Gabby Gifford (AZ rep) shot

[Cramulus]

GREAT term, Cain! very useful object for discussion.

This all starts to sound like a game of Magic: The Gathering, no?


"I tap AM Radio and gain 2 mana. I spend 2 mana to summon a Frothing Militia. It gets +1/+0 due to the invocation of the second amendment. Your turn."

[Phox]

It's exactly Al-Qaeda Core's strategy, that.

It's also the reason Anwar al-Walaki is currently being targeted for assassination by the CIA.

I also believe that in the case of several genocides in developing states, this form of terrorism may have helped inspire attacks (Rwanda, the Haiti uprisings etc).

At the same time though, I think it needs to be fleshed out.

Suicide bombers at first blush also fit the missile definition.

They're not really Suicide Bombers. They're Homicide Bombers. A Suicide Bomber would go out into the Desert somewhere, and just blow himself up. He wouldn't need a cause any more than any other Suicide.

But if he did it in protest, all he has to do, is say so in his Note. Then he's a Suicide Bomber with a cause.  (But still not needing to blow anyone else but himself up)

Strapping a bomb to yourself, then going to town and blowing as many other people up as you can, is something other than  Suicide. Spree killers? Self inclusive spree killers? Explosive Martyrists? But not "suicide". Suicide should be a solitary and self contemplative event. Like masturbation. It shouldn't have anyone else involved in it. Not even as witnesses. If witnesses are tricked into being present, (In either scenario) then you're doing it for attention. Making you at the very least, an exhibitionist. And exhibitionists don't want to die, not while there is anyone left alive that can be their audience.

fuck... mittens.... 

[Telarus]

GREAT term, Cain! very useful object for discussion.

This all starts to sound like a game of Magic: The Gathering, no?


"I tap AM Radio and gain 2 mana. I spend 2 mana to summon a Frothing Militia. It gets +1/+0 due to the invocation of the second amendment. Your turn."

[BabylonHoruv]

GREAT term, Cain! very useful object for discussion.

This all starts to sound like a game of Magic: The Gathering, no?


"I tap AM Radio and gain 2 mana. I spend 2 mana to summon a Frothing Militia. It gets +1/+0 due to the invocation of the second amendment. Your turn."

hmm, that could definitely be an interesting card game.  Somewhere between magic and illuminati

Clash of the extremists maybe?

[Aucoq]

GREAT term, Cain! very useful object for discussion.

This all starts to sound like a game of Magic: The Gathering, no?


"I tap AM Radio and gain 2 mana. I spend 2 mana to summon a Frothing Militia. It gets +1/+0 due to the invocation of the second amendment. Your turn."

[Iason Ouabache]

Also, I'm going to think about this for a while

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/1/10/934890/-Stochastic-Terrorism:-Triggering-the-shooters.

Very interesting concept. Start a low level buzz in multiple spots. Create a powerful feedback loop. Keep it up until bad shit happens. It's completely unpredictable though and is very likely to backfire eventually. This shooting isn't going to end up being a positive for the people who were hinting at violence. Americans are very good at knee-jerk reactions so this will either start swinging the other direction or get much much worse.


Also, the mugshot of Loughner they keep showing on tv is creeping me out. I can think of at least 3 different people I grew up with that look like him (hell 1 or 2 people from here to be honest). I've seen that crazy look before and it really bothers me.

[BadBeast]

As long as it's not a mirror you've seen that look in, I'd just put it down to media saturation, and viral newscasting. Some things don't get any better under scrutiny.

[AFK]

I'm talking about the actual Congressmen.  The GOP don't think twice when it comes to legislating based upon their ideology.  They don't care if the people like it or not.  It's full steam ahead.  It's the Democrats who get all in a bunch and worry about consensus and compromise and reaching across the aisle.  Those things are good virtues, but I think sometimes they get a little OCD about it and then we get bullshit like the weak-ass HCR law.  And that started in a compromise position. 

The Patriot Act didn't start that way.  They rammed that sucker through.   

Actually, no.

The Democrats are also voting based on ideology.  That ideology involves fucking every American under a certain wage level for all their productive worth.  The hand-wringing etc is the propaganda, for their supporters.

Alan Grayson's former senior policy advisor explains this quite well:

Since the 1970s, Democratic elites have focused on breaking public sector unions and financializing the economy. Carter, not Reagan, started the defense build-up. Carter, not Reagan, lifted usury caps. Carter, not Reagan, first cut capital gains taxes. Clinton, not Bush, passed NAFTA. It isn't the base of the Democratic party that did this, but then, voters in America have never had a lot of power because they are too disorganized. And there wasn't a substantial grassroots movement to challenge this, either.

Obama continues this trend. It isn't that he's not fighting, he fights like hell for what he wants. He whipped incredibly aggressively for TARP, he has passed emergency war funding (breaking a campaign promise) several times, and nearly broke the arms of feckless liberals in the process. I mean, when Bernie Sanders did the filiBernie, Obama flirted with Bernie's potential 2012 GOP challenger. Obama just wants policies that cement the status of a aristocratic class, with crumbs for everyone else (Republican elites disagree in that they hate anyone but elites getting crumbs). And he will fight for them.

There is simply no basis for arguing that Democratic elites are pursuing poor strategy anymore. They are achieving an enormous amount of leverage within the party. Consider the following. Despite Obama violating every core tenet of what might have been considered the Democratic Party platform, from supporting foreclosures to destroying civil liberties to torturing political dissidents to wrecking unions, Obama has no viable primary challenger. Moreover, no Senate Democratic incumbent lost a primary challenge in 2010, despite a horrible governing posture. Now THAT is a successful strategy, it minimized the losses of the Democratic elite and kept them firmly in control of the party. Thus, the political debate remains confined to what neoliberals want to talk about. It's a good strategy, it's just you are the one the strategy is being played on.

A lot of people think that Obama is a bad poker player, but they miss the point. He's not playing with his money, he's playing with YOUR money. You are the weak hand at the table, he's colluding with the other players.

If you don't know who is the sucker in any given poker game, it's you.

I think the Democrats want and certainly intend to legislate based upon their ideology, and they certainly set out to do that.  But recent history is that they usually fail and when they succeed, what they get is very watered down.  Then there are some fights they don't seem up for at all.  A good one being renewable energy and green energy.  This is an item where they talk a pretty good game when it comes to campaigns, but they can't really seem to get up a head of steam to actually get something in and through the Congress.  The GOP are much more full steam ahead with their agenda, again, in recent times.  That is what I'm mainly focusing on with my commentary. 

Health care is the best example.  It completely failed under Clinton and under Obama it is completely watered down and verging on useless.  They could have started with single payer and compromised down to a public option, instead, they started in the compromise position.  They do this pretty often. 

[Adios]

http://reason.com/blog/2010/10/29/attack-ads-circa-1800

These guys knew how to party.

[Disco Pickle]

http://reason.com/blog/2010/10/29/attack-ads-circa-1800

These guys knew how to party.

[Phox]

http://reason.com/blog/2010/10/29/attack-ads-circa-1800

These guys knew how to party.

YEAH, AND I FUCKING VOTED FOR JEFFERSON BASED ON THAT ADD, AND NONE OF THAT SHIT HAPPENED! ADAMS WAS A LYING CUNTFACE! 

[Adios]

I blame you for believing.

[Phox]

I blame you for believing.

ETA: Is it my fault I believe the worst about people?

[Cain]

RWHN, the "compromise" is part of the propaganda, the political theatre they put on.  They were doing it even when they had a supermajority...

Let's put it this way.   Why would you negotiate with anyone to pass legislation which is not going to please your base?  Because you already know you can get what you want out of the negotiation and so you can spread the blame.  The Republicans are knee-jerk oppositionists, and such they are perfect foils to deflect the blame on, as Democratic pols can point to the intractable nature of the opposition as the reason they "had" to "water down" bills they never intended to pass in anything but a "watered down" form in the first place.

It's all a sham.  The Democrats have been passing the legitlation they have wanted to pass for the past two years.  Every major piece of legislation, it turns out the White House and key Democrats had already decided on the major provisions of such bills before the debates in the media had even started.  It is all pre-ordained, kabuki politics.  They're successfully pursuing the policies they want, getting their donors rich and shifting the blame for corporatist policies on the Republicans. 

[LMNO]

That's so goddamn cynical that it makes perfect sense.