Pangloss

Which his own country apparently does a lot more severely than the US, but my point was that Democrats gave him a standing ovation after he chastised this country for one of its state laws. These Democrats are the people in charge of this country right now, and they gave a standing ovation to a man who criticized what this country is currently doing. In other words, they felt it more important to make an ideological statement than to stand in unity with their fellow countrymen and their concerns. (And these guys are supposed to be superior to Republicans? And people wonder why some on the right often accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic?) At least Michelle Obama had the good grace to answer that little girl's question with "well we'll have to work on that", instead of the "we're on YOUR side and we think our own countrymen are racists" message that Democratic leadership gave with that standing-o. I agree completely. That's the main problem. Well I agree here as well, and I think this is also where I have an odd confluence of agreement with "labor" in the sense that if we were willing to pay what food and basic services are ACTUALLY worth then we wouldn't have such a demand for illegal aliens. People are generally lazy and take the path of least resistance, which is why comprehensive, thoughtful leadership from the top is so important. (I saw that 60 Minutes piece, btw, and I couldn't understand why it actually made sense to anyone to not have the same safety features as any canal anywhere else in the country would have. Dumb and inhumane. We in society can have a rigorous debate about whether local governments can participate in immigration enforcement, but not at the level of basic physical safety!) Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I don't know about Arizona, but there was an interesting case in Georgia recently where a college student with an expired Visa was granted an extension by the State Department, but then arrested by local officials and is now awaiting deportation. Georgia does not have a law like Arizona (yet), so it raised a question in a lot of people's minds about how they could prompt a deportation. Essentially what happened was that during her period of illegality she gave false information to a police officer asking for her address during a routine traffic stop (obviously to avoid being arrested and deported). This lead to an outstanding arrest warrant which was exercised, again all through the routine operation of local law enforcement (standard procedure). But the arrest caused her to lose her visa extension and now she's awaiting deportation. That's a sequence of events so odd it might make Joseph Heller squirm, but I imagine this sort of thing happens all the time. The point being that just having all these different policies and situations is a big part of the problem -- just getting everyone on the same page would go a long way to both fixing the problem and resolving our dispute with Mexico. Some have even gone as far as to point out that the new Arizona law may actually form a funny sort of path to citizenship, because the act of local law enforcement stepping in will cause some illegals to discover that they could have applied for work visas after all, and can then do so.

Then why when President Calderone chastised this country in its own legislative house yesterday did every Democrat in the room give him a standing ovation? I don't think you're wrong about where the middle ground is located, but the public outcry over the Arizona law has made it quite clear that ANY effort to make things more difficult for illegal aliens in this country will be met with SEVERE resistance by mainstream media, most Democrats in office, and vast numbers of mainstream, relatively moderate people in this country. They may be the minority, but they're not extremists, padren. Perhaps that's due in part to the increasing divide and lack of ability for people to recognize that it will take compromise by both sides to fix this. But that lack of recognition is pretty obvious at the moment. I doubt that even as much as 25% of this country recognizes what kind of compromise this is going to take. I'm not even sure the Arizona law has a moderate-majority support anymore. I believe the Arizona polls show most of them support it, and I reported a country-wide poll earlier that I believe showed 59% in support, but another poll last week showed only 42% in favor (though only half that amount was opposed, so perhaps it was a phrasing thing).

See this is where you lose me, when you go and take what sounds like an objectively interesting point and twist it into a biased statement. Do politicians reach out and attempt to compromise and get chopped off? Yeah I buy that. Do I think Democrats are consistently behaving better than Republicans? No, I have no reason to think so. You haven't shown anything other than extremely selective circumstantial evidence to go by. Jon Stewart isn't qualified to pass that judgment, and that's all you offer -- ridicule. I know you're not a huge fan of Democrats either, but you don't speak for moderates. What you do is pretend to speak for moderates in order to convince people that Republicans suck more than Democrats. That is a very different thing. Then explain to me how accusing someone of having amnesia is outing them on a disease that has nothing to do with amnesia. That's not a connection that was made by this ad. Why would they do that? Does it actually make SENSE to you that Republicans would say "look at this cripple, he must be stupid too!" Do you really think that schoolyard bullying is a tactic that the RNC thinks will score with conservative voters? Seriously? How stupid do you think conservatives are, padren? See this is what happens when you start from an assumption of stupidity based on all the ridicule heaped on by bascule, Jon Stewart, etc -- it makes you find it believable that nobody at the RNC is intelligent enough to know that Parkinson's isn't Alzheimer's, or that it would be a bad idea to suggest that an Alzheimer's sufferer might be losing their memory. So it makes SENSE to you that they might do this deliberately. You go right on to ignore the fact that this is a routine political tactic -- it makes MORE sense that Republicans are stupid, because you get told this 24/7 by the likes of bascule and Jon Stewart. Not only shouldn't you FALL for that, you should get MAD AS HELL about it. Great, then you should be able to point out the passage where they do this. I know EXACTLY why it's such a hard little piece of consensus. iNow said it above:

I love this bit from the Neal Boortz show the other day. This is Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon (a Democrat and opponent of the new law) speaking out on what he feels is what brought all this about: 0guvYJk0VtM Boortz's comment:

Well you've decided to inject yourself into his dialog for the purpose of insulting me, so how about you tell me instead? He's trying to convince everyone that Parkinson's Disease is the same thing as Alzheimer's, so where do you get off accusing me of having a narrative? Or do you want to just sit back and lob Mr. Pot shots?

He's trying to convince everyone that Parkinson's Disease is the same thing as Alzheimer's, and you're accusing ME of having a narrative?

They didn't claim that he has a medical condition. Nor is his medical condition generally known as one which affects memory. Candidates love to accuse incumbents of amnesia. It's part of the landscape. Look at all the flak Charlie Crist has taken lately from Marco Rubio over "forgetting" that he took federal stimulus money, saying that he thought it was a great idea even though now he says he's opposed to it. What is that if it isn't "amnesia", and why isn't that fair game? Why? Parkinsons is not Alzheimers. It's a nerve disorder not a memory disorder. How could they, when Parkinsons is a degenerative nerve problem, not a memory disorder?

How is Sean Hannity any better than Glenn Beck? I don't know, if you guys are actually watching Fox News then maybe you know something I don't. I just haven't heard anything actually stated that's different.

Saying that an opposition candidate or politician's memory is failing them is a common political tactic. It's also entirely warranted when the person in question said something specifically to warrant that comment, such as "I can't remember how I voted on that issue", or in this case that the health care bills (which are quite large) were "difficult to remember". Unless it can be shown that Andy Sere was specifically referring to John Spratt's Parkinsons there is no objective basis for a complaint of exceeding the normal boundaries of electioneering. Bascule, it disturbs me if you are going to deliberately ignore the fact that Parkinsons and Alzheimers are not the same thing just to make an ideological statement.

Well that's your opinion about Fox News, and more power to you, but that doesn't mean my comparison is invalid. I think you just see it as invalid because you don't like what it showed. That's the funny thing about bias -- people tend not to recognize it in themselves.

Wait, why is it that you feel that the RNC is the one convincing voters that Parkinsons equates to Alzheimers?

Exactly. If he'd said that he shouldn't be attacked for his memory loss because he had a leg amputated we wouldn't even be having this conversation. But because people think that Parkinsons = Alzheimers, he thinks he can get a pass on what really amounts to nothing more than standard politics.

Politico is running an interesting piece comparing Rand Paul's positions that are in apparent conflict with some of his father's. Rand is in favor of term limits, for example, but his father has been in office for 11 terms now. But the kicker is this earmarks business: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37467.html Hm, I guess that's the "do as I say, not as I do" approach to politics?

I have to say I'm kinda curious why you feel that coal/oil are unsustainable, but global warming has not been sufficiently proven. Doesn't the evidence for both suppositions more or less reach the same level of incomplete detail?

And just because you say it's totalitarianism doesn't mean that it is. I guess I just see maturity on this issue as the ability to see that telling people it's one thing when you really feel it's another is not the best way to engender their empathy over the long term. In my opinion your "it's a totalitarianism" stance is a false dichotomy. It's actually quite possible for a society to... mature... in its view of security, as our UK friends have discovered with domestic surveillance, discovering new lines that can be drawn to protect both privacy and security without falling all the way to the bottom of that oh-so-slippery slope.

Sure, I'll go along with that.

I think you're reading it wrong. What they're saying is that he's a bad candidate (who can't even remember what he himself said), not that he has an actual mental disorder. I don't see any evidence here that they're actually referring to his Parkinsons, nor does that make sense because Parkinsons is a nerve disorder not a memory impairor. It's not the RNC's fault that some people conflate Parkinsons to Alzheimers. But it seems like Spratt is deliberately playing on that accidental conflation for political gain.

Sure, technology is scary. But nothing about nuclear power is scary disproportionate to the gain. How many people died every year because of lack of refrigeration for food, or the various other improvements of modern life? Unless you can get us off the oil teat with an actual working solution, you're really just advocating the abandonment of modern life.

That's a total red herring. It's a law that they agree with, or they wouldn't have argued its merits before the Supreme Court in November of 2009.

I think for a great many people it very much is a liberal/conservative issue. I think for a great many special interest groups it very much is a liberal/conservative issue as well. What I mean by that is that many special interest groups take up the banner of immigration reform (for one side or the other) even though it rests outside of their normal, "special interest" purview -- gun control advocates ally with border security groups, labor unions ally with immigrant rights groups, etc.

Michael J. Fox's political efforts extend way showing people the symptoms of his Parkinsons. If memory serves he has, for example, campaigned for candidates while off his meds.

The Washington Post had some interesting insights into the situation today: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/19/AR2010051902703.html That makes sense, but I think the author misses a key point. This isn't just the result of failure by voters to recognize improvement amidst the clutter of conflicting ideologies. It's also the result of the failure of ideological adherents to set aside their differences and find middle ground. Both ideological extremes would, I'm sure, love to capture this message and wrap it in a thin veneer of "I told you so" examples, followed by reasons why you should vote Democrats/Republican this fall. But they're going to be almost completely wrong in doing so.

Well if so then we have had a couple of good teachers for that behavior. But I think the argument being deflated here is the concept of boycotting Arizona, and it's being deflated by the very side that thought it was a good idea in the first place. When they put up a boycott it sounded all rosy and fine, but when Arizona contemplates one of its own the very idea suddenly becomes flawed and ineffective. But okay, you win, left -- boycotts don't work. What's next up your sleeve?

rofl

A couple of weeks ago Los Angeles decided to boycott Arizona. What they apparently forgot is that the city gets 25% of its electricity from Arizona. But Arizona didn't forget. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/19/arizona-official-threatens-cut-los-angeles-power-payback-boycott/ Cute.