Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RedKing]

Spoiler: MZ Tangent (click to show/hide)

I'll hold an arm.

And where did the MZ face-punch meme come from?

Apparently, someone took my martial arts experience and ran with it as hard as they could. Memes are weird.

Well, and I remember some comment about it not helping you to sell things more. Then something about punching people in the face to make them buy stuff. That's where it started for me, but possibly I was merely unaware of its existence at that point.

That would make my job so much easier...

It's known as cognitive recalibration. If his clients say no, he hits them really hard on the head.
</Avengers reference>

North Carolina is turning into a likely red state, based on last few polls.

I thought North Carolina was always fairly red. Am I mistaken?

Well, in a manner of speaking, yes...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It wasn't until I was like 8 years old and went back to the Midwest for the first time, that I realized dirt came in any color other than red clay...

but the recent political redness didn't start until after the Great Southern Realignment of the 1960's. North Carolina, as most Southern states, had been almost monolithically Democrat for 90 years since Reconstruction. The problem was that the Democratic party in the South was the party of the old-school agrarian landowners, Jim Crow, institutionalized racism, segregation and hatred of Lincoln and "the damn Yankees". While in New York and California, it became the party of Vietnam War protestors, hippies and radicals. Cue the Dixiecrat split and migration to the Republican party (and the beginning of the GOP's descent into madness, to be honest). It went blue in 1976, but that's because Carter was a Georgia boy (and the first Deep South President since 1848) and a devout Christian. After that, solidly red up until 2008.

Had my hopes up that 2008 marked a sea change in state politics (NC was historically one of the most politically progressive of the Southern states), but 2010 was a major blow and it's just steadily getting worse. A few weeks ago, polls were showing Obama actually had a good shot of taking the state, but now he's behind again by as much as 8 points depending on the poll. And we're likely going to elect only the third Republican governor since 1897. 

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It wasn't until I was like 8 years old and went back to the Midwest for the first time, that I realized dirt came in any color other than red clay...

And just for the record, red clay is almost impossible to remove from clothing. Pretty much all of my clothes were permanently reddened to some degree when I was younger.

[CJ1145]

I don't understand American voters! I just don't!

Mitt Romney didn't win anything! You don't win a debate by being a lying, swindling asshat. Describing your medical overhaul as "Everything Obama does, but with my face slapped on it" shouldn't net you points. You shouldn't win votes by promising to go back to the economic system that put us in our recession in the first place!

Everything about him makes me cringe.

[Glowcat]

I don't understand American voters! I just don't!

Mitt Romney didn't win anything! You don't win a debate by being a lying, swindling asshat. Describing your medical overhaul as "Everything Obama does, but with my face slapped on it" shouldn't net you points. You shouldn't win votes by promising to go back to the economic system that put us in our recession in the first place!

Everything about him makes me cringe.

As an American voter, me neither.

I find the whole system to be far too much in favor of people like Romney who can confuse their positions by claiming whichever stance has the most political opportunity at the time (aka "flip-flopping"), no matter whether or not he actually agrees with it, whether his official position is contrary to it, or whatever. The presidential debate is, as far as I know, supposed to be an opportunity to showcase your positions and argue for them to the American people, not deny them. But instead of the realities of governance, victory was determined based on style. It's... incredibly depressing and I can't help feel that America deserves every karmic backlash that it suffers from indulging in absurd policies completely divorced from reality. And I do lay most of the blame on the feet of the Republican party as it becomes more and more partisan while the Democratic party collects everybody else* - which makes it far more difficult for the sub-groups therein to argue their own positions and gives massive undeserved credence to the ideals held in the Republican party's platform, pushing our perceptions even further right.

Personally, if I were running the presidential debates, I'd stage them in a manner that would allow for periods of fact checking or even have a big honking screen in the background which corrects the more egregious errors/lies real time. That way they might actually be informative instead of opportunities to confuse the wider argument and spread misinformation on an extremely public venue.

EDIT: *who want a reasonable shot at getting at least some of their views enacted into legislation given the political reality surrounding 3rd parties. The election laws are pushed too far in favor of two large groups and our elections do suffer for that reason as well.

[MonkeyHead]

Ah, but thats the beauty of being in opposition. You arent constrained by the reality or restrictions of holding office, so can promise anything to make people happy.

[Owlbread]

-snip, I would have derailed again-

[Nadaka]

I suggest that the next presidential debate have an army of live fact checkers validating every word said. And any factual discrepancy discovered will result in the electric dog training collars that the candidates wear being set off.

[Owlbread]

I suggest that the next presidential debate have an army of live fact checkers validating every word said. And any factual discrepancy discovered will result in the electric dog training collars that the candidates wear being set off.

Or one of those huge collar things they had in Wild Wild West that would act like a magnet for a spinning sawblade.

[RedKing]

There's two main reasons that it has come to this:

1. You can't call someone a liar to their face in a public forum. You just can't. Even if you have hard evidence that they're chock full of shit, everyone would gasp and you'd be accused of "vile personal attacks".

2. There is no objective truth anymore. Each side has a veritable army of pundits, fact-checkers, and think-tanks to bolster their argument and denigrate that of their opponent. So it doesn't work to call Romney a liar, because he can just pull out a study from the American Enterprise Institute that would support his argument. And then FOX News would run stories all day about how mean old Obama unfairly called Romney a liar, when very smart "non-partisan" experts at AEI and Cato and Heritage and places like that agree with him.

I think #2 is far more pernicious. And I don't see a way out of it. It's the crux of what Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" is all about: there's an entire industry devoted to creating a particular narrative and selling it as "truth", with different sectors for the various major political ideologies. And the public in general just takes a lot of that at face value, or even when they subconsciously know it's bullshit they will seek out sources which already agree with what they think, and with the other sources they read, so that it just creates a huge feedback loop and makes liberals more liberal, conservatives more conservative, and the two information realms they inhabit increasingly further and further apart.

Eventually they're going to be in two entire different realities. It'll be like alternate universes coinhabiting the same physical plane. In one, Teddy Roosevelt was a badass who embodied muscular foreign policy, American hegemony and was the living avatar of America's swinging cod. In the other, he was an anti-corporate, monopoly-busting defender of the poor. In reality, he was some of both. But that intersect is getting smaller and smaller by the day.

To borrow the old metaphor of the blind men and the elephant, all the blind men are lining up on opposite sides of the animal. One group sees nothing but the mighty tusks and powerful trunk, and the other sees nothing but a whole lotta ass.

I suggest that the next presidential debate have an army of live fact checkers validating every word said. And any factual discrepancy discovered will result in the electric dog training collars that the candidates wear being set off.

See Mitt Romney get funky in Debate II: Electric Boogaloo!

[darkrider2]

I suggest that the next presidential debate have an army of live fact checkers validating every word said. And any factual discrepancy discovered will result in the electric dog training collars that the candidates wear being set off.

Or one of those huge collar things they had in Wild Wild West that would act like a magnet for a spinning sawblade.

We'd have no candidates left?

Even orator extraordinaire President Barack can't say true things all the time. But at least he's not causing fact checkers to faint in their seats when they watch him.

[Owlbread]

We'd have no candidates left?

Even orator extraordinaire President Barack can't say true things all the time. But at least he's not causing fact checkers to faint in their seats when they watch him.

There's telling the truth, then there's lying and finally making a mistake. If they were simply making a mistake that'd be ok. If they were outright lying then the sawblade is justified.

[Glowcat]

1. You can't call someone a liar to their face in a public forum. You just can't. Even if you have hard evidence that they're chock full of shit, everyone would gasp and you'd be accused of "vile personal attacks".

Interesting that you'd bring this up, as I recall Romney tried calling Obama a liar ("You can say the same thing over and over, but that doesn't make it true")

It didn't seem to generate any backlash against him. Possibly a double standard?

2. There is no objective truth anymore. Each side has a veritable army of pundits, fact-checkers, and think-tanks to bolster their argument and denigrate that of their opponent. So it doesn't work to call Romney a liar, because he can just pull out a study from the American Enterprise Institute that would support his argument. And then FOX News would run stories all day about how mean old Obama unfairly called Romney a liar, when very smart "non-partisan" experts at AEI and Cato and Heritage and places like that agree with him.

While this is true when debating the effects of policy, there are certain facts that Republicans can't escape from. Such as Romney declaring that his health care plan included protection for pre-existing conditions, only to be corrected later by his own campaign...

[darkrider2]

We'd have no candidates left?

Even orator extraordinaire President Barack can't say true things all the time. But at least he's not causing fact checkers to faint in their seats when they watch him.

There's telling the truth, then there's lying and finally making a mistake. If they were simply making a mistake that'd be ok. If they were outright lying then the sawblade is justified.

Yeah and next time we should just make our debates start with like 100 candidates. Then its just process of elimination, the winner gets the presidency. It would also help reduce the population a bit.

[RedKing]

We'd have no candidates left?

Even orator extraordinaire President Barack can't say true things all the time. But at least he's not causing fact checkers to faint in their seats when they watch him.

There's telling the truth, then there's lying and finally making a mistake. If they were simply making a mistake that'd be ok. If they were outright lying then the sawblade is justified.

Intent is impossible to determine. EVERY politician caught in a lie will either say they were misquoted, or that it was an "unintentional misstatement". There's even Jon Kyl's wonderful "not intended to be a factual statement".

1. You can't call someone a liar to their face in a public forum. You just can't. Even if you have hard evidence that they're chock full of shit, everyone would gasp and you'd be accused of "vile personal attacks".

Interesting that you'd bring this up, as I recall Romney tried calling Obama a liar ("You can say the same thing over and over, but that doesn't make it true")

It didn't seem to generate any backlash against him. Possibly a double standard?

That's not calling someone a liar. If he had said, "The President is lying." That's calling someone a liar. There was that one guy in the House that yelled out "Liar!" during one of his earlier State of the Union addresses and was excoriated for it. Nobody even really talked about the merit (or lack thereof) of the charge, just that he had actually had the gall to say it (and the fact that didn't just say it, he yelled it on national TV during someone else's speech....dick move)

2. There is no objective truth anymore. Each side has a veritable army of pundits, fact-checkers, and think-tanks to bolster their argument and denigrate that of their opponent. So it doesn't work to call Romney a liar, because he can just pull out a study from the American Enterprise Institute that would support his argument. And then FOX News would run stories all day about how mean old Obama unfairly called Romney a liar, when very smart "non-partisan" experts at AEI and Cato and Heritage and places like that agree with him.

While this is true when debating the effects of policy, there are certain facts that Republicans can't escape from. Such as Romney declaring that his health care plan included protection for pre-existing conditions, only to be corrected later by his own campaign...

See my statement above. Obviously, Romney had an "unintentional misstatement". Corrections will be buried on page B27 in 3-point font. Should the media take pols to task more for being caught lying? Hell yes. And what would be the result? The pol's "truthisphere" would then attack the media outlet for playing "gotcha politics" and being biased. Just look what they tried to do to Helen Thomas.

[Lord Shonus]

Interesting that you'd bring this up, as I recall Romney tried calling Obama a liar ("You can say the same thing over and over, but that doesn't make it true")

That's the decorous way of saying it. It's okay to call someone's statement "inaccurate," "misleading," or "false." What you can't do is say "Mitt Romney is lying to you."

The former slips through the decorum, but it scores very few points.