An anonymous reader writes
"For the first time in United States political history, the House Majority Leader has been defeated in his primary election. Long time Republican congressman and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated by 10 percentage points in the Virginia primary by Republican Tea Party challenger Dave Brat. This shocking defeat is likely to upset the political balance of power in the United States for years to come."
Re:Democrats voted
By MightyYar
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2014-Jun-11 14:24
• Score: 4, Insightful
• Thread
Thing is, just about all of those things you listed are so-called "wedge" issues that have very little bearing on most people, even if they deeply affect some consequential number of people. Remember that we are mostly talking about federal government here, which is supposed to be tackling things that make sense on a federal level:
- Public funding of stem cell research: While it might be promising, there aren't any real therapies as of yet and the republic will boldly march on in any event.
- Abortion: The republic will boldly march on.
- Same sex marriage: Almost completely inconsequential to the health of the republic.
- Discrimination based on sexual orientation: There is probably some meat to this one, as it is difficult to call yourself a democracy with a repressed minority.
- Flag Burning: This would probably have zero practical impact on free speech.
- Affirmative action (well, technically use of quotas): another inflammatory issue, but probably some meat to it as we do need to decide what criteria needs to be met to measure the success and need for these programs.
- Gun control: 30,000 traffic deaths per year shows that society can function perfectly well with a similar number of gun deaths.
Notably absent from your list are things like:
- Debt, government spending, taxes, budget, etc.
- Domestic spying
- Foreign policy
- Military policy
- The role of federal vs state government
- Using the federal government to alter people's behaviors.
And on those issues, I bet he looks surprisingly similar to his Democratic colleagues. Even on wedge issues, I'd bet he's not far off. For instance, I'd wager that for every politician you can find who supports curtailing free speech by restricting flag burning, I can find another who would like to ban hate speech. I'd argue those people are both the same kind of politician, even if they have different motives.
Re:hahaha!
By OneAhead
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2014-Jun-11 14:29
• Score: 5, Insightful
• Thread
entangling alliances set up after WW2 specifically to prevent an American retrenchment.
There's nothing of that sort. The US went to Iraq against the will of a majority the UN (it wasn't just France, who simply got scapegoated for speaking out a bit more loudly than everyone else). And that's a general pattern; whenever there's talk about intervening somewhere, the US are the ones enthusiastically firing up the rhetoric while mostly everyone else is calling for cool. It's so predictable that Russia has started exploiting this to make the Americans look like fools (I'm talking about the Syria chemical weapons debacle here). The "our allies asked our help" argument is just a convenient casus belli if your military-industrial complex begs to show off its shiny new toys. Truth is, if you're the biggest bully on the block, whenever there's conflict, you will be asked for help. Most often by both sides. All the US has to do is pick a "long-time ally" on the spot, then send the cruise missiles on the other guy's ass.
Apart from that, +1 good post!
Re:hahaha!
By something_wicked_thi
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2014-Jun-11 14:40
• Score: 4
• Thread
Too bad you don't have any facts on your side, then, isn't it?
You people are as bad as the creationists with your science denial. There's overwhelming evidence that the earth is warming, that it's caused by mankind, and that it's going to be really bad for us in another one or two hundred years. It's so overwhelming that 97% of climate scientists agree with that.
And then you like to point out irrelevant local phenomena as "evidence" against this, like the antarctic sea ice extent increasing this year while ignoring the actual volume of it, ignoring arctic sea ice, ignoring greenland ice melt. Or you like to point to 1998 as being a very hot year and saying "look, we've only had a couple of years hotter than that" while ignoring the trend lines, as if one year of temperature means everything.
Which is why you're as bad as the creationists. You think your tiny little facts, like an incorrectly dated fossil, or some scientific misconduct around one hominid fossil, disproves an enormous body of evidence. You've got your head in the sand and you seem to like it there.
Brat and Elizabeth Warren have in common ....
By ankhank
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2014-Jun-11 14:42
• Score: 3
• Thread
.... a review with praise in Common Dreams, a self-identified "Progressive" website, about the surprise winner in Virginia's Republican primary:
http://www.commondreams.org/vi...
"... Republican Dave Brat, a college economics professors who spoke about GOP hypocrisy and railed against Wall Street greed, unseated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a primary challenge.
âoeAll of the investment banks, up in New York and D.C., they should have gone to jail.â ... Thatâ(TM)s a common campaign slogan repeated by Dave Brat, the Virginia college professor ....
The national media is buzzing about Bratâ(TM)s victory, but for all of the wrong reasons...."
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The media will talk about anything except the real problem
Re:hahaha!
By OneAhead
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2014-Jun-11 14:42
• Score: 4, Interesting
• Thread
What's going on is the Tea Party is apparently dragging the republican party to the right of center (politically).
The Republican party has been well to the right of the center since long before there was ever talk about this Tea Party. The Tea Party is pulling them towards the extreme right abyss, where there be totalitarianism (just like at the extreme left). From an international point of view, even the Democrats are center-right. The US political system is unbalanced, with no credible left. Maybe one will spring up once the Republican party has crashed and burned and the Democrats have been pulled a little bit more to the right by non-extremist Republican refugees. It's even possible the new left will call itself "Republicans", just like in the early years of the two-party system.