Elections 2012 [third-party candidate option added]

[Phytotron]

OK, but here's the problem. First of all, you seem to be putting more emphasis on the superficialities of the performance than the substance. Yes, Rmoney was on top of his game—it was almost like he had caffeine for the first time in his Mormon life. Obama seemed like he didn't want to be there. In that respect, Rmoney destroyed Obama. But again, that's performance, not substance.

On the substance, saying "'moderate Mitt' step[ped] out from behind the shadows" isn't right. Stepping out from the shadows implies that maybe that's the real Mitt, but it's not. It's a complete fabrication. The real Mitt is the one we saw in that 47% video. Be on the lookout and don't let anyone you talk to fall for that "moderate Mitt" performance.

Trouble is, Obama didn't put up much substance of his own.

There were a lot of policies put forth in the past 4 years. Some of which I say "hell yeah, 'bout time" and others I'm like "grrr wtf! what is the matter with you!!!!!"

Totally.


And now I realize that I have to unirate, and the debate is just about to start, so I'm gonna cut this off.

[sinewav]

Right, that's how I felt about the candidates, personally I guess. But I also said it didn't change my vote because of substance.

I've got the debate open in another window. Obama is killing.

[Cody]

lold "cutting big bird & Planned Parenthood"

Obama is just destroying Mittens tonight.

[sinewav]

lold "cutting big bird & Planned Parenthood"

Obama is just destroying Mittens tonight.

Dude, Mitts is going to have nightmares for years after this stare.

[Concord]

I wish Obama would have pointed out to Mitt that tariffs on China make everything made there more expensive for the American consumer.

[Word]

Note that Obama did the same with McCain, let him win the first one and then destroyed him in the other two.

Also, I loved that moment during the gun control part when Romney walked to Crowley as if he was going to hypnotize her ("That's what we need more of, Caaandy!") and the she just burked him (if that's the right word).

[Phytotron]

Neither of them were good on China. There was a portion of that 47% video that wasn't much covered in the major press, but you can go look at it yourself. From the transcript:

And I remember going to—sorry just to bore you with stories—but I was, when I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there, employed about 20,000 people, and they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married, and they worked in these huge factories, they made various small appliances, and as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with little bathrooms at the end with maybe ten rooms. And the rooms, they had 12 girls per room, three bunk beds on top of each other. You've seen them. And around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire, and guard towers. And we said, "Gosh, I can't believe that you, you know, you keep these girls in." They said, "No, no, no—this is to keep other people from coming in. Because people want so badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out, or they'll just come in here and start working and try and get compensated. So, we—this is to keep people out." And they said, "Actually, Chinese New Year, is the girls go home, sometimes they decide they've saved enough money and they don't come back to the factory."

Now, I would have hammered him on this. There's so much in there. Outsourcing, right off the top. The bullshit about why the girls are there—it's often that they're driven there by their families to get money to send their brothers to school. Girls aren't allowed education. The bullshit about these compounds keeping people out; that's what these factory owners have said for years and years as PR to assuage western investors. No, they are there to keep the girls in. They're not allowed to leave until the New Year. And then there's his admiration of sweatshop labor and desire to bring that model to the US.

But Obama can't hammer him on that stuff because his policy on China is typical of Democrats on any policy: point to the Republicans and say, "what they said, just not as bad." He still supports "free" trade with China and other nations, without any meaningful conditions on human rights, labor rights, consumer protection, or environmental standards. It's slightly "not as bad" as Rmoney's actual position, but it's not good either.

[Lucifer]

Some asshole put this on my facebook feed today:

THERE ARE FRENCH DEPARTEMENTS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE???? WTF?!?!?

I'm voting for the candidate that promises to kick all the euro bastards out of the western hemisphere. Ever heard of something called the Monroe Doctrine? That's right. USA forever, bitch!

That's right, anybody of european descent has to LEAVE the western hemisphere. And anybody who thinks that eurotrash people can stay here can talk to my two pistolas, because *I'M* an American, and all you ******* Europeans have to leave, RIGHT NOW.

I'd vote for Romney if only he'd endorse the Monroe Doctrine AND the Roosevelt Corollary.

[Cody]

Some asshole put this on my facebook feed today:

THERE ARE FRENCH DEPARTEMENTS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE???? WTF?!?!?

I'm voting for the candidate that promises to kick all the euro bastards out of the western hemisphere. Ever heard of something called the Monroe Doctrine? That's right. USA forever, bitch!

That's right, anybody of european descent has to LEAVE the western hemisphere. And anybody who thinks that eurotrash people can stay here can talk to my two pistolas, because *I'M* an American, and all you ******* Europeans have to leave, RIGHT NOW.

I'd vote for Romney if only he'd endorse the Monroe Doctrine AND the Roosevelt Corollary.

I really hope such a person doesn't exist and you made this up to make us laugh

**ADDED winky face**

[Phytotron]

That's ehxxxtreeeemely awesome.


By the way, Word, since you apparently watched that debate, what'd you think of those swipes at Germany?

[Word]

Well, being named in one row with China isn't flattering but I don't disagree just because my perspective is different. He's right that we try to get more educated immigrants like Canada because currently few academics come here and get their qualifications acknowledged as they should, so they have to work as taxi drivers instead of, say, surgeons - regardless how much we need those. This is one of the most important things that will have to be changed soon, especially seeing the pressure of our demographic change.

I'm not sure what to think of the part about eco-friendly cars, because if he was referring to that ugly Opel Ampera (are there any other examples for German's supposedly big role in developing eco-friendly cars?), he shouldn't ignore that the company still belongs to GM, although our state and iirc some Russian company named Magna invested a great deal to keep it alive, and it is still struggling, if you can trust recent news. I'd rather pay attention to France here, but I don't know Hollande well enough yet.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/10/15/ ... his-smart/

[Phytotron]

I was just referring to the outsourcing bit. Stop stealing our jobs!

Tangentially related, there are also German companies that own, for instance, American municipal utilities. That bugs me, partially for being foreign-owned, but mostly because I think municipal utilities should be publicly owned.

...our demographic change.

Are you bothered by that? I find it really disturbing the degree to which not only Germany but various European countries lament and criticise the fact that brown people are immigrating to their countries; and all this talk about not only limiting their immigration, but also of promoting increased birth rates among the "preferred demographic." And that it's not just the fringe right that's saying these things.

[Word]

I think municipal utilities should be publicly owned.

Me too. This is getting worse here, too.

Are you bothered by that? I find it really disturbing the degree to which not only Germany but various European countries lament and criticise the fact that brown people are immigrating to their countries

Well, um, that's not why we are so concerned, at least my reasons are different. I'd find it good if we'd get more skilled immigrants, like the UK so that they can actually help carrying our system substantially. But when those skilled workers came already in the past, they got idiotic, poorly paid jobs and now their children are getting more and more angry and have their own problems, to get proper education and jobs. And at the same time more and more local schools close down, the doctors have to deal with too many patients and nobody really knows who will pay them in the next 50 years, and the cities don't have enough money to employ more teachers or expand the few schools we keep. I mean, I live in Cologne and we have lots of immigants here, but few of them are "brown" if you mean Afro-Americans/Africans, or African Frenchmen. The majority of them is from Turkey and the first two generations of them (the ~35-70 year olds) are fully integrated. The third generation isn't. What is so odd to many people here is that this third generation is more religious than the moderate and liberal Turks who stayed in their homeland and wear headscarves and take the Quran literally, and that we now have to deal with honor killings every two years. But we, the "original" Germans aren't better - I don't like how this national pride is coming back again either (we saved the Euro so we are the best people in the world etc., or that we award ourselves with a Nobel prize. Really...?).
http://www.turkishweekly.net/article/14 ... rmany.html

It's not that I care about our race dying out or our language changing a little over the course of time...

[Phytotron]

By brown, I mean just about anyone non-white. So that would include Middle-Eastern and South-Asian people as well as African. It would include Hispanics and Latinos, though they're not much relevant to this discussion. It even includes the Romani "gypsies" who are getting so much crap in France. Indeed, what's going on in France is even more disturbing. Here's a country where a number of African Americans moved during the Jim Crow era for its tolerance, and now the outright systematic racism against Romani, Middle Easterners and North Africans, and Islam in general. The outlawing of religious head coverings? Disgusting. I'm saying this as an atheist, feminist, and moral universalist, as you know. I think head coverings in Islam and other religions—including Catholicism—serve primarily as an instrument of religious and patriarchal oppression. I would like to see them gone. However, this is simultaneously a violation of religious liberty, and is still subordinating women's choices to a patriarchy; this time the state making the choice for them. Women are just playthings of men.

But when those skilled workers came already in the past, they got idiotic, poorly paid jobs and now their children are getting more and more angry and have their own problems, to get proper education and jobs. And at the same time....[all that other stuff]

To which I was about to respond, until you sort of did it yourself:

But we, the "original" Germans aren't better

Aren't these more problems of class and society, not immigration? Somebody would be working those jobs resulting in those social and economic problems even if the immigrants weren't there, right? (Rhetorical questions.)

I don't like how this national pride is coming back again either ... It's not that I care about our race dying out or our language changing a little over the course of time...

That's good to hear. That's the other bit I didn't mention: this broad European resistance to real multiculturalism (as opposed to white appropriation and selective "assimilation") and cries about the 'native' language or culture dying out. Homogeneity is boring, to say the least.


... African Frenchmen? No. Africans who speak French as a legacy of brutal colonialism. French-speaking Africans. Not "African Frenchmen."

[Lucifer]

Some asshole put this on my facebook feed today:

Something really ******* funny, of course

I really hope such a person doesn't exist and you made this up to make us laugh.

I thought everyone here knew my secret identity. Hmmm............ Better go read my web comic, and while you're at it, look at the URL.