The 2012 "Election" thread

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Politics Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls

Postby IanEye » Sun Sep 30, 2012 9:22 am

I look forward to voting for Elizabeth Warren.
I look forward to voting against Mitt Romney.

I look forward to my morning commute on November 7th.
No matter who wins.

I look forward to crawling my way through bumper to bumper traffic, and whenever I encounter a "01-21-13 GONE" bumper sticker on a vehicle, cracking my window open to blow rich plumes of blunt smoke out into the ether as I make eye contact with each and every one of my fellow Americans.

All politics is local.

Over the last four years I have had a number of occasions where I have heard some one I know utter the words out loud, "I want my country back".
My answer to them is always the same, "Every thing changed on 9/11".

I take great joy in saying this to them because it is exactly what they said to me for eight years when ever I pointed out some insane policy of the Bush Administration.
Every thing changed on 9/11.

The people who said this to me then and say, "I want my country back" now, all they want to do is go back to September 12th 2001.
They loved the Bush-Cheney years.
They refuse to see the Obama era as a continuation of those years.

I always say to them, "put it this way, did we ever have a President with a name like Barack Hussein Obama before 9/11? No. 9/11 changed every thing."
They need to realize that the eight years of Bush-Cheney that they loved so much came with a price.
I think it will be healthier for them to tune into a Fox News that attacks the President for four more years than a Fox News that defends a President for the next four years.


No matter who wins, I will still be on that high way.

*

Image


you might think i am crazy
you might think eye am insane
you will never know the secret

that lies hidden in my brain


there won't be any trumpets blowing
come the judgement day,
on the bloody morning after

1 tin soldier rides away

*
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby lupercal » Sun Sep 30, 2012 11:08 am

^ nice. And remember this amazing guy?

We had high expectations back in '08, and sure there's been a few bumpy landings but all in all I think he's lived up to them. Here's my favorite reality check:

What has Obama Done? 200 Accomplishments with Citations

For example, #5, from the first 100 days:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a 2010 Pentagon budget Monday that reflects major changes in the "scope and significance" of Defense Department priorities.

One of the high-profile programs on the chopping block is the Air Force's most expensive fighter, the F-22 Raptor.


http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/06/ ... dget.cuts/


And sure enough, the mighty F-22 that used to run banner ads from here to eternity is now one of those things you don't see anymore:

The final F-22 rolled off the assembly line on 13 December 2011 during a ceremony at Dobbins Air Reserve Base.[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_M ... -22_Raptor


R.I.P.Raptor, one of many things the dead-baby flogging media are apt to forget to remember.

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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby barracuda » Sun Sep 30, 2012 11:47 am

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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby JackRiddler » Sun Sep 30, 2012 12:13 pm

We return to the contradiction I noted on this or the thread many pages ago.

1) Voting is an act of powerlessness in a rigged system, a tired old routine that changes little or nothing, a pacifier. Do whatever you like, it's a show, not really worth your time. (In the further version: Besides, all outcomes are scripted in advance.)

VS.

2) Voting makes you a fully complicit co-perpetrator in the mass-murders of Barack "Hitler" Obama, the most exceptionally devious liar among all politicians ever in the history of the universe, according to Nordic and now 82_28. (Or else, you are killing yourself with your own hand, etc. etc.)

Which is it? When I ask, anti-voters insist they're saying it's number 1. Some pages later, you're back to making voters responsible for baby-murder.

ANTI-VOTERS NEVER ANSWER THIS:

One out of the two duopoly parties is on a crusade in many states to suppress the vote, using bureaucratic but also illegal means to deny it to black and Latino people. Why is that?

One out of the two duopoly parties has a recent record of election fraud, with at least one proven and momentous success in 2000. Why is that?

.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby 82_28 » Sun Sep 30, 2012 1:32 pm

I've said many times, Jack, that I believe voting at municipal, local levels voting is noble and right. However, like probably Nordic, we are, like you, anti war and in some ways, with all the flaws, single minded about this. These last few going on decades of this made up shit we're made to believe is real is getting really exhausting and I simply can't take part in that shit anymore. There is no one to trust. No party that that is championing commonsense. I want, you want, Nordic wants, fuck the whole world would like some commonsense injected into it. And commonsense is what this presidential pageantry bullshit is lacking. How to get there I do not know.

And Ian, that was just this side of brilliant. I agree, I agree! However. . .
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby sunny » Sun Sep 30, 2012 1:46 pm

JackRiddler wrote:2) Voting makes you a fully complicit co-perpetrator in the mass-murders of Barack "Hitler" Obama, the most exceptionally devious liar among all politicians ever in the history of the universe, according to Nordic and now 82_28. (Or else, you are killing yourself with your own hand, etc. etc.)

Which is it? When I ask, anti-voters insist they're saying it's number 1. Some pages later, you're back to making voters responsible for baby-murder.


Nobody is forcing you to agree with our point of view; feel however you want about the issue of baby-killing drone attacks. But the contempt you and others are showing for people who DO feel this way is, well, contemptible. People follow their own sense of ethics and morality. We are all responsible for upholding our own integrity, in word and deed. By castigating others for taking what we feel is a self-evidently principled stance on baby-killing drone attacks by a fully complicit POTUS and sneeringly insisting we take a stand that we've already clearly taken, you are not maneuvering us into revealing any flaws in our logic, you are revealing yourselves as people who revere rigid rhetorical structure and inhumane 'reason' over principle and humanity.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby ninakat » Sun Sep 30, 2012 2:20 pm

Thank you sunny. I can't think of anything to add. Except that I need a hug. :hug1:
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby DrVolin » Sun Sep 30, 2012 3:27 pm

If voters are complicit, what does that make non-voters? What is the real complicity: Not speaking at all, or speaking, for example, by voting for a third candidate?
all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

--Guns and Roses
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby ninakat » Sun Sep 30, 2012 3:41 pm

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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby ninakat » Sun Sep 30, 2012 4:18 pm

Finding the Gift

ImageThose of us who have been following the unfolding global crisis - the converging, interlocked "wicked problems" of energy, the environment, economics and social justice - have become intimately familiar with the painful progression through the Five Stages of Grief described by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross.

1. Denial — "This can't be happening! There's been some stupid mistake."
2. Anger — "This is simply not fair! Who is to blame for this?"
3. Bargaining — "I'll do anything for a chance at a few more years. Anything!"
4. Depression — "I can't do anything about it, so why bother with anything? What's the point?"
5. Acceptance — "Well, I can't fight it, so I may as well prepare for it."

As I have worked within Stage 5 for the last few years, I've come to realize that Kübler-Ross stopped one stage too soon. There is an important stage even beyond the clear recognition and acceptance of What Is Really Happening. Often when we arrive at acceptance we are so relieved just to be free of the pain of our grief that we stop looking to see if any new possibilities may have been revealed.

There is a fundamental principle in deep inner work that the greatest gifts are always found in the darkest places. The acceptance of an inevitable ending, whatever it is, can clear our vision and allow us to see previously unnoticed things that become the launch pad for new growth - for a kind of rebirth.

The bigger the change, the greater its potential gift, if we can just look at it with new eyes. We may find ways of moving beyond our old habits, expectations and judgments. We may realize that our old ways of seeing the world held us back. We may give ourselves permission to live authentically, as our true selves.

As a reminder to keep looking for those opportunities, I invite you to add a sixth stage to the Kübler-Ross model:

6. Finding the Gift — "Wow, look at the opportunities this change opens up! I may not be able to go back, or even forward in the direction I wanted, but just look at all the other possibilities that have suddenly appeared!"

At first, I wanted to change things. I hoped to help put out the “fire on the roof of the world” or at least show people how that might be done. Later on, I wanted to wake people up to the fact that the roof was on fire in the hope that they would find a way to act. Both of those hopes have turned out to be forlorn.

Now I have turned my attention and energies closer to home – to my immediate circle of community and my own inner preparations. My involvement with the global aspects of the crisis has largely shifted to watching it unfold, to making sure that any new developments are seen and understood by others, and generally acting as a shamanic witness to humanity’s transition.

If we follow this shift in our attention and values, we will discover the opportunity to explore the sixth stage of grief, and we will begin to find the gifts that such great challenges always hold. These gifts include:

    * Understanding that humanity is a special animal, and that both our specialness and our animal nature must be a factor in all we do;
    * Realizing that we are a part of nature, not apart from her;
    * Learning that our sense of control is an illusion born of fear, and that the fear itself is an illusion;
    * Recognizing our personal and collective limitations, and reorienting our action within them;
    * Awakening to the fact that change is not the enemy, but the nature of reality;
    * Accepting that what humanity faces is not a set of physical problems, but the turmoil that always accompanies a transition from adolescence into adulthood.

It is time for us to stop thinking in terms of fixing things that can’t be fixed. It’s time instead to begin imagining the best ways to live happy, caring, cooperative, altruistic, mindful, joyous, and even sacred lives in the midst of a world we have defaced forever.

In closing, I would like to say that there is a very good reason that the concept of Surrender is at the core of all the world’s sacred philosophies. Unlike the Western interpretation of the word – “the acceptance of defeat” – this use of Surrender asks us simply to accept that there are indeed some things that cannot be done. If we surrender to the truth of our reality in this way, we are suddenly released from our attachment to the impossible, free instead to do the very best of those things that can be done.

In this surprising reversal of meaning, surrender becomes synonymous not with final defeat, but with the opportunity for true victory. That opportunity is to find the gifts of insight that wait hidden in even the darkest corners of our experience.

    Grant me this day
    The courage to change those things I can,
    The serenity to accept those things I cannot change –
    And above all, the wisdom to know the difference

May your journey be filled with hope, joy, liberation and love.



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September 29, 2012
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby lupercal » Sun Sep 30, 2012 6:13 pm

sunny wrote:Nobody is forcing you to agree with our point of view; feel however you want about the issue of baby-killing drone attacks. But the contempt you and others are showing for people who DO feel this way is, well, contemptible. People follow their own sense of ethics and morality. We are all responsible for upholding our own integrity, in word and deed. By castigating others for taking what we feel is a self-evidently principled stance on baby-killing drone attacks by a fully complicit POTUS and sneeringly insisting we take a stand that we've already clearly taken, you are not maneuvering us into revealing any flaws in our logic, you are revealing yourselves as people who revere rigid rhetorical structure and inhumane 'reason' over principle and humanity.


Sunny I'll let Jack speak for himself but if the "stand that we've already clearly taken" is voting your conscience I have no disagreement with that whatsoever, or with voting 3rd party, voting for a write in, not voting for a particular office or measure, or not voting at all, even in a swing state, even in Ohio or Florida, if that's a position you've thought through carefully, and I said so back on page 6.

The two arguments I've objected to are: (a) that voting is meaningless or ineffective, because it isn't, and (b) that voting is a breeze, "derp derp derp," because it isn't: you have to make sure you're registered by the deadline, that you receive your election pamphlets, sample ballot, polling place address and mail-in ballot (if you're voting mail-in) in time to sort through them, and that you actually vote, rarely a cake-walk in California as there are many races and measures, including state senate bills, state and local propositions, judicial elections and half a dozen other local contests on a typical Cali ballot, and presidential elections are whoppers.

So it's easy to blow off voting altogether and think, "well, that's what Noam, Glenn or Chris would want me to do anyway," even though that IS what they want you to do, but not for the reasons they advertise.
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby Lottie McLotsaluck » Sun Sep 30, 2012 9:09 pm

That was great indeed IanEye! I don't think there has ever been a topic that has generated as much anger but some great thinking along with it, as our so-called 'elections.'
I am biased from the get-go against republicans because they truly put the hole in asshole. What an insane collection of crazy fascists, mindfucked militarists and no -brained bigots -male chauvinist pig? I bet the cro magnons had much more respect for women than these 'modern' men do!
I think this country lost any chance for a safe, sane, democratic future with the ascension of St Reagan and the collection of turds who think his 'knowledge' of some topic is holy writ. And the repukes of today are living in an alternate reality-they have gone so far beyond Reagan that it seems the worship of Hitler, Mussolini and Ayn Rand must not be far around the corner.
However, I always have to remind myself that they couldnt have gotten as far as they have without the complicity of a great number of democrats-and this is extremely sad because there are some truly great and nice people in the Democratic Party! BHO isn't one of them. I might even vote for him again if I thought he would truly defend Social Security and Medicare from theft instead of giving it to the 'pukes as a burnt offering.
I state this knowing he is a full card carrrying member of the Evil Empire because of how many more will die when everything for any of us lower proles on the totem pole is put on the chopping block. I am sorry but I just don't think he will if he wins re-election-I think he will be fully complicit in killing these programs too.
And me-my father and mother and dependent on these programs in some way, so this has been a horrible, gut wrenching decision for me. Americans are at the 'do or die' time or damn close to it and we'd better learn some peaceful jujitsu quick! if BHO would have been a real man he probably been remembered for 200 years-as a sell-out-it will be a couple of decades and that is if he wins election again. For some reason, in opposition to about 90 percent of thinking out there, I am sadly predicting a Romney win November 6-talk about damned if you do, damned if you dont! One more thing- please vote on local/state issues if nothing else-3 times in my voting career this has made a difference by hundreds of votes. I wont preach about it though and that is all I will say about the presidential part of the election :yay
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby compared2what? » Sun Sep 30, 2012 10:23 pm

sunny wrote:
JackRiddler wrote:2) Voting makes you a fully complicit co-perpetrator in the mass-murders of Barack "Hitler" Obama, the most exceptionally devious liar among all politicians ever in the history of the universe, according to Nordic and now 82_28. (Or else, you are killing yourself with your own hand, etc. etc.)

Which is it? When I ask, anti-voters insist they're saying it's number 1. Some pages later, you're back to making voters responsible for baby-murder.


Nobody is forcing you to agree with our point of view; feel however you want about the issue of baby-killing drone attacks. But the contempt you and others are showing for people who DO feel this way is, well, contemptible.


I should probably preface this by saying that I'm asking because I really want to know and not out of hostility, both because it's true and because my question is:

Where's the contempt? I believe that it's there, since you say so. But I don't see it myself. To me, that reads like almost a prototype of the kind of challenge that typically characterizes fair debate -- ie, literally, an intellectual challenge from a debate opponent, obviously issued in hopes of winning the point wrt a matter of conviction, but with no particular presumption about whether or how it will be met attached.

I mean, granted, there are some moral overtones built in to the subject. But those apply equally to everyone who addresses it. So I'm stumped. What's so contemptuous about it? He doesn't agree with you. But as you say:

People follow their own sense of ethics and morality. We are all responsible for upholding our own integrity, in word and deed.


Very true. Hence my question. Because as I understood it, that's exactly what he was asking for.
_________________

ON EDIT: Just to be on the safe side: Yes. Jack's question is explicitly critical of the arguments being offered for not voting. But criticizing the merit of the other side's argument is (to put it mildly) a pretty standard feature of political debate. .
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby compared2what? » Sun Sep 30, 2012 11:13 pm

DrVolin wrote:If voters are complicit, what does that make non-voters? What is the real complicity: Not speaking at all, or speaking, for example, by voting for a third candidate?


Anyone born after approximately 1930 who lives in the United States on non-Unambomber terms has probably been complicit in acts of baby-killing every single day of his or her life, irrespective of who he/she voted for or whether he/she voted. I'm not actually sure how or why voting came to be representative of political complicity in this conversation. As a matter of fact. If you're an American citizen, the real pay-off for your compliance in American crimes abroad is your life and everything in it. Such as that is.
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
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Re: The 2012 "Election" thread

Postby JackRiddler » Sun Sep 30, 2012 11:27 pm

DrVolin wrote:If voters are complicit, what does that make non-voters? What is the real complicity: Not speaking at all, or speaking, for example, by voting for a third candidate?


compared2what? wrote:Anyone born after approximately 1930 who lives in the United States on non-Unambomber terms has probably been complicit in acts of baby-killing every single day of his or her life, irrespective of who he/she voted for or whether he/she voted. I'm not actually sure how or why voting came to be representative of political complicity in this conversation. As a matter of fact. If you're an American citizen, the real pay-off for your compliance in American crimes abroad is your life and everything in it. Such as that is.


Right. Exactly. The idea that voting is a special form of complicity strikes me as downright crazy. Driving makes you more complicit than voting. Having an account with a Wall Street bank makes you more complicit than voting. Dare I say it, paying income tax makes you a whole fuck of a lot more complicit than voting, at least as long as half of those go to the war budget. But even these examples are lacking. No matter what you do, it's not you making the decision to continue the wars. The important question is not whether you are complicit in the decisions of others. It's about action. What can you do to end this state of affairs?

@ sunny:

I intend to project no contempt, and feel no contempt. Unfortunately, if that's what you're reading, then one of us is projecting something.

But I am exasperated by what I regard as logical fallacy.

Given the rigged game of forcing us to choose among evils -- a game in which many seriously try to figure out which is truly the lesser evil, or the most strategically smart decision to make -- I see fallacy in the insistence that those who choose finally to vote for Obama out of strategic considerations (preferring his evil to Romney's, since it's going to be one or the other) are therefore more complicit in the age-old evils of the US government than those who vote for Stein or for no one. All three of these theses can be argued. None of these three options can be concluded with certainty to be the most "complicit." We are all complicit on some level, and yet none of us here make the decisions. It is not really by our vote that we are complicit. Confronted with the choice of voting in a fixed game, people do what they think is right. The situation is infuriating.

If you're not fighting for money out of politics and a true representative democracy (which we do not have constitutionally - we pick winners only) then to vote or not really makes little difference either way. So why all the passion over it? Someone who votes for Obama and then marches against the wars is doing a tiny bit more to end the wars than someone who votes for no one and then doesn't march. Marching obviously ain't much either. An anti-war movement has to be a movement, and not waste time on debating an election we all agree is largely a stage show. On this board I see the anti-voting side making the biggest deal about the election. The difference between our opinions seems to be that the election is all show, or else that it's mostly a show. So why the dead baby pictures and accusations that voters are (automatically) responsible for this?

And once again the question I've posed to you all quite a few times is completely ignored:

One out of the two duopoly parties, and only one, is on a crusade in many states to suppress the vote, using bureaucratic but also illegal means to deny it to black and Latino people. Why is that?

One out of the two duopoly parties, and only one, has a recent record of massive election fraud on the national level, with at least one well-known and momentous success in 2000. Why is that?

Why do the Republicans go to such extreme lengths to win? Why do they get so much life-support from the corporate media and the big money, without which they'd be in a permanent minority?

.
Last edited by JackRiddler on Sun Sep 30, 2012 11:46 pm, edited 3 times in total.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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