Friday Open Thread [4.5.13]
I said on Wednesday at the PDD Meeting that Gun Control on the Federal level so long as the Republicans are in control of the House, and hell, so long as Democrats are cowardly preserving the filibuster privileges of the Senate Republicans. Indeed, it is a mystery to me why some Democrats and everyone in the media thought somehow that Republicans would abandon the NRA and pass even the most innocuous gun control measure. On state level, things look better, in Connecticut and Colorado and Maryland, and also here in Delaware, where at least one bill, the Universal Background Check bill, has a good chance of passing if we lobby our legislators so that the hear sane reasonable voices in addition to the insane pro-gun arguments. But whether legislation is successful on the state or national level, the issue is back as a cultural wedge issue, and this time the case can be made, based on the poll numbers I showed you in the Polling Report today, that it benefits Democrats.
“For decades after the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, Republicans regularly provoked confrontations on a broad array of polarizing noneconomic ‘wedge issues,’ from crime and welfare to immigration and gay rights. Democrats, with a few exceptions, mostly tried through those years to neutralize the debates and quickly pivot back to economic terrain.”
“Now, that has flipped. In Washington and in blue-leaning states, Democrats are forcing the collisions on these issues. Democrats may not win all of these fights legislatively, in Congress or in the state capitals. And in most red states, Republicans are still pursuing their own culturally conservative agenda, particularly on abortion. But the Democrats’ willingness to take the offense on so many cultural issues represents a stark change–and a measure of their confidence that they now represent the national majority on these disputes.”
Brian Beutler at TPM says on every other cultural wedge issue, that is true, but on gun control it is not yet:
Back in the late 1990s, social issues were the GOP’s raison d’être.
With the economy thriving, Republicans famously kept their political footing by fighting Democrats over God, guns and gays. Immigration was a winning issue for the GOP too. The list went on.
Fifteen years later, the dynamic has almost completely reversed. Two years ago, Republicans were playing footsie with the idea of amending the Constitution to deny citizenship to the children of unauthorized immigrants U.S. Today, five months after President Obama’s re-election, they’re coalescing around legislation that could ultimately turn 11 million immigrants into voters.
Obama’s victory was likewise the bellow that triggered an avalanche of political support for marriage equality.
But when it comes to guns, things don’t look much different than they did just over a decade ago. In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, elected officials still lie in paralytic fear of the NRA. And supporters of new gun regulations are taking a close look at what makes their issue immune to the demographic and cultural phenomena that have seemingly changed the politics of gay rights, immigration, and other issues forever.[…]
Universal background checks may enjoy overwhelming support across the country, but gun owners and sympathizers in rural states with little gun crime are less animated by the idea — which means politicians can’t count on them to offset the backlash from high-intensity pro-gun voters.[…]
“The NRA has done a very good job of convincing a vocal segment of gun owners, that new laws means they have to give something up,” Kessler said. “They’ve sold that narrative very very well, and they’ve elevated their membership to believe that they’re the bulwark that’s protecting this right…. What the other side is getting is safety, and the question is how tangible is that.”
I would argue that gun control is now a wedge issue when it comes to the public. Beutler is right that legislators are not on our side as they fear the NRA. But when 90% of the public agree with your policy position, and the other political party’s members oppose it, by definition, it is a wedge issue. The question that is open is whether the Republicans will suffer any electoral consequences due to their stand in opposition to 90% of what the people want.
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You look at the numbers as do I… There is an anti conservative wave sweeping across this nation, and this state, always at the forefront, has been 5 years ahead of that curve….
If Conservatives yell in a vacuum, they win. But most people when given two choices, throw conservatives into their recycling bin….. They ask this simple question of themselves. Have conservatives made your life better? no. it’s kinda worse. Have progressives ever made your life better? HELL YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
🙂
There is an anti conservative wave sweeping across this nation
And yet we are about to debate bipartisan cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Open thread… well: Modern terrism, for dummies
Visualizing drone strikes, for dummies
After all, we can’t have terrism getting out of hand or messing up all the entertainer in chief’s hopium and change.
We should probably look into getting another actor to play the part of our president.
You should look into another therapist to play the part of your therapist. Apophenia. Look it up. It’s right next to your picture in the dictionary.
Okay, I admit I had to look that word up.
Pandora: I read about it a few weeks ago, a psychology story explaining paranoia as the overstimulation of the part of the brain responsible for pattern recognition. Short and sweet, it means “seeing patterns everywhere, even where none exists.”
Mynym is one of the guys (Moseley being the other) who makes Delaware Politics unreadable. He’s a 9/11 truther, among his other conspiracy-theory “interests,” yet he’s a hardcore Christian of some stripe — meaning he sees dark, sinister forces tricking us into believing all sorts of untrue things, but still hasn’t figured out that man made God, and not the other way around.
If you let him, he’ll make this place unreadable too.
There is an anti conservative wave sweeping across this nation…
“And yet we are about to debate bipartisan cuts to Social Security and Medicare.”
Even if politicians were trying to represent us the banksters might inflate the price of the goods and services that they would be trying to “redistribute” just out of reach again. It seems that the real ruling class may let you entertain yourself with the idea of redistribution but it’s not like they’re actually going to let you do it. Not unless there’s a million man march on D.C. with guns* (without short clips?) or Occupy stops wandering around playing with arts and crafts and establishes their own decentralized banking systems, begins using bitcoin, makes “Strike Debt” more effective than it already has been or has more of a relevant decentralized movement. Not that I’m against arts and crafts or wandering around with signs or making JP Morgan put more money into the police $tate, it’s just that none of that is really all that significant in the end.
Democrats often seem like dumb asses, always reaching for the carrot in front of them while pulling a huge cart of the bankster’s paper ponzi behind them. Every time a banker creates debt/money, they become more powerful and “redistribute” everything to themselves. Get it? Yet instead of dealing with that Democrats apparently like to say to their politicians, “Please create more of the banker’s money for us! Yay, more debt… I mean money!!!” It’s too bad that modern Democrats can’t follow their “I killed the bank.” founder, Andrew Jackson. There again, apparently no one has the courage for the assassination attempts and so on that seem bound to emerge randomly from the void every time the root of all bankster’s redistributive power gets touched on.
Killing Lincoln (Greenbacks), Killing JFK (Executive order?), Killing Jesus (redeeming and turning the tables of debt)… say, why does a “conspiracy theory” interpretation of history sound like a Bill O’Reilly book tour?
Imagine that.
See what I mean?
Short and sweet, it means “seeing patterns everywhere, even where none exists.”
Any diagnosis is a case of pattern recognition… including Apophenia. Here is another diagnosis for you… the inability to engage in basic forms of pattern recognition = idiocy. (Let alone complex forms… yes, they exist too.)
Tell ya what. See a professional and get back to me. Better yet, get a job.
Psychologists are usually waist of money… here is some of the information you’re trying to make use of by merely labeling it, as if you actually understand it. Note the distinction between vigilance with respect to predators/psychopaths/banksters and mere paranoia based on false forms of pattern recognition….
But there really are predators in the world and it’s not as if even lowly organisms are always pooping rainbows of love and tolerance on each other. Imagine that.
This response is a continuation of the thread, ‘I read it as a joke. Others read it as a vile attack,” Pandora’s requested the conversation between anonymous and geezer be continued here instead of there.
Sorry for geezer’s vile attack folks, but geezer chooses to pull his sexually frustrated outbursts ‘in print.’
This is what an intelligent, informed, responsible journalist, public commentator actually sounds like: (I’d ask geezer to take note, but he’s a lost cause.)
Others will view the following and realize what they are hearing (and seeing) is quality, intelligent, useful conversation, 180 degrees opposite of the above vulgar geezer outburst.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/encore-ending-the-silence-on-climate-change/
It’s my opinion Moyers’ guest, scientist Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, has your number geezer, No. 6, last, and called the “dismissive.”
“.. last but not least, eight percent of Americans are what {one} calls the dismissive. And these are people who are firmly convinced it’s not happening, it’s not human caused, it’s not a serious problem and many are what we would lovingly call conspiracy theorists. They say it’s a hoax. It’s scientists making up data, it’s a UN plot to take away American sovereignty and so on.” “But they’re a very well mobilized, organized and loud eight percent. And they’ve tended to dominate the public square.”
At about 20 minutes into the above mentioned program, Chris Jordon a digital photographic artist and activist, offers a visual presentation of the country’s consumption. Geezer can press “Full Transcript” and read about it, pretending he’s “sees the picture.”
One is sure geezer will keep screaming ‘hoax’ and claiming scientists make stuff up, as he works himself into another mindless outburst. After all, the last thing deniers want, is for the public to connect the dots from anthropogentic CO2…..to climate change deaths, similar to the origins of the tea party back in 2002, when the tobacco industry set out to deny cancer deaths.
Anthropogenic CO2 is an atmospheric WMD. No it’s not just a harmless gas you exhale. It’s an hazardous waste industrial by-product that republicans don’t want controlled by the EPA, don’t want listed in the Clean Air Act, restricted or taxed. And they don’t want the dots connected (CO2….deaths) because they don’t want to pay for the damages anthropogentic CO2 causes. The over abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere is harmful to the environment, nature and humans. In fact, it has been ‘permitted’ to become the worst problem to ever face mankind. It causes and will continue to cause, human deaths by the millions and if left unchecked, hundreds of millions of deaths.
Geezer, keep your “little man” in your pants as you attempt to silence the truth.
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Why can’t you learn to read? I don’t think it’s a hoax. I just think you’re an asshole.