satyreyes wrote:

Other things I think should be legal: nonviolent Neo-Nazi marches through Jewish communities; KKK rallies that don't involve stringing anyone up; burning the flag, or the Bible, or the Koran, in a protest; depicting and satirizing the prophet Mohammed just to piss off Muslims; rallying in front of a courthouse with signs that say GOD HATES FAGS; rallying in front of the Church of Scientology with signs that say SCIENTOLOGY KILLS; and on and on.  Speech should not be banned merely because it's insensitive.

I agree completely, but I would add further that while one should have the right to be an insensitive bigoted shit...I'd like to see more done to teach people why being like that is maybe not a great thing. The government shouldn't be allowed to say I DON'T LIKE THE CUT OF YOUR JIB and shut you up, but I do think you should have been taught in school and in social upbringing that sensitivity to the people around you, and a pointed effort to avoid pointless behavior likely to incite violence, is a virtue.

I have a thought I want to get across here but frankly I'm failing to nail it down and I keep sounding in my head like WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG??? It's a distressing sign to me that almost every time freedom of speech comes up, it's because someone wants to be racist, sexist, or some other -ist where frankly there is no rational argument for feeling that way and decent reasonable people would universally disagree with whatever X jackass is saying. Freedom of speech allows me to walk up to any random black person and call them a fucking nigger. Decency and the realization that there is nothing in their genetic code or mine that justifies a feeling of superiority prevents me from doing so. I guess what I'm saying is, while I'm glad we have freedom of speech, I'm disappointed in our country that we use it so frequently to further causes that shouldn't exist, and perpetuate divisions among people that are completely unnecessary. I feel sometimes like we focus a little too much on the freedom to say whatever we like, and not enough on the responsibility that should be implied in that capacity.

Sorry! But freedom of speech IS on topic in one big regard: CAMPAIGN ADS. Nothing blurs the line so gloriously between freedom of speech and gross slander. That said lately they seem to be going for HORRIBLY STUPID instead.

Mike Weinstein INDEED.

Florida update!

The senators' race, which I wrote that lengthy post on, might as well be over.  All the polls show Republican candidate Marco Rubio with a large and growing lead, on the order of 44% to independent Charlie Crist's 31% and Democrat Kendrick Meek's 22%.  There aren't really enough undecided voters to change the race at this point, so the next senator from Florida will be a certifiable Tea Partier.  I mailed in my absentee ballot the other day and ended up voting for Alexander Snitker, the Libertarian candidate, who probably won't get more than 1% of the vote but seems less crazy than Rubio, less expedient than Crist, and more independent-minded than Meek.  At least I found a candidate I could vote for!

Meanwhile, the governor's race, which Democrat Alex Sink used to be slightly favored in, has moved into a statistical tie between her and her Republican opponent Rick Scott.  I can't for the life of me understand why half of Florida is planning to vote for Rick Scott, given the legitimate complaints about corruption I raised earlier, but I guess people get the government they deserve.  I voted nevertheless for independent candidate Michael Arth, because if everyone would make voting decisions based on their first choice rather than based on R-vs.-D political calculus, maybe we would see some real diversity of opinion in government!

One more tight race in Florida.  Our eighth Congressional district is the one Gio was asking about earlier, where Democratic incumbent firebrand Alan Grayson is battling it out with state politician Daniel Webster.  Grayson recently released a well-publicized campaign ad that shows Webster, speaking to a deep-Christian audience, talking about how his wife "should submit to me -- that's in the Bible."  Problem is, in the full context of his speech, Webster was making a point about how not everything in the Bible is equally worth our attention.  The ad was a bald-faced lie on Grayson's part, and if you ask me, if he loses he'll deserve it.  And he may well lose, since the most recent poll (in late September; House races don't get polled much) showed Webster up 43-36.  I don't get to vote in this one -- my home Congressional district isn't a competitive race -- but I'll be watching to see whether Grayson, who is a histrionic exaggerator but an interesting and progressive one, goes under to Webster, who seems like a hardcore religious-right politician who is otherwise respectable.

Giovanna wrote:

I feel the same way though. Why DO I vote? You know, I dunno. Because I feel like I earn whining rights that way. Wouldn't a 'fuck off these all suck' option on the ballot be interesting though? If you don't win a majority over 'none of the above', you don't get the office.

There'd be no government.

This is so true and I could not vote in my area's Elections because I am a registered independent; so according to the rules I can only vote for primary elections.
So, I totally vote for the whining rights! 

I DON'T LIKE THE CUT OF YOUR JIB

Last edited by SexingTouga24/7/365 (10-14-2010 06:15:43 PM)

Did my part.  Most important locally is the proposed constitutional amendment to cap property taxes.  As a librarian who lost a job due to the caps already, I think that perhaps it's not necessary to make them part of the constitution.  Just seems a wee bit extreme, given that they're already law.

Didn't you guys just voted in Obama two years ago?? I thought they had four year terms, not just two.

On that note, I just got the news that:

New Hampshire: Gov John Lynch
Delaware: John Carney
Alabama: Richard Shelby
Maryland: Barbara Mikulski

I wonder about TX... meanwhile, I heard Christine O'Donnell didn't make it in her race.

Last edited by Hiraku (11-02-2010 06:15:28 PM)

Ahh... so they're only "likely". Mm... part of me hoped that Tea Partiers won't make it up there, but I guess that's unavoidable.
On that note, I believe Sheila Jackson Lee is elected House, District 18, TX. Maybe TX is a little bit less conservative than they were before?

Florida 8 -- home of Alan Grayson, the contentious Democratic representative we discussed earlier in this thread -- has been called for his opponent Daniel Webster.  Grayson was supposed to lose by about nine points, but with two-thirds of the vote counted, it looks more like eighteen.  Republicans favored elsewhere are also winning by wider than expected margins -- some, much wider.  It's going to be a couple hours before we know how things have shaken out (and I need to go work on a paper), but I would guess that things are going to go even better for Republicans than most analysts thought going into the night.  On the bright side for Democrats, it looks like West Virginia will re-elect its Democratic senator, which almost certainly means that the Dems will hang onto a slim Senate majority.

Last edited by satyreyes (11-02-2010 07:00:04 PM)

Blumenthal knocked down WWE mogul McMahon to keep that senate seat in the Democrats' hands. Huzzah!

Got this from NPR, GOP will need to take 7 seats in order to gain control over the Senate. In other news, Obama disapproved by Floridians? http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics … &sc=tw
D: But, but... Mr. President promoted Science Fair... and invited Bill Nye and the Myth Buster hosts to the White House! No president in the history of America has done that! D:

Bugger if I got any work done tonight. 

More House gains by the Republicans.  Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com is saying the Republicans will gain between sixty-two and seventy-two seats when all is said and done: more than expected, as -- out of the races called so far -- they've won 27 out of 31 tossup races as well as five Democratic-leaning races.  Republicans will have a clear House majority, something like fifty or sixty seats more than the Democrats, but not anywhere near the two-thirds needed to override a veto.

But though the Republicans won close Senate races in Pennsylvania and Illinois, the Democrats have won equally close races in California and West Virginia, and it seems that Nevada's Harry Reid -- Senate majority leader and a prime target for Republicans -- has also surprisingly survived the night.  The jury is still out on the races in Colorado and Washington, each of which is as tight as Utena's pants, but the Democrats will retain at least 51 out of 100 Senate seats.  For Republicans to take control here, they'd have to win both Colorado and Washington, and then convince conservative Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska and independent senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to switch parties.  That probably won't all happen, so we can say with confidence that Democrats will have a slight Senate majority -- but not a big enough one to block a filibuster, which requires sixty votes.

As for gubernatorial races, the Republicans have already had a big night.  They've gained ten new governor's seats, while the Democrats haven't gained any.  But a lot of people may wake up tomorrow and still not be sure who their next governor will be: it's going to be close in Illinois, Minnesota, Vermont, and -- surprisingly -- Maine, where independent candidate and green guru Eliot Cutler, who was on nobody's radar, is within a percentage point of Republican Paul LePage.  The New York Times is also stubbornly refusing to stick a fork in Florida, where Republican Rick Scott leads Democrat Alex Sink by eighty thousand votes, but with 98% of the vote counted, it seems like the votes clearly aren't there for Ms. Sink.  Also on the state level, pot will continue to be illegal in California.

So politically, here's what the next couple of years look like.  The liberal wing of the Democratic Party can't pass bills anymore, because the House will vote them down and the Senate will filibuster them.  (So no movement on stimulus packages or gay marriage.)  But the conservative wing of the Republican Party can't pass bills either, because the Senate will vote them down and the President will veto them.  (So no health care repeal or Arizona-style immigration reform.)  I think there are basically two scenarios that could play out.

- 1. Washington is basically functional.  The extremes of each party are neutralized, so we have to move forward on things that the parties more or less agree on, like job creation, domestic green energy, and continued terrorist-hunting in Afghanistan.  There are a lot of false starts and painful compromises, but budgets are eventually passed and the work of government is eventually done.  In 2012 the economy has gotten a little better and the parties share the credit.

- 2. Washington is basically paralyzed.  House Republicans are controlled by the Tea Party and refuse to talk compromise, but President Obama won't let Republicans control the agenda while he holds the veto pen.  The lights might go off in Congress -- either because they haven't passed a budget, or because they all went home.  Everyone continues to blame the other party for everything that's wrong with the country and the world.

#2 is maybe the more natural outcome in the current political climate, but it's possible that the climate will cool down a little after the newly elected Republican legislators take office in January.  Angry voters have vented their anger; disappointed voters have vented their disappointment.  I think that now that Republicans have some stake in the franchise -- they control the House -- it will fall on them to help get something done.  But there's only one way to find out -- to move into the future!  Good night, and good luck

Last edited by satyreyes (11-03-2010 12:03:04 AM)

I am very angry when I know so many of the Florida votes come from just blind anti-Obama voters who would vote for Sara Palin on a stick so long as it wasn't a democrat.