2861

I can’t find raw party id breakdowns for Ohio outside of whatever the crosstabs are in polls; I thought you guys were talking about national. I still don’t know where anyone was getting a +6 democratic polling average for Ohio.

For chrissakes, no they haven’t. The cross-pollster gap this year is nothing special compared to previous years.

2862

Ya, Houngan summed it up pretty well though.

Generally, lots of folks in the US have all the “big stuff” covered pretty well. In terms of basic survival, it’s just not something that most folks need to worry about.

So they consume themselves by making up crap to worry about… Without a real adversary to fight against, folks feel the need to construct one. Sadly, perhaps mainly due to the way that political news is pushed onto folks these days, people have taken to increasingly demonizing people who have different political beliefs from them.

No longer do people who have different political views simply disagree with you… but now they are evil/stupid/bad people. They are beasts to be fought and defeated. No attempt is made to understand their perspective, because it stems out of a bottomless abyss of immorality and darkness. Their views should be shouted down, and ignored, rather than discussed and considered. All the other side does is argue in bad faith, and try to trick you into doing terrible things. All of their ideas have failed already, and we know that we must discount them.

But when something real happens, all of that nonsense is cast aside, because it’s not based in reality. It’s all just a construct of the political machinery that governs our electoral process. It’s not REAL.

2863

Is this the place where we compare and contrast the federal response to Sandy against the federal response to Katrina?

2864

Timex, pretty much agree with what you said, except a little confused by this bit

partisanship is extremely one sided, all about your side verse the evil otherside, which downthread you concur with…so struggling on the context of this one sentence really.

2865

Th Economist reluctantly endorses Obama:

For all his businesslike intentions, Mr Romney has an economic plan that works only if you don’t believe most of what he says. That is not a convincing pitch for a chief executive. And for all his shortcomings, Mr Obama has dragged America’s economy back from the brink of disaster, and has made a decent fist of foreign policy. So this newspaper would stick with the devil it knows, and re-elect him.

2866

It was in response to the picture posted by brian, which seemingly blames one side for partisanship.

My statement there that you quoted was pointing out that both sides of the aisle demonize each other and display extreme partisanship.

2867

I know the “both sides do it” game is fun, but honestly, if you can think of a liberal corollary to the Tea Party, I would really love to hear it. Congress wasn’t all smiles and rainbows before them, but their “we will work with nobody and compromise on nothing” strategy ground things to a fuckin’ halt.

Think of someone on the left as inflammatory yet influential as Rush Limbaugh. Go ahead. If you say Bill Maher you’re reaching, and you’re wrong. Name a liberal equivalent to Birthers. You can’t. Because the actual mission statement of the Republican party for the past four years has been to be divisive, and to be obstructionist. And now the same people want to try to criticize the president for not being bipartisan and not working with the other side–give me a break. You know it’s bullshit, I know it’s bullshit, so let’s drop the “both sides are the same” act and just be goddamn honest.

2868

I think pro sports do themselves a great disservice by announcing contract amounts and by making a big deal of the winners share of money. How do you really root for someone making more money in one year than you will see in your life? How can a golfer make more winning one tournament than many people will ever see in their life?

All that money going to individuals and yet schools etc are begging for funds. There is no balance anymore and yet most could care less.

2869

Wow, who would have thunk. A media outlet actually making some practical sense.

2870

Meanwhile, yeah, Romney probably paid no taxes just like Reid said:

2871

Shit, the sports figures on that show are the worst offenders. They were in the home of a pitcher for some team or another and I don’t know how much money that guy makes but holy FUCK it must be a truck load. Gigantic estate, the best of everything, ridiculously appointed rooms and guest houses and cars and … for playing baseball.

2872

There’s a lot of truth to this, and I say it as an independent with no fond feelings for either party. Despite their claims to represent morality, the current incarnation of the Republicans seems willing to say and do literally anything in opposition to the Democrats or in support of their side. There’s no patriotism, just partisanship.

2873

Bloomberg endorses Obama: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/nyregion/bloomberg-endorses-obama-saying-hurricane-sandy-affected-decision.html?hp

2874

Scuzz, WarrenM: I also get creeped out by the fetishization of millionaires, which is sort of a cross-cultural, cross-political phenomenon. I like to think envy isn’t much of a factor as I’m not really into the vast majority of the things money is blown on by the very wealthy - obviously everybody could do with more travel and leisure and so on, but much of it is sad tacky nonsense.

The thing I’d note is - in 1960 “Rich Kids of Instragram” would’ve been a very small and unimpressive website. This class of absurdly wealthy people was shrunken and cramped by progressive taxation under FDR and allowed back into existence by changes to the tax code under JFK and afterwards. It wasn’t just “inevitable market forces,” it was the unintended transfer of wealth via the tax code from the middle class back to the sort of moneyed elite that had always existed before the great middle class flattening of the 20th century. It isn’t divisive class animosity to point out the political and institutional changes that led to that. Krugman synthesized it well in Conscience of a Liberal. When I see that crap I think “man, we had it good and the creation of this stupid shit is what it was ransacked in exchange for.”

2875

Well, one thing my wife and I agree on while watching that show is that money can buy you a lot of things, but it can’t buy taste. Some of those houses are expensive as hell and look like they were decorated by a blind person.

And I agree! Travel is a much better use of money if you ask me. If I had millions, I’d be retired and traveling the world. There’s so much to see and experience and I know that at my age I’m not going to see anywhere near all of it, and that saddens me.

2876

They forgot “Fox News.” Still a sweet pic, even if Christie can’t stand looking at old white chicks any more than Obama or I can.

The forces of right-wing hyper-partisanship are a lot better funded, organized, and influential than anything the Left can muster. Heck, the fact you would stack the Qt3 Leftist Brigade up against the Tea Party, Fox News, Limbaugh, etc. pretty much proves that point.

Put another way: the extreme right-wing is simply a lot better at being evil than the extreme left-wing. Hooray for American exceptionalism?

And perhaps the most farcical element is the Democrats are nowhere near as radical as the right-wing echo chamber constantly depicts them as. Obama’s dirty little secret is he’s a lot closer to a moderate Republican circa 1988 than he is to any liberal I know. The sad fact of the matter is the Dems lost their balls years ago (apart from the occasional liberal holdout like Pelosi), while the GOP has been steadily losing its marbles, like the whole party’s been afflicted with political Alzheimer’s.

2877

I would say that the Tea Party is something of an outlier in terms of national politics, and not really indicative of the overall conservative movement. I mean, I think most conservatives would tend to agree that the tea party folks got kind of crazy (although I think perhaps at the beginning, there were folks who had a more moderate dislike of the overall direction of the government, rather than the extreme stuff like, “Best for the government to default!”)

I would probably say Olbermann, but I guess he’s still out of work? Maybe Maddow? Al Sharpton? I watch MSNBC quite a bit, and most of those shows that are on in prime-time are pretty inflammatory. Perhaps you just don’t notice it because they are saying things you agree with?

I suspect that Limbaugh may have more influence because he’s more successful, but I don’t think the folks who are clearly just as partisan on the left get a pass, just because they aren’t as good at the “infotainment” crap.

Name a liberal equivalent to Birthers.

The whole Bush National Guard nonsense… The idea that Bush wasn’t actually legitimately elected AT ALL. That stuff, especially that second one, is pretty far out there.

Although here, I must admit that I can’t really defend the birthers… Because I think they are retarded. Like, maximally retarded. So, again, I’m not really down with trying to justify their idiocy.

And now the same people want to try to criticize the president for not being bipartisan and not working with the other side–give me a break. You know it’s bullshit, I know it’s bullshit, so let’s drop the “both sides are the same” act and just be goddamn honest.

In actuality, I think that Obama himself is nowhere near the extreme of the democratic party when it comes to partisanship. But Pelosi? Ya… she’s pretty hard freaking core when it comes to this. Like I said, go watch her interview on the Daily Show. Jon gets visibly uncomfortable as she says things which are really divisive.

Lots of folks here watch MSNBC, right? Folks realize that channel is pretty much crazy ass partisan, right? You guys don’t just watch it, and nod your heads and think it’s cool, do you?

2878

While nobody was looking, unemployment down to 7%:

2879

Um…Occupy Wall Street? Or do they get a pass, because they were even crazier, but didn’t really accomplish anything? Nevertheless, you saw a ton of people (from Nancy Pelosi to Michael Moore to Tim Robbins to Bill Maher) praising them.

I know you threw “influential” in there, knowing that no one on the left has anywhere the numbers to be as influential as Limbaugh. Barring that, what about Chris Matthews? He has a thrill down his leg when Obama speaks, he feels betrayed when the President does bad in a debate, he says that when Republicans say “apartments,” it’s code for “black people”…he’s pretty inflammatory. I would also include Maddow and Olbermann in there, but Olbermann can’t seem to hold down a job these days.

The same way I root for Steve Jobs or John Lasseter or Joss Whedon: because they make something great that I really enjoy, and I’m really happy that they got some recognition and money for it! Why wouldn’t I root for those people? Is it okay to root for someone who doesn’t make a lot, but bad to someone who does? If so, maybe you need to look at your own personal biases. I don’t need to know people’s salaries to decide whether or not I should be happy for them.

2880

What you’ve just done is fixate on the “partisan” half of the question and wave away the “influential” half. You’ve done this because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to answer the question in the way you did, because there is no liberal equivalent to Limbaugh in terms of both vitriol and reach. Which was the entire point. Which you disregarded in your haste to assert equivalence.

Likewise, there is no liberal equivalent to the Tea Party. OWS may be as far to the left as the TP is to the right, but OWS is largely irrelevant to the Democratic Party’s workings. The Tea Party, in contrast, is the single most important group in the GOP in terms of selecting candidates and, therefore, driving policy.