The General American Politics Thread

[Mono]

I envy Jon Stewart; it's people like this that makes his job do itself.

I remember Santorum on The Daily Show once. Stewart really kicked his ass.

[Nepenthe]

I'm surprised there isn't discussion going on about the women's healthcare firestorm brewing, especially since the source of the controversies has roundly been from Republican lawmakers and media figures.

So my fellow conservatives... is there any defense for various states' forced vaginal ultrasound clauses in their personhood bills which prevent abortion and sometimes even contraception, much less the personhood bills themselves? Was there any reason for Del. David Albo to make jokes about the media outrage over these clauses? Is there any defense for Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke, a girl testifying before Congress for medical contraception coverage for women who need them strictly for medical purposes, a "slut" who should put forth sex videos online?

Can anyone explain this to me or am I, as a woman, well within my right to be fucking outraged over this ignorant, misogynistic bullshit?

[Candescence]

Oh, you are well within your rights to be outraged. I'm not conservative, and I'm also a man, but things like that are completely and utterly disgraceful. Those people deserve to get punched in the face and have their noses broken. What a load of fucking bullshit.

[turbojet]

I am not sure if this belongs in this topic, but isn't Mormonism a cult? I've been trying to develop a concept definition of a cult, but mine mirrors too much to religion. There is a difference between cult and religion, right?

[SuperStingray]

There is a difference between cult and religion, right?

Not really. It's more an issue of size than anything.

Connotatively, it's easy to dismiss Scientology and the Unification Church as scam artists, but when you look at history, several major religions have been used just as exploitatively.

Edited March 5, 2012 by SuperStingray

[Mono]

I am not sure if this belongs in this topic, but isn't Mormonism a cult? I've been trying to develop a concept definition of a cult, but mine mirrors too much to religion. There is a difference between cult and religion, right?

Edited March 5, 2012 by Jay Rockman

[SuperStingray]

Only thing that particularly bothers me about the Mormon Church is their practice of posthumous baptisms. For those that don't know, the Mormon Church has a practice of baptizing non-members after death by proxy, most controversially Holocaust victims. If you ask me, it's an infringment on their faiths and exploitation of their disposition; if a person didn't choose to be a Mormon throughout life, they have no reason to choose it after death.

Edited March 5, 2012 by SuperStingray

[PSI Wind]

Speaking of the forced vaginal ultrasound:

This makes me fucking sick to my stomach.

Edited March 5, 2012 by PSI Freeze

[Patticus]

Only thing that particularly bothers me about the Mormon Church is their practice of posthumous baptisms. For those that don't know, the Mormon Church has a practice of baptizing non-members after death by proxy, most controversially Holocaust victims. If you ask me, it's an infringment on their faiths and exploitation of their disposition; if a person didn't choose to be a Mormon throughout life, they have no reason to choose it after death.

And Princess Diana...

As for the healthcare issue, that is all about the more extreme end of the G.O.P. wanting to roll back 150 years of women's rights, re-enslaving them in the kitchen, denying them the freedom to choose whether or not they want children, lowering their pay (probably) and "restoring" the supremacy of the male sex. These are people with archaic, intensely narrow-minded viewpoints rooted in ignorance, blind religious faith and "tradition," who care not one jot for the constitution they claim to love so well, and who, if left unchecked, would ram the US back into the Middle Ages if they could. I cannot trust that any of the present crop of presidential hopefuls would do anything positive for their country or the world at large.

[Nepenthe]

That video's amazing. I can understand "permit issues" or whatever the legality or lack thereof of the protesters' presence was, but they honestly called in armed forces and riot police to deal with people who were merely walking and sitting around? This is an absolute disgrace.

[Stacy]

I am not sure if this belongs in this topic, but isn't Mormonism a cult? I've been trying to develop a concept definition of a cult, but mine mirrors too much to religion. There is a difference between cult and religion, right?

[turbojet]

I don't know if cult is the right word for it. It's widly accepted by most people, and at it's base it's still pretty christian. They have wacky ideas, like babtisms for the dead, dying and becoming a god, that people from Israel came to the Americas. Is it wacky? Yes. Cult? I don't know.

I was interested in Mormonism a few years ago (not to join the church, I just find religion interesting) and read a book called Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. It pretty much explains how the church started. Check your library for it if you're interested. It explains how Joseph Smith was pretty much a scam artist before he founded the church.

I know how it was started and I also know that he was an elitist racist.

EDIT:

You've seen this ad before on Youtube. I know you have. I decided to Fact Check them and, as predicted, most of it was exaggerations or blatant lies.

A conservative group exaggerates the number of “Wall Street executives” in the Obama White House. In a major TV ad buy, the American Future Fund lists 27 people it claims are part of “Obama’s Wall Street Inner Circle.” But the ad is either flat wrong or greatly exaggerated in more than half of those cases. Among the most laughable examples we found of “Wall Street executives” in Obama’s “inner circle”:

• A “White House fellow,” class of 2009-2010, who served in the Department of Defense, not the White House.
  
• Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who never worked for Goldman Sachs (as the ad falsely claims) or any other Wall Street firm.
  
• Two men who were appointed by President George W. Bush, and who left not long after Obama took office.
  
• Two men who never worked in the administration — including the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who was selected by the New York Fed’s board of directors (the majority of whom are appointed by member banks).
  
• Two others who never worked for any Wall Street firm until after leaving the Obama administration.
  
  It’s true that Obama raised a record amount of money from Wall Street for his 2008 presidential campaign, as the ad says. But Obama has had a rocky relationship with Wall Street executives since taking office — especially since signing legislation in the summer of 2010 that imposed tougher regulations on the industry.
  
  

  The Geithner Myth and Other Exaggerations

  
  American Future Fund, a 501©(4), announced Feb. 27 that it would spend nearly $4 million in nine states on a TV ad titled “Obama’s Wall Street.” It opens with a clip of Obama saying, “I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.”
  
  The ad then mocks those words with two facts that, while accurate, can use some context:

  • The ad correctly states that Obama’s 2008 campaign received $42 million — “more than any other candidate in history” — from “Wall Street bankers and insiders.” The ad cites an analysis of campaign finance data by the Center for Responsive Politics, which reported that Obama’s campaign raised $42.2 million from the “finance, insurance and real estate” sector. That’s up from the $35.9 million that Bush raised for reelection in 2004. Even when adjusted for inflation, Obama still raised more than Bush, although the gap is smaller: $42.2 million to $41 million.
    
  • The ad also correctly says that Obama, as a senator, voted for the Wall Street bailout in 2008. So did 73 of the other 100 senators — including Sen. John McCain, who was Obama’s opponent in the 2008 presidential campaign. The ad also fails to mention that Bush proposed the bailout and his administration lobbied for it.
    
    The ad veers sharply from the truth when it claims Obama’s “White House is full of Wall Street executives.” The viewer is shown photos of seven people to support this claim — but more than half of them are bogus examples. One of them never worked as an investment banker (Geithner); two of them have resumes that fall far short of being “Wall Street executives” (Rahm Emanuel and Louis Caldera); and one was not part of the White House (Jon Corzine).
    The most blatantly false example is Geithner, who is pictured along with the words “Goldman Sachs” and “$1.7 million estimate of assets.” Despite a popular myth circulated on the Internet, Geithner never worked for Goldman Sachs. The New York Times wrote an article about how often this rumor has been misstated as fact, including in the venerable Washington Post.
    Geithner, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before joining the administration, had this comical exchange with Damon Silvers, deputy chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP, at an April 21, 2009, hearing:
    
    
    In addition to Geithner, the TV ad stretches the truth by including photos of:
    • Rahm Emanuel, the president’s first chief of staff. It’s true, as the ad notes under his photo, that Emanuel reaped $16 million while working as an investment banker for Wasserstein Perella. But he worked there two and a half years. He spent nearly his entire professional life in politics and government. As Politico wrote, Emanuel worked on Paul Simon’s 1984 election to the U.S. Senate, served as a senior adviser and chief fundraiser for Richard M. Daley in 1989, and became a senior adviser to President Clinton in the 1990s. He was also a member of Congress from Illinois, and he is now the mayor of Chicago.
      
    • Louis Caldera, former director of the White House Military Office. It’s true that Caldera was a member of the board of directors for IndyMac Bancorp for six years, leaving in August 2008. Many public officials serve on the boards of major corporations. But his career has been in government and academia. He was a California assemblyman (1992-1997), chief operating officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service (1997 to 1998), U.S. Army secretary under Clinton (1998-2001), and president of the University of New Mexico (2003-2006). Prior to his appointment, Caldera was a law professor at the University of New Mexico. He is now vice president of programs at the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.
      
    • Jon Corzine, an ex-chief executive at Goldman Sachs and former New Jersey governor. Corzine is a true Wall Street executive, but the TV ad goes too far in claiming Corzine was “Obama’s adviser on the stimulus.” Corzine, who endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008, was one of several people consulted by Obama’s campaign on the economy during the general election. But in 2009, Corzine was preoccupied with reelection, which he lost. Obama’s economic team was headed by Geithner and included Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council. Romer, Summers and Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, were the main players in shaping the stimulus bill, as detailed by theNew Yorker magazine.
      

    Padding ‘Wall Street Inner Circle’ List

    While the ad’s narrator focuses on these seven “Wall Street executives,” the names of 27 people scroll up the screen under the header of “Obama’s Wall Street Inner Circle.” It’s supposed to read like a Hall of Shame. But we found 14 of those names don’t belong on the list — including, as mentioned above, Geithner, Emanuel and Caldera.

    Other names used to improperly pad the list include two Bush appointees: Stephen Friedman and Neel Kashkari, both former Goldman Sachs executives.

    Bush appointed Friedman to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in 2005. He became chairman in 2006 and served until 2009. Likewise, Kashkari was the interim assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability under Bush. Kashkari had been “in charge of staffing TARP and helping to structure the government’s investments,” as the Wall Street Journal reported. He was asked by the Obama administration to stay in his position for a limited time after the inauguration, and he resigned in May 2009. He now works at PIMCO.

    Others who don’t belong on the list are two men who never worked in the Obama administration: William Dudley and Adam Storch.

    Dudley, a former chief economist at Goldman Sachs, replaced Geithner at the New York Fed. He was selected by the New York Fed’s board of directors after a two-month search by an outside firm. Storch went from Goldman Sachs to the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he works in the Division of Enforcement. Obama did appoint the SEC chairwoman, Mary Schapiro, but the agency itself was responsible for Storch’s hiring.

    Then there is the curious case of Emil Michael — a White House fellow, class of 2009-2010. This supposed member of the president’s “inner circle” didn’t even work at the White House. His assignment was at the Pentagon. He was just one of 13 fellows selected for a one-year stint in government. Very few of the fellows actually work in the Executive Office of the President.

    One true insider on the list — but not a Wall Street executive — is former White House counsel Gregory Craig. After leaving the administration, Craig joined the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in January 2010, and one of his clients is Goldman Sachs. He’s a lawyer, not a Wall Street executive. Prior to working at the White House, Craig was a partner in the high-powered Washington law firm of Williams and Connolly.

    So, that means Craig was retroactively made a member of Obama’s Wall Street inner circle — as was Peter Orszag, the former White House budget director.

    Orszag had no Wall Street experience before joining Citigroup after he left the administration. Hisbackground is in government and public policy. Prior to joining the White House, Orszag headed the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (January 2007-November 2008) and was an economist at the Brookings Institution (2001-2007).

    As with Emanuel and Caldera, there were a few others on AFF’s “Wall Street inner circle” list who made their careers in government or academia — not Wall Street. They include:

    [*]Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, whose lengthy government resume includes being a congressional aide, a California congressman and a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton. He makes the list based on his six years serving on the New York Stock Exchange board of directors.

    [*]Larry Summers, a former Harvard University president who served as treasurer under President Clinton. Summers, who headed Obama’s National Economic Council, was managing director of the hedge fund D.E. Shaw after he stepped down as president of Harvard University in 2006. But he spent nearly his entire professional life in government or academia.

    [*]Diana Farrell, who worked under Summers at the National Economic Council. She worked just two years for Goldman Sachs in the late 1980s, from 1987 to 1989. Most of her career has been at the management consultant firm of McKinsey & Company, serving as the director of its research arm, McKinsey Global Institute. She was the institute’s director from 2002-2008.

    [*]Karen Kornbluh, who makes the list because she briefly worked about 20 years ago as an economist at Townsend-Greenspan & Co., where she started as an intern. Her background is almost exclusively in government. A graduate of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Kornbluh has worked for Sen. John Kerry (1991-1994), the Federal Communications Commission (1995-1997), the Treasury Department (as a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton administration) and for Obama (2004-2008). She is now the U.S. ambassador to OECD.

    The ad wraps up by saying “Wall Street sure supports President Obama.” It includes a headline from a Washington Post story to show that Obama is continuing to raise big money from Wall State execs despite the new Wall Street regulations. The Post story was based on combined fundraising by the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee. But as the story also noted, “Obama’s [fundraising] numbers look much worse” compared with Republican Mitt Romney when the DNC funds are not included. That’s still the case. Center for Responsive Politics data show Romney has received $12.5 million from those in the finance, insurance and real estate sector — more than double Obama’s take of $5.2 million.

    Certainly, the American Future Fund has a point about the massive amounts of money the Obama campaign raised in 2008 from Wall Street executives. The jury is still out, though, as to whether such executives will support him more than the Republican nominee.

    For sure, Obama has hired some Wall Street executives to serve in the White House — including White House budget director Jacob Lew (Citigroup) and former chief of staff William Daley (J.P. Morgan Chase). He also has appointed some long-time investment bankers — including ex-Goldman Sachs executives Gary Gensler, who chairs the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Phil Murphy, U.S. ambassador to Germany. But in its zeal to build its case against Obama, American Future Fund strains credibility by padding its list of “Obama’s Wall Street Inner Circle” with a majority of people who don’t belong.

Edited March 6, 2012 by turbojet

[Patticus]

I fail to see how grossly misleading exaggerations or blatant lies can go unpunished in this country. Why are no heads rolling for that ad? Why is nobody being held to account?

[Mono]

Because the elite run this country, and we're just their little lab rats. The people paying for these ads aren't average Americans. It's made by the rich to keep themselves rich.

[Stacy]

Why are they allowed to broadcast crap like that its very undemocratic?

[Mono]

Why are they allowed to broadcast crap like that its very undemocratic?

Because the American people are kept stupid by the media, books, PAC's, etc.

[SuperStingray]

Fucking Citizens United.

[Tornado]

This predates that case by a long while.

I fail to see how grossly misleading exaggerations or blatant lies can go unpunished in this country. Why are no heads rolling for that ad? Why is nobody being held to account?

Because if anything was done to stop it, the people that hand out the punishment won't be able to do the deed themselves when they are trying to get reelected.

Edited March 6, 2012 by Tornado

[SuperStingray]

^I know, but it certainly didn't help. If you've followed the story of Colbert Super PAC, it's pretty clear how easy it's made exploiting the system.

Edited March 7, 2012 by SuperStingray

[-Robin-]

That video's amazing. I can understand "permit issues" or whatever the legality or lack thereof of the protesters' presence was, but they honestly called in armed forces and riot police to deal with people who were merely walking and sitting around? This is an absolute disgrace.

What's even worse is how McDonnell and the Republicans are demanding the Democrats to apologize:

"I understand today, on the floor of the Senate, we witnessed something that I haven't heard in the 21 years I've been up here, and that is legislators taking to the floor of the Senate of Virginia and essentially attacking our law enforcement officers for doing their job," said Gov. Bob McDonnell...

...Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling said the Senate Democrats who criticized the police presence "owe an apology to Virginia's law enforcement professionals."

http://www.roanoke.com/politics/wb/305815

[Mono]

The Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot on their war on women. All the polls show women prefer Obama over Romney, etc. Also, women vote more often than men. The Republicans are going to get what they deserve come election day: a huge loss.

[Patticus]

Because if anything was done to stop it, the people that hand out the punishment won't be able to do the deed themselves when they are trying to get reelected.

There needs to be a body able to deliver appropriate punishments to offending politicians, a group wholly independent of these governing officials, which has real teeth and can not easily be removed by future governments who would seek to return to the (current) bad old days. Its power should be legally binding and enforceable across every state. Maybe that way, politicians will be more keen to emphasize their own good works and suitability for the job, rather than painting their opponents in lies and dubious half-truths for months on end until nobody is sure who anyone on the ballot is any more.

[Mono]

I guess this belongs here, but now the Republicans are asking Obama to bomb Syria (McCain was ranting about it on the Senate floor a day or two ago). Some are even pushing for Obama to bomb Iran. Why are the Republicans pushing for war AGAIN? And the President shouldn't do anything unless war is declard, and that is never going to happen.

[Tornado]

Silly Republicans. Obama is perfectly capable of starting a war with Iran himself, thank you very much.

Edited March 7, 2012 by Tornado

[Patticus]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turned out that most of the politicians pushing for bombing campaigns in Syria and attacks on Iran happened to have links with America's military-industrial complex, and could therefore stand to benefit from another war. That said though, it's equally likely that they are only pushing for war because, if it can be said that Obama got America lodged into another quagmire conflict just as soon as it extricated itself from the last one(s), he could become much less electable with the country's war-weary public and soldiery.