Hey, Progressives and Liberals, Let's Pick Out A State To Take Over, Like Mississippi!

[BrainGlutton]

@Kepler1571

To drag us back to the thread topic, I choose Utah. It’s absolutely gorgeous. The Mormons might even come along for the ride if we legalized bigamy (hey, it’s a lifestyle choice…).

We can offer to support legalized polygamy if the Mormons support legalized gay marriage and pot, and see how they react.

[rogerbox]

Not just pot, we should get all drugs and gay marriage in exchange for bigamy.

[Kepler1571]

@basset_hound

Take our lovely ladies? Why, they’d likely use one of those dreadful firearms to shoot the first Yankee-type that made unwelcome advances. Best not get yourselves into a situation you couldn’t handle.

As a rule, women prefer men with jobs. Especially southern belles.

[Human_Action]

@Kepler1571

As a rule, women prefer men with jobs. Especially southern belles.

Unemployment rate map

Looks like the men from Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming will be irresistable.

[LonesomePolecat]

nm

[LonesomePolecat]

@Evil_Captor

Fun concept. It’s occurred to me with all the marijuana legalization and anti-abortion initiatives, that what makes a real difference in living conditions might just be the state you live in, rather than the nation you live in. Perhaps if liberals and progressives were to move to a state en masse we could swing enough political power to take over the state legislature and run things our way. A good, progressive, well funded public school system, pot legalized, same sex marriage legalized, universal health care, all sorts of good things.

Congratulations, you’ve just rediscovered states’ rights.

[Evil_Captor]

@LonesomePolecat

Congratulations, you’ve just rediscovered states’ rights.

But … but … I don’t WANT to oppress black people!

[Ibn_Warraq]

@BrainGlutton

Obama is pretty much at the center of the American political spectrum, maybe a touch to the right of it; he’s certainly not leftier than Clinton was.

You seem to think your neighbors are typical Americans. We all have that illusion to some extent – “How could he have won?! Nobody I know voted for him!” If you really want to know how the American people break down politically, see here.

You think Bill “I love executing mentally retarded black people”, “I love throwing poor women off welfare”, “throwing gays out of the military gives me a woody” “I not only signed DOMA I bragged about it in TV ads”, “I like golfing at country clubs that don’t admit black people”, “I play the race card against black opponents” and “I repealed Glass-Steagall enabling the bank meltdown” Clinton is “leftier” than Barack Obama?:dubious:

I’d recommend checking up a bit more on Bill before making such an assertion.

[gms453]

@BrainGlutton

Obama is pretty much at the center of the American political spectrum, maybe a touch to the right of it; he’s certainly not leftier than Clinton was.

Any cites for this bald-faced assertion? (Jes’ 'cause you say it’s so don’t make it true.)

[Ibn_Warraq]

@gms453

Any cites for this bald-faced assertion? (Jes’ 'cause you say it’s so don’t make it true.)

Well, it’s an opinion and admittedly I’ve heard a few elitist white progressives who have absurdly rosy memories of Bill Clinton and ignore how he was a DLC lap-dog who regularly scape-goated poor people, particularly poor minorities, but it certainly doesn’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

One can certainly make a case that Obama could have been a bit more progressive than he’s been, though I think doing so ignores the forces he’s been working against, but claiming that Clinton as President was more left-wing than he is utterly stupid and ignores reality.

[Kepler1571]

@Human_Action

Unemployment rate map

Looks like the men from Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming will be irresistable.

Well, the counterweight is women also prefer men with an education.

[Human_Action]

@Kepler1571

Well, the counterweight is women also prefer men with an education.

Proportion of Adults, 25 to 34, with College Degrees

Iowa, Nebraska, and North Dakota, more than any other states, provide employed, educated menfolk.

[BrainGlutton]

@gms453

Any cites for this bald-faced assertion? (Jes’ 'cause you say it’s so don’t make it true.)

Here. You will see that the “center” is just a bit further left than is generally perceived.

As for Obama being no leftier than Clinton was, I hope you would not think seriously of arguing that, but, if so, it would be a whole topic for a different thread.

[BrainGlutton]

@Kepler1571

As a rule, women prefer men with jobs. Especially southern belles.

Whah, everah Southen belle knows a job is a thing beneath a Southen gennleman, suh!

[Ibn_Warraq]

@BrainGlutton

As for Obama being no leftier than Clinton was, I hope you would not think seriously of arguing that, but, if so, it would be a whole topic for a different thread.

Er…you’re the one who rather presumptuously proclaimed that Bill “I love executing mentally retarded black people”, “I love throwing poor women off welfare”, “throwing gays out of the military gives me a woody” “I not only signed DOMA I bragged about it in TV ads”, “I like golfing at country clubs that don’t admit black people”, “I play the race card against black opponents” and “I repealed Glass-Steagall enabling the bank meltdown” Clinton was “leftier” than Obama.

If what you said was true and Obama was more right-wing than the guy executed a mentally retarded black man as a campaign stunt, repealed Glass-Steagall which led to the housing and economic collapse, who put in place DADT, who signed into law DOMA and then campaigned on it, who regularly made poor people scapegoats in his speeches and his politics, and who shamelessly played the race card against African-American opponents then you should be able to produce some fairly compelling evidence of it.

Please do so.

[BrainGlutton]

@Ibn_Warraq

Er…you’re the one who rather presumptuously proclaimed that Bill “I love executing mentally retarded black people”, “I love throwing poor women off welfare”, “throwing gays out of the military gives me a woody” “I not only signed DOMA I bragged about it in TV ads”, “I like golfing at country clubs that don’t admit black people”, “I play the race card against black opponents” and “I repealed Glass-Steagall enabling the bank meltdown” Clinton was “leftier” than Obama.

No, I said Obama is no leftier than Clinton. He loses a lot of left-points, IMO, for the drone-strikes, indefinite detention, etc.

[Ibn_Warraq]

@BrainGlutton

No, I said Obama is no leftier than Clinton.

Sorry, with all due respect, that’s an even more foolish assertion.

You think Obama isn’t more left-wing than the guy who executed mentally retarded black people for a political stunt, got a chubby at the thought of throwing poor, black women off welfare, put both DOMA and DADT into place, regularly scapegoated the poor in speeches and slashed desperately needed social programs for them while slapping absurd and unnecessary regulations on teachers, attempted to impose the Patriot Act on the American people almost a decade before Bush, and who regularly engaged in race-baiting?:dubious:

Please produce evidence for such an absurd claim.

What’s next? Claiming Martin Luther King was Richard Nixon in whiteface?

[gms453]

@BrainGlutton

Here. You will see that the “center” is just a bit further left than is generally perceived.

As for Obama being no leftier than Clinton was, I hope you would not think seriously of arguing that, but, if so, it would be a whole topic for a different thread.

I’m not interested in arguing with anyone about anything, but you’re bald-faced assertion that Obama is slightly right-of-center strikes me as disingenuous, and your link does nothing to prove (or disprove) your assertion.

[BrainGlutton]

@gms453

I’m not interested in arguing with anyone about anything . . .

:dubious: Then what are you doing here?!

[BrainGlutton]

@Ibn_Warraq

Sorry, with all due respect, that’s an even more foolish assertion.

You think Obama isn’t more left-wing than the guy who executed mentally retarded black people for a political stunt, got a chubby at the thought of throwing poor, black women off welfare, put both DOMA and DADT into place, regularly scapegoated the poor in speeches and slashed desperately needed social programs for them while slapping absurd and unnecessary regulations on teachers, attempted to impose the Patriot Act on the American people almost a decade before Bush, and who regularly engaged in race-baiting?:dubious:

Please produce evidence for such an absurd claim.

What was the nature of Clinton’s race-baiting?

Anyway, on the economic side, Obama shows no signs of being anything but a DLC/DINO-neoliberal like Clinton. Are we about to repudiate NAFTA, or roll back Clinton’s “welfare reform”? Not that I’ve heard.

Obama is somewhat preferable to Clinton on social issues, perhaps; at least he’s opened the way for gays to serve openly in the armed forces and more or less gotten behind gay marriage.

Nevertheless, there’s plenty of criticism coming from Obama’s left.

Fulfillment of campaign promises

While Democrats view Obama’s presidency as an improvement from the previous Bush-era domestic and foreign policies, a large number of his campaign promises remain stalled or completely broken. PolitiFact, which tracks how many promises Obama has kept, has found that by February of 2013 the President had kept or compromised on about 370 promises, while he had outright broken about 120.[29] Some examples:

• Early in his campaign, Obama promised to abide by the voluntary spending limits required for public financing, but then went “never mind” when he saw the shitload of money he was raking in.[30]
• Obama said that he would not go after medical marijuana dispensaries, but then did so, a sign that the War on Drugs won’t die anytime soon.[31]
• On January 22, 2009, President Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanamo Bay within a year and for those incarcerated within to be dealt with as quickly as possible.[32] No change has occurred and Guantanamo continues with little reduction in inmates (and it’s not helping with a large amount of Republican states disapproving).[33] Some abortive attempts at moving them to other states or countries have met with very limited success — essentially, no one wants them.

<snip>

Human rights record

Obama has mainly been criticized for his somewhat disappointing actions concerning human rights in the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan:

• On January 23, 2009, a mere 72 hours after taking office, Obama authorized an armed strike against a village in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan — an ally of the United States (although the area being bombed, the “tribal belt,” is not under control of Pakistan’s government),[44] — because the Pakistan Taliban Movement in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) had launched a campaign to discover local informants for the Central Intelligence Agency and had killed 40 of them.[44]
• On February 14, 2009, the United States, for the second time in a month, bombed a house in Pakistan that was being used as a hideout by the Taliban. Twenty-seven militants were killed.[45]
• On September 30, 2011, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both of whom were American citizens living in Yemen, were killed by a drone strike. Though both had been deemed terrorists, this action has been criticized for possibly violating the Fifth Amendment.[46]
• On May 26, 2011, he signed an extension of the PATRIOT Act, which has been criticized by the left and civil libertarians as allowing violations of the Fourth Amendment.[47]
• On December 31, 2011, he signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, which codifies the President’s authority to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects without trial (there is currently a dispute over whether it changes existing law or not, due to apparently contradictory passages in the bill on the matter).[48]
• Under Obama, drone warfare has become a central element of American military policy, a practice which critics have called into question - it’s extremely effective with regard to killing terrorists, but it’s unfortunately also extremely effective with regard to killing everyone within 100 yards of said terrorists, fellow terrorists and uninvolved civilians alike.

And add to the above the countless white-collar criminals in the financial sector and Wall Street whom Obama has utterly failed to prosecute or indict, and the Wall Street insiders he put in charge of fixing the mess. :mad:

See also Oliver Stone’s and Peter Kuznick’s new book.

But on subjects from Wall Street reform to health care to Afghanistan, Stone and Kuznick rip Obama for breaking campaign promises and continuing the policies of President George W. Bush — who’s roundly condemned throughout the book. In some instances, they write, Obama went further than Bush’s White House toward anti-progressive policies.

“Obama asserted presidential power in ways that must have made Dick Cheney jealous,” they wrote.

“In 2011, Obama defied his own top lawyers, insisting that he did not need congressional approval under the War Powers Resolution to continue military activities in Libya,” they continued, in their write-up of Obama’s handling of intervention in that country.

<snip>

The biting criticism from Stone and Kuznick includes:

On Wall Street reform: “The biggest winner under Obama was Wall Street.”

On health care: “Obama’s failure to articulate a progressive vision was also apparent in the fight over health reform, which was to have been his signature initiative…Obama’s health care reform effort, marked by the inability to even refute Republican charges of death panels, was so unpopular that it became an albatross around the necks of Democrats in the 2010 election.”

On a troop surge in Afghanistan: “When it finally came down to decision time, Obama didn’t have the courage or integrity of a post-Cuban Missile Crisis John F. Kennedy. He settled on a 30,000-troop increase, giving the military leaders almost everything they wanted and more than they expected.”

On civil liberties: “Among the greatest disappointments to his followers was Obama’s refusal to roll back the expanding national security state that so egregiously encroached on American civil liberties.”

On ‘imperialism’: “[He] was not offering a decisive break with over a century of imperial conquest. His was a centrist approach to better managing the American empire rather than advancing a positive role for the United States in a rapidly evolving world.”

On defense spending: “While cutting defense spending, pulling combat forces out of Iraq and beginning the drawdown in Afghanistan represented a welcome retreat from they hypermilitarism of the Bush-Cheney years, they did not represent the sharp and definitive break with empire that the world needed to see from the United States.”

@Ibn_Warraq

What’s next? Claiming Martin Luther King was Richard Nixon in whiteface?

I wouldn’t, but Malcom X would have . . .