.
   
   
3. Crisis - This one is clear. The oil crisis of the 1970's was our key takeover crisis moment. It basically ushered in an end to embedded liberalism as the American way of life. So many aspects of our political life and the way our economy was run was radically changed in the aftermath of that crisis, even though it was a walk in the park compared to today's economic problems.
   
   
4. Normalization - Conservative Republicans won 3 terms in a row, from 1980 until 1992, followed by a conservative, Southern Democrat who won in part because a third party candidate split Republican support. Party-line economists have treated the works of John Maynard Keynes the way their forebears treated the work of Karl Heinrich Marx -- they pretended it had nothing worthwhile to say, and tried their best to erase it from academic discourse. The Democrats of today consider reforms Republicans proposed in 1992 massive ideological win for the left.
   

Take the bananas out of your ears, morons.

Anyways, this is actually a pretty astute observation about how radical political and economic change happens. It's not necessarily planned like our conservative takeover was, but the framework for all ideological revolutions start with an ideology becoming commonly known, then during a period of destabilization and crisis, people may turn to the new ideology.

This is literally what more than a few libertarian bloggers say is their raison d'etre -- to make sure the ideology is lying around for when a crisis hits.

However, anyone who thinks some Russian-led infiltration of "Marxist-Lenninist" ideology happened or is happening is fucking deluded. It would've been a real trick considering your average American doesn't have a fucking clue what Marxism is...because the right stigmatized knowledge of it!

@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 just don't get the reasoning. You are afraid of a democratically elected government possibly interfering with the internet sometime down the road, so instead you would prefer a complete corporate takeover immediately. I know you constantly deny being a corporatist, but I really don't see any other way of looking at this. Not to mention CATO. It doesn't get much more corporatist than CATO, which is funded by corporatist demi-Gods Scaife, Koch, Ford and Coors.

>> ^blankfist:

It's not Obama controlling the internet; it's government regulation. I used to be in favor of Net Neutrality, because on its surface it sounds like it would protect me. But...
Government regulation of the internet is what it will turn into in a manner of a decade or so. It starts with what sounds good: keeping the big evil corporate conglomerates from stifling the customer's free speech. Then it eventually becomes a regulated means of communication where only big businesses are given controlled access to offer services via the internet and all content (torrents, etc.) is policed.
Has the government every lied about its intention to you? Think about that. Do any of you actually agree with anything the FCC has done in the past fifty years? Sure, corporations are scary, but at least it's not a one-size-fits-all monolithic entity. And when has the current ISPs censored free speech of any kind on the internet? Just stop and think about it for a second.

The southern borders to the south are porous by design.
Mexican nationals have been here for over 2 centuries and only when the ramped-up destabilization of the U.S. by the elites who really run the show entered another phase did the signs of real strain begin to show.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback

Ike saw a reason to curtail the dark elements within the power elite (Imperialism) with his MIC speech on his way out as well.
The real enemies of humanity use race-baiting and propaganda in the form of spokespeople like Maddow..... constant newsspeak programs piped into every home, 24-7/365. (see Orwell's epic rant) Their agenda has been the same for a long, long time....Empire-building, consolidation of power, dominion.

Simple formula really-The elements of a successful takeover include destabilization of economies and nations through tactics we are experiencing worldwide.This shit is not unique to any one nation anymore because power and dominion over the planet have reached planetary proportions and is no longer relegated to individual nations. Next phase is coming soon......... one big country called the NAU.

This shit (National News cunts taking sides) is diversion. The real issue is how the systematic dumbing-down of populations while distracted by infotainment has kept most of the planet's landless peasants in a state of hypnosis ala bread and circuses and endless legalities with a view to enslaving them....so far it has been utterly successful, evidenced here in the delusional reasoning in most of the comments above.

The regime that may become our future (if you all don't pull your collective heads out of the asshole of television) will be totalitarian, and worldwide.....Corporations exist on the scale they do nowadays, because we forgot how insidious consolidation of power is.

I don't believe people will continue to sleep though, I have more hope for humanity than that.

The elimination of currencies, free energy and full-disclosure of the crimes of our keepers is the next step in human evolution.There is simply a cabal of fucking human garbage who have successfully pulled the wool over the eyes of us for too long and these times are either the birth pangs of awakening, or the prelude to more complete global enslavement.

Tarrifs? Smoot–Hawley all over again? The issue is not the size of government but the embed corporate interests. An efficient and truly representative government would be flexible enough to grow and diminish to reflect economic dynamics. As it stands different corporate interests represent each party and there isn't so much as a legislative deliberation but stubborn grandstanding for conflicting interests and a back and forth with electoral cycles.

I'm not saying anything new here of course, but my point is, ideology in the grand scheme of things is irrelevant. The Democrats are firmly behind free market policies over any kind of long term nationalization, or anti-free trade policies. They will be rid of their corporate ownership of the automobile and financial services industries as fast as they can, and they will be forced or at least pressured into spending cuts, tax rises, raising the pension age and what have you to combat the deficit whether they like it or not.

The best thing in the short term is effective education reform. As much as anyone would like to say otherwise, the biggest factor that has led average middle income wages stagnate or fall in real terms over the last few decades has been technological innovation and automation replacing manual jobs. Competing at this level in trades that haven't been automated is obviously a fool's errand, emerging countries will easily out compete on wages. Educating people into higher skilled jobs should be the priority.

Effective campaign finance reform is the only way this and any meaningful reform will be possible though. When Massa went on his talk show tour, the focus shouldn't have been on his playful tickling or innuendo it shouldn't have been him saying on Beck's show: (a comment that is in a video in my PQ by the way!)

“Congressmen spend between five and seven hours a day on the phone begging for money ..."

If this isn't dealt with, the US will simply become Japan if it has not already. Growth will stagnate, but living standards will remain high though so no one will really notice. Rather than bureaucrats becoming more embedded with the government as in Japan it will be the corporate interests. Meanwhile problems will accumulate. As the government becomes less and less effective, voter apathy will takeover and feed the process.

As with Japan's current debt of 200% of GDP, the US's current 80% level will continue to rise until breaking point. Japan is lucky being a creditor nation and having plenty of domestic lenders willing to provide low yield rates, but even that will not last. Meanwhile the US's stupendous absolute debt in relative terms and being a debtor nation will probably not allow it to reach that level, with perhaps the saving grace being that the US dollar is still the world's reserve currency.

But anyway, tl;dr version: ideology is irrelevant, campaign financing and genuine representation is everything.

Oh perhaps I should make clear that this isn't really all directed at you, more a general response to the topic.
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

We need to rethink our economy. The population is getting bigger, while at the same time employment is being lost to automation, 3rd world labor exploitation and corporate consolidation. It seems to me that this is a problem that can't be solved by a booming economy alone.
I'm not sure what could be done to halt this process, perhaps huge tariffs on corporations that use non-American labor, or limits on the size and power of corporations. I don't know. I'd love to hear ideas on this.