General Political Links Thread

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/11yz14/special_mod_announcement_aljazeera_wants_the/

http://www.linktv.org/programs/free-and-equal-third-party-presidential-debate-2012?hm

Link to video of the debate.

Participants:

Holy cow, XKCD did an awesome visualization of DW-NOMINATE data today.

Yeah, except... it has the 19th century Republicans as right-to-far-right and Democrats as left to far-left. I understand how complicated it'd be to show the shift but... that's a problem. As is the actual meaning of "far left / left / left" - I don't mean to suggest that DW-NOMINATE isn't useful but the executive summary version - "democrats, run by the far left!" comes off as unintentionally hilarious. In other words it could use a disclaimer indicating "all of these words are in relation to DW-NOMINATE, not the generic sense of, eg "far left" as used by, eg, someone on the planet earth particularly in any context other than the US Congress or Fox News."

I didn't post that, because it's fucking awesome and pretty, but... the issues bummed me out.

Don't know if this was posted somewhere, but Nate Silver's been mildly chastised by the NYT's public editor. Since the Times licenses the 538 blog, I guess they're having a bit of an issue with the fact that Silver's offering a charity wager to Joe Scarborough is conduct unbecoming a Times employee, even though he's not really a journalist.

From Silver's Twitter:

FYI: I think Margaret Sullivan (@sulliview) is a terrific Public Editor.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 2, 2012

Sounds like Nate has calculated the probability that she'll be fired.

Adam Curtis pops up another fascinating blog post - this one on Gaddafi. I wasn't aware there are questions around who was behind the Lockerbie bombing. Interesting stuff. Regardless, the sad story of Gaddafi, as told by Curtis, makes for superb reading (as always from him).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...rriage-immigration-and-yes-marijuana/?hpid=z4

Look at all the shock in my pants. We are literally waiting for the haters to die.

For fans of egregiously terrible journalism, history, politics, and using-shitty-history-for-a-shitty-political argument, I give you this NYT op-ed arguing that America needs President Obama to invite Congressional Republicans to dinner.

Courtesy of Jon Meachem, dean of low-middle-brow Sunday talk show denizens.

"You wanna tussle, amigo?"

I like to think that the logo on Uncle Joe's hat reads "I'M THE FUCKING VICE PRESIDENT" in lieu of "SEAL OF PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES"

Or for everyone else to vote with as much enthusiasm. Still great data though.

Ezra Klein has a good post up about why talks between the White House and Congressional Republicans regarding the Fiscal Cliff have stalled: the GOP wants Medicare cuts, but they want the White House to propose them.

Klein's interpretation is that, after being clobbered on vouchers, the GOP simply has no ideas on how they'd like to cut Medicare. The cynical interpretation is that they just want to hang Medicare cuts around the President's neck. Frankly I have no idea which one I believe; I tend to assume that the GOP are both incompetent and cynical!

They know they won't be effective and will be highly unpopular. The only way they win in the near term is to make the Dems do something deeply unpopular and useless.

The Dems would be stupid to take that deal, and likely any stall would be the Dems pointing out that the cliff hurts everyone, so the only driving factor to fall on their swords would be if they were the only responsible adults in the room.

I'd like to think that this term, Obama's tired of being asked to play the responsible adult in order to enable childish behavior.

Probably this doesn't fall under the rubric of P&R, but fortunately this is D&D so maybe it does. A couple of bloggers I read have been writing lately about Thomas Jefferson.

First, Ta-Nahesi Coates: The standard "product of his time" defense of TJ's slaveholding does not hold.

Then, Tyler Cowen: Jefferson is overrated.

As a totally amateur scholar (and I use that phrase with tongue firmly planted in cheek), I tend to agree with Cowen's view. The intellectual heavy lifting of the Revolution and early days of the Republic was done by others. Jefferson made some important contributions, but no more than many others who don't get nearly the attention / accolades, and his contributions are tempered by some strong negatives (slaveholding, general attitudes toward race, the fact that his economic vision for the country was totally wrong).

I think his career in American thought is solid evidence that style counts for a lot in how you are remembered. However, from an intellectual history perspective, Jefferson represents some important positions in terms of understanding why some of the signature issues of his time were issues in the first place, so I don't think he's going anywhere in terms of his raw importance. Coates' criticism is carefully constrained and appropriate, I think, although I'm not really a fan of "here's the guy you know is famous, here's the guy that should be famous" style of article.
I guess what I'm saying is that the attention itself is important.

Republicans go to Obama School

I hope Obama's people didn't tell them TOO much. Or told them wrong stuff on purpose. "That 47 percent thing? That was great for you. The problem is that not enough people heard it."

Oh for a picture of Mr Goff's face when asked that.

I do like that it took this, not the actual fucking campaign or facts on the ground, to get Romney's folks to go "Holy shit, we were outclassed and phoning it the fuck in from day 1"

No shit you idiots. THIS is why people are abandoning your party: it's increasingly run by people who think they're winners who can succeed at anything, and never actually work for shit.

Keep in mind I'm totally an amateur, while I recognize the futility inherent in "this guy was better than that guy," it's about the level of conversation I'm equipped for. :)

That being said, I agree that Jefferson was influential, I just don't think that influence was necessarily a net positive. It's likely that sort of thing can't ever be proven, but from my level of understanding many of his ideas were pretty clearly wrong in retrospect, and some were obviously wrong at the time.

And again, I read the comments and was made sad.

Specifically on slavery the whole "product of his time, or a disappointment" thing kind of falls down relevance-wise the more you read, because it's an essay-question false dichotomy. It's easy to prove either assertion with framing or emphasis, or both in this case, since the two statements aren't even mutually exclusive.

Why do you keep hitting yourself?

Saw this belatedly. I've been periodically hawking Mark Lilla's The Tea Party Jacobins since 2010 as I find most of the argument has stood up, despite the Tea Party as such receding from the foreground. His thesis focuses in considerable part on the claim that

"Paranoia as American exceptionalism" is scarcely a new idea, but combining that with the anti-establishment consensus of the latter 20th century and the - forgive the faddish pop-psych - Dunning-Krugerish self-regard of the right wing booboisie gives you something novel.

Oh good, it's that time! When we find out behind the curtain what the shit people were thinking!

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/12/romney-five-point-plan-47-percent.php

After Romney's 47% stuff came out on the national stage, they made a quick plan on how to react to it:

Quickly, point out where in those five points they actually attempted to address the core issue that he was insulting the fuck out of nearly half of America, and a decent chunk of which should have been his base! Seriously, his campaign staff are a shining reminder that sometimes your company only works because your employees are fucking awesome, and the management staff is the dead weight making strange action lists while everyone else actually fixes the damned problem.

Here's as good a place as any for the news: Jim DeMint is leaving the Senate to run the Heritage Foundation.

For those who aren't familiar with his body of work, DeMint is arguably the Tea Party leader in the Senate. I have no idea how to read the tea leaves on what this means, other than the dude wants to get paid.

The conventional wisdom I've heard is that there's a Tea Party purge in progress. I guess the difference when you're of DeMint's "stature" is that you get a hell of a golden parachute.

Could be. I'm not whether DeMint was expecting retaliation from McConnel, or whether he's even vulnerable to it.

I don't think he's vulnerable to retaliation. I think he's looking for an out with pay if the Tea Party's power is waning.

"And they won’t go down without a yelp."

OH COME ON.

But come on are these guys really shocked? News at eleven, if you like your district getting federal money you should probably not hire as your rep people whose prime goal in life is pissing in other, more important people's Cheerios.

Also this shit is hilarious:

If Republicans are smart and like winning they'll use their control of the various states to push open unified primaries (anyone can sign up, top two winners go into a final vote, the rest walk, all voters are invited). That'll completely defang the dipshits looking to enforce purity through the mechanism of primary challenges by ensuring that the agenda setting group is of the same ideological makeup (ON AVERAGE) as the population at large, and hand more power to the party establishment as they'll be the ones picking who does and doesn't get branded with the Sacred R Of Power that gives a guaranteed baseline of like 30% of the electorate.

lol another moron who didn't get the memo on the message change.

The R's always get bandied about as this party that's amazing on discipline and such, but as this article makes blatantly clear that seems in large part to be because the leadership is willing to experiment by letting the crackpots run the show from time to time. Well, so long as those crackpots can deliver votes, anyway. As soon as the magic vote juice dries up the messaging changes to something the party bigwigs think will deliver a victory. An entire block of society will now learn to like different things so as to keep abreast of what's cool in their party.

Interesting, and also a great example of just how critical the elites in a society are to our collective decision making, institutions and society at large.

These questions are incoherent and mostly stupid, but at least this Amash guy tried to deliver an interesting answer.

He's got a point that I'd be far more inclined to accept the fiscal policy of a Republican party that was less stupid about WHAT needs cutting. I get that funding arguments are really about which party gets to push what dollars to which favored constituents, organizations and contractors. What I don't get is why the Republicans think the military needs quite so much coddling when there's a snowball's chance in hell the Dems will be able to pry their way into that particular constituency. A base closure would probably hurt in the polls for that location, but most of the domestic bases are located in places so solidly red that there's no possibility of any actual damage from it. And in the rest of the country it'd win votes from moderates who get wood at the sight of a declining budget. Maybe it'd mean a decline in brand sharing? I dunno.

That said, even if they wise up on the fiscal they'll still need to fix their stance on social issues and immigration before I'll vote R again.

Senate showboating is this very strange beast that involves a combination of arcane rules and bluffing that a) I don't think anyone actually pays attention to and b) often turns ridiculous. Case in point: today Mitch McConnel filibustered his own debt ceiling bill.

Was just coming to post that Jeff. Fucking hilarious and sad.

Guys we can't do this guys guys just not possible GUIS STAHP

Thoughts on this approach to the fiscal cliff?

I luv u congressssssssssssss

God fucking damn it, Obama.

What the fucking fuck

I was all out of god fucking damn its with Panetta. If you focus on the positives, there's not that much wrong with Hagel, relatively. Relatively. The CS Monitor puts the break with straight R voting as opposition to the Iraq War, and it's a bit more nuanced than that through the vote for the war.

It's just frustrating that Democrats can't nominate, you know, Democrats for the top defense post. Token bipartisan gestures were appropriate in 2009 when it was possible the GOP might be willing to play ball; in 2013 they're a waste of time.