bmags

It's amazing to me in the face of another September when "our fate was in our hands" and we fail miserably, how many people are willing to give our leadership a pass. You all don't want to win as much as being proud of being non confrontational.

Missouri takes their role as a state school seriously. They keep education options open in their state. What you are talking about means nothing except being more selective over students, not educating them. I'll put a Big 10 education up against mine any day. That goes double for Nebraska.

My softball game was canceled too, maybe there is something to this field problem

no way that's true. You think the players are ready to lose a whole years salary?

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 09:37 PM) +1 I remember someone posted in a game thread like in the first week of the season that it was gonna be a fun summer and I totally agreed...then Thornton had a meltdown and let the A's score like 4 runs in the 9th and we eventually lost in 10. A whole lot of suck has happened since then and they are a very boring team. the first two games of the season, I was excited for our offense. heh. heh.

didn't krause really love miles? Man, that was an AWFUL draft.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 07:02 PM) It's almost more amusing to think how much outrage there would be against Oney had Mrs. Teahen been as Oney described here. We've talked so much of hyperbole here this summer, and his description was just a "cheap shot" hyperbolic/exaggerated description of her. The reality is in that clubhouse, the woman who's the "7-8.5" on a 10 scale isn't good enough because the way MOST NFL, NBA and MLB players judge women is almost completely superficial. Oney was raised and still seems to be caught up in that "machisimo-driven" Latin American culture, which teaches the men that "men prefer girls who are beautiful (modelos) but brutas (dumb)" and Oney would be challenged by any relationship with a woman who's educated, confident, strong, athletic and well-rounded. That's the kind of woman that's harder for someone like him to dominate and control. What would be even more interesting would be to see how Oney reacted to criticism of his "groupies" or girlfriend/s. And the way Oney thinks, unfortunately, is pretty common. It's just rare to see it articulated. Just watch all the groupies and "trophy wives" in the players' boxes and you'll notice that quite a few of them are out of the same cookie-cutter mold. or you could look at posts on soxtalk

Yes, this deal will probably hurt the recession, not as much as default, however. But my point is that narrative stood less of a chance if liberals didn't repeatedly remove themselves out of the process. What did you think was going to happen when they didn't vote in 2010, at all, and a wave of "the debt will kill us all" came in? Liberals don't organize unless they are in the minority, but they'll only put in enough work to get into the majority and then stop doing ANYTHING worth a damn.

That's nonsense. You need to realize that people ARE concerned about the deficits. There's a reason the republicans got so much traction with it. But they didn't end the welfare state. They got some discretionary cuts, bfd. There was a hell of a lot done for the progressive cause recently and in this administration. But liberals won't even remember DADT as progress, or DOJ not backing the DOMA, or lily ledbetter, or ACA as soon as they pass. They'll rightfully move on and want more, but suicidally will give up any ground they gave up in exchange for someone who could promise everything and get absolutely nothing.

You should poll their base and see what they identify as, then convince yourself that they are liberal.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 05:52 PM) I think Balta's point is that whether she is attractive or not has nothing to do with it. Even if she was not what most people consider to be an attractive woman, Oney's statements would still be incredibly offensive and inappropriate. thank you

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 04:37 PM) It would legitimize it as a valid viewpoint in healthcare discourse. Republicans always propose far-right ideas that make center-right ideas look centrist or moderate in comparison. When nobody argues for single-payer, then public exchanges get held up as an idea of crazy far-left socialist Marxists. On the flipside, it could have prolonged the health care debate to a length where it couldn't have passed. It took long enough to go from public option to no public option to the point of near fallout, before this bill was finally enacted. My main complaint with the healthcare proceedings is they didn't speed it up that summer.

I mean, we didn't need a rucker park performance to know durant is awesome, but the atmosphere is fun to watch.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 03:24 PM) You really don't think there's anything more that Obama could have done to press a liberal agenda? edit: "Obama sits on sidelines, gets s*** 'compromise' from conservatives" is kinda the story of his presidency. edit2: Obama actually laid out general policy guidelines in the summer of 2009 for HCR, and it notably did not include single-payer. He could have promoted that idea then. Why not? Are democrats incapable of seeing Republicans succeed repeatedly in pulling discourse to their viewpoints? What do you thinks easier "we want to cut gov't and taxes" or "we want to completely undercut an industry with tens of thousands of american jobs and profits with a incredibly powerful lobbying industry and replace it with a government run insurance program"? That's why the republicans are better at pulling the populace to their right. The "pro-tax" lobbies aren't very strong, they dont' really exist. I'm not saying obama has been perfect, I'm saying this narrative that all he needed to do was negotiate harder is ignorant of the structural issues that have arisen with a rigidly aligned republican party. Rather than blaming the actors we need to start blaming the institutions and start looking for changes, and in the meanwhile putting pressure on the actors with proven-effective means of pulling them left. You guys can do your "I'm going to let a republican get into office and then complain about their outRAGEOUS policies", and i'll try to work within the means of the system to put a more fluid system in place while fighting for progress anywhere I can find it and working hard not to let it go.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 01:38 PM) Well some NBA players have to past the time. 1st time in legendary Rucker Park for Kevin Durant? Drops 66 points. Here's him going off in the 4th. Longer highlights. awesome

Your premise is wrong. Obama let the legislators legislate (as oppose to Clinton in 1993, and this strategy historically has worked well), and the legislators did not have the votes to get that in the "60 vote" world.

our problems are structural: yglesias background on the "Linzian nightmare" pull:

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 02:05 PM) Ok, then he never made the case for single-payer or nationalized health care. Instead he want straight to private insurance mandates. Britain made the NHS is WWII, the US's employer provided insurance started in: WWII. Once something becomes structure it's incredibly hard to change. But there were a lot of good thigns in this bill you guys now call trash, things that will flesh out and improve. We put a bunch of "let's see" cost control measures that will go into effect and hopefully be built upon.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 01:49 PM) But he started with universal healthcare and ended up coming back to the middle, "pulling" his position more to the left than what the country wanted, which was no additional government coverage. Honestly I think you're just upset that more people don't think like you. Yeah, you might not have nearly as many "liberal" politicians as you'd like, but I think you're pretty extreme. There's not a single conservative policy you agree with. It's not easy to get voted in with a "let's change everything radically from what it is now!" campaign. This is sort of what I'm getting at. A lot of people switched to "identifying democrat" during the latter bush years, and I think a lot of liberals mistook that as a drift toward liberalism. It really wasn't. The base of the democratic party is not liberals. Being a democrat in rhode island or ohio is a lot different than being a democrat in chicago or california. The good news is that demographics are on the democrats side. The bad news is that in the short term, the largest voting bloc is very, very conservative, and very very good at voting. So that's why I don't think it's a good idea to just throw out any progress that IS made (and there was a lot), push the candidates that are there to the left, vote for the better candidate, push that candidate to the left, etc, all the while paying attention to local politics and zoning so we start building a more dense society...last part's all me, but nonetheless. This stuff is hard. And the past 3 years are no where near the success I was expecting. But progress is a lot harder than standing pat. ANd a lot of liberal policies that have evidence behind them are NOT very intuitive, whereas the GOP can sit there and be like "do you like taxes? No, well OUR party doesn't believe in taxes" and no matter how stupid that is, it's a winning electoral strategy.

You have to understand that the majority of the public is worried about the deficits. When one party is swearing we're bankrupt, it's too counterintuitive to say "well actually 100% debt:gdp ratio is not unheard of for countries" blah blah people won't believe you. So they fought to make the austerity measures out of the short term and to include defense cuts. Given the circumstances, the question becomes whether you wanted that or the country to not pay it's poorest citizens social security because there is a delusional congressional majority and pass off congressional responsibility to a super committee. This is what you see in republics like the united states when a party starts behaving like republicans. One reason our country worked so well was because the ideological alignment was out of whack due to racism. that doesn't exist and it favors the party with more rigid discipline.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 2, 2011 -> 09:13 PM) Wait a second I'm not arguing against running liberals in primaries. I'm arguing against voting to bad Democrat candidates just because they're not Republicans. You could primary that bad candidate to the left. But the left doesn't do that enough. They just have them get voted out of office, let the republican get in office and vote in bad legislation, and then a democratic candidate will then position themselves as moderate, and if they win the liberals will celebrate, then sit on the sidelines and watch and bemoan the centrist candidate because they didn't vote for liberal causes, then let a republican take over.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 2, 2011 -> 09:09 PM) "she said she would have voted to repeal DADT, but darn it, she just missed it" Obama campaigned on all sorts of stuff he immediately backed away from as his opening move. edit: What Balta said. So, you have a great example of a completely conservative democrat in a state that only votes for democrats because of historical reasons, where everyone is worried that she won't vote for the derivative language in the bill because she's so pro-corporate, gets primaried by a slightly to the left candidate who paints her as pro-banks, and she then doesn't support that language because she wants it to be STRONGER...and primarying her didn't work because? Yeah, you're right, she's not russ feingold. But in a world with realities, you could look at what does work, and replicate it, or you could look at what doesn't work, and just assert really adamently that it should work. We know that latter doesn't work. But it's the only gameplan in the liberal handbook.

"she all of the sudden became the world's biggest derivative regulation backer"

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 2, 2011 -> 09:00 PM) Especially in the Senate though where it actually mattered...how many of them could win if they were legit liberals? Nelson in Nebraska? Lincoln in Arkansas? Are those seats going to be won by Russ Feingold? Did you miss what happened when Lincoln was primaried? She all of the sudden become the world's biggest derivative regulation backer.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 2, 2011 -> 08:54 PM) The Republicans took one part of one branch of government and forced serious policy changes within 7 months. Largely because Obama was afraid of their big, swinging dick. He immediately adopted their narratives and immediately took legitimate options to get around their obstructionism off the table. He fought for nothing and capitulated to everything while getting nothing in return. Somehow this is liberals' faults. Dumb, whiny liberals who are stupid for expecting Democrat supermajorities in Congress and a Democrat President to make equivalently substantial changes in the two years they controlled government. They did make substantial STRUCTURAL changes. The way our military is run, the way women in the workplace can be treated, the way health insurance and care is run. The republicans got a bunch of one-off cut promises. Not even cuts, promises to cuts, in exchange for not completely ruining our economy. And the republicans can do this because their base is conservative and votes, and is active. The democrats can't do this because their base is moderate, wants compromise, and liberal base just doesn't vote so they pander by being more conservative to get the median voter to their side. Your behavior reinforces this. You could go and organize a primary to get someone more liberal, you won't do that, you just will vote for a third party that will put absolutely no pressure on the democratic party or conservative party.