Because I really liked the last one. It made me happy.

There are other political threads here. Please, no damn politics. Politics can go in the fifteen other threads posted today.

A post to note all the ways in which your life is really pretty good-- and to remind yourself that, unlike the Other Side, your value is not determined by the percentage of the vote a political candidate gets in Ohio.

Posted by: Ace at 03:01 PM | Comments (320)
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"It's not until you read the newspapers" that you realize the impact on people's lives. Like, for example, the 100 dead.

He didn't read the newspapers? He had no idea of the incredible suffering? He had no idea of the death poll?

No, all he saw a lethal storm as was an opportunity for Democrats.

Posted by: Ace at 02:29 PM | Comments (129)
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You know, I think this loss was bad enough that this might happen.

Of course it will be politically disastrous, but the point isn't to win elections; it's something else.

Honestly, I'm not so into politics that I give a rat's ass about these games. I don't care about being Head of the Conservative Club. I don't care much who is. Politics don't so dominate my life that I care about these things.

What I want from government is to be ignored by government, to not be burdened by government, to be free as possible from government. And that requires having people in office -- not in grandstanding, personally-benefiting clubs -- who will advance that notion.

There is a real cleavage between those who are just fascinated by political philosophy -- and who want, like the Libertarian Party, to have a little club where they can discuss how awesome their political philosophy is -- and those who are much less interested in political philosophy and really only care about political action, where the actual rubber meets the tangible road.

Herman Cain can do what he wants.

I would say this though: Some of us only push certain issues because we're in a coalition with people who care about those issues. if we're not in a coalition any longer, we no longer carry that burden.

We'll both lose, but perhaps we'll both be happier, apart, pursuing only our own narrowed agendas, living under one-party socialist rule.

We'll have lost everything in terms of actual real-world impact, but we'll each have our own no-account little clubs where we can draw up fantasy plans for a fantasy politics.

Honestly, though, I am too wondering if this marriage can be saved, and wondering if we simply need to lose for 12-16 years with third parties, until some new viable coalition forms.

It's a difficult question. I don't have a real answer. I think the uncomfortable suspicion is that we can win apart, but we also can't win together.

I'm not sure what to do about that.

I do know that any third party will hand one-party rule to the Democrats for at least 8-12 years, until a new coalition forms. As the Republicans ultimately replaced the Whigs.

It would be tough.

But who knows. Maybe we just all hate each other too much.

But I don't get this idea. We just lost with 49%; we're going to try again with 24-25%?

Posted by: Ace at 01:55 PM | Comments (616)
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Living well is the best revenge.

Matthews is a vicious idiot with an envenomed heart, a sad clown dancing furiously for his daily meat.

The Good News: A Hurricane swept in, killed 100, and got your imaginary boyfriend elected

The Bad News: You're still Chris Matthews

This is what I'm getting at with the Positive Thread. We do not worship at their bizarre altars.

We are better than that.

End of the day, they have a President, we have ourselves.

Posted by: Ace at 01:45 PM | Comments (91)
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Because a commenter suggested it, and I was actually going to post a recipe.

No, really.

I call this "Autumn in a Bowl." Or Pumpkin-Sausage soup.

Um, it's kind of simple. Pumpkin, chicken broth to cut the pumpkin down to a smoothish liquid (but not too smooth), chopped onions (eyeball it) and broken up bits of sausage (as much sausage as you like; I like a lot). Some Italian seasoning or salt and pepper.

Then you cook it until it's hot. *

No, it's not sweet, there's no sugar. I think it's Atkins-friendly because pumpkin doesn't have too much carbs in it. But, honestly, I don't really know the actual number.

But it's the sort of soup that puts you in the mind of J. Crew, hunting dogs, and fowling pieces.

* All my recipes are like this. I don't do measurements or timing or cooking heat.

That's for wimmens. Real men just eyeball things.

Posted by: Ace at 01:14 PM | Comments (285)
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Bumped. Lots of political threads below. Don't post political stuff here.

Rules: No politics. No mention of Obama, debate, anything. If trolls attempt hijacking the thread, they'll be trollbusted. Don't quote them and perpetuate the original offense. Their comments will disappear.

In three weeks we celebrate Thanksgiving. Even in the direst days of the Republic, we have much to be thankful for.

Always remember this: Government is not, to us, a holy thing, a central organizing principle displacing the family and church, that it is for liberals.

Our lives go on-- richer, freer, better lives than those who would prefer the gray existence of Obama's sad cow Julia. (Incidentally, wasn't Julia the name of the woman in 1984?)

I'm not posting this thread to sugar-coat things. We got hit, hard.

I'm posting this thread because the coming fight will require a high morale.

Talk about what's important to you -- besides repudiating Obama. Besides solving the fiscal crisis.

For just a period of time -- until the next post -- let's remember the things we fight for, the things important in our lives. Not the policies we fight for, but the people and the passions that make us fighters.

Posted by: Ace at 12:59 PM | Comments (711)
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Happy Days are here again!

Barack Obama may consider introducing a tax on carbon emissions to help cut the U.S. budget deficit after winning a second term as president, according to HSBC Holdings Plc.

A tax starting at $20 a metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent and rising at about 6 percent a year could raise $154 billion by 2021, Nick Robins, an analyst at the bank in London, said today in an e-mailed research note, citing Congressional Research Service estimates. “Applied to the Congressional Budget Office’s 2012 baseline, this would halve the fiscal deficit by 2022,” Robins said.

Electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket.

Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (318)
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Happy Days are here again.

I guess Obama is FDR after all.

I don't mean this in a good way. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 PM | Comments (103)
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Here are some people who lost:

Allen West.

Rick Berg, for North Dakota Senate. He just conceded.

Mia Love, as the headline mentions.

Michele Bachman may or may not win -- the count is close, and her opponent is paying for a recount.

While we're mostly looking at Why Romney Lost, we have to also figure out why so many other people lost. People who should have won.

Why didn't they win? It can't be "because Romney drove down the vote." In Utah and North Dakota, Romney won easily. Why did some voters vote for Romney but then vote against Mia Love and Rick Berg?

The only thing I can think of is that the Republican Congress is even more unpopular than Congress generally, and more unpopular than Romney generally.

Why? Not sure. I think the Rape Abortion stuff plays into the "extremist" label but I've made that point already and there is surely more to it. For example, let's face it, most people with less money want those with more money to pay more to give them free stuff, and it's long been that way, and it will almost certainly continue being that way. That aspect of fiscal conservatism is also not terribly popular.

I don't know. I was harping on the Rape Abortion thing in the comments last night, and a commenter wisely noted: "Fiscal conservatism also proved to be not so popular, too."

One more thing (which I'd meant to include in the Why Romney Lost thread) is that Bush's maximalist military policy is also incredibly unpopular. Romney made a play for distancing himself from that at the very end of the campaign, but probably too late.

I think it might be folly to blame any of the three stools of conservatism for the loss, as all three wound up losing to one extent or the other.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: I don't think the public minds bombing foreign malefactors. Given the popularity of Obama's drone strikes -- he brags to the press about his Kill List, so popular is it -- I'd say bombing is just fine.

The problem is occupation. Occupation is designed to spare the population of the targeted nation the horrors that will inevitably flow from a power vacuum -- riots, banditry, ethnic cleansing, civil war. All of it.

I think the public has now spoken pretty clearly on this: They aren't willing to sacrifice American lives for this latter purpose, this merciful part of military intervention.

It costs too many good American boys, and we wind up trading their lives for foreign lives, whose actual worth is subject to some debate.

If it's not evident already, the Neocon Project is dead. It's actually been dead since around 2006-2007 (and was very unwell before that), but there has been a cowardly reluctance in the Republican establishment and among Republican pundits to admit this.

A lot of us (and I include myself here) have just hoped that no one would notice this fact, so we wouldn't have to admit it, and we could stick to our guns and keep sort of claiming we've always been right.

Well, we weren't. We certainly misjudged how quickly we could transform backwards, alien countries during an occupation, and also misjudged the public's patience for such a project.

If we could do it in two years and then get out, that's one thing. That is potentially doable. (I don't know if it would be advisable; but it would be politically achievable.)

But we're obviously not looking at a two-years-and-gone situation. We're looking at 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years, and the public simply loves their sons more than they like the idea of transforming Afghanistan into a pluralistic democracy.

I don't think they think that's even possible, for one thing. I can't say I disagree with them.

One thing we got a little too used to during the Bush years, and then during the McCain candidacy, was speaking glibly about doing "whatever it takes" to achieve this result or that. We are now suffering from Vietnam Syndrome-- a national aversion to war. Happens after every long, bloody, grueling struggle. Happened after WWI. Happened after Korea. Nations -- people -- tend to forget how awful war is during times of peace. They then go to war, and are unpleasantly reminded.

On foreign policy, we cannot speak in maximalist terms. For every statement we make about what we would do, we must limit that with a clear statement of what we would not do.

Otherwise, the public will imagine we want to occupy another country. Obviously we don't -- there is no appetite for that -- but I think we're still trying to pretend we think the Iraq Occupation was just terrific, so the public isn't completely crazy to take us at our implication.

I've said this before: I think the public would tolerate a bombing campaign against, and even the injection of ground forces into, Iran, so long as the ground forces were an armored column with the strictly-defined and limited goal of seizing nuclear material and then exiting-- within in days and weeks, not months and certainly not years. A strictly defined mission, always kinetic, always moving, always in mass, always bringing maximum firepower to anyone coming within a mile of the column.

No nation building, no protecting engineers as they rebuild electrical grids and bridges. None of that.

Nations will rebuild themselves. They always have. They don't need American hand-holding, and even if they do, that's their problem.

We continue paying a price for the Bush years. I hope Obama's disastrous second term, and the coming recession, will be the last payment.

By the Way: I think that even what I lay out -- bombing Iran, plus an armored column or two to dash to the reactors and centrifuges and destroy them -- would be politically unpalatable.

This is a horrifying thought, but here's where I think we are: Obama is pretending he's going to stop Iran's bomb production, but he's actually lying. He intends to let them have the bomb, then hope for the best. Hope that containment and deterrence work.

But the horrifying thing is that I think the public knows he's lying, and is on board with that. They just don't have the resolve -- or understanding of the future -- to stop it. So they want to lie along with Obama.

So, the course I laid out is something that could never be announced in a campaign.

Once already in office, though, it's possible the public would withhold judgment long enough to accomplish it. So long as it was in-and-out.

One big difference between anti-war conservatives and anti-war liberals is this: Liberals talk endlessly about foreign deaths, while conservatives are pretty focused on American deaths.

I think, on that point, the general public is on the conservative side. No one's happy about foreign deaths, either, but when push comes to shove, when America is threatened, they will tolerate them. They won't cheer foreign deaths, but they'll chalk it up to the Way of the World.

But when it comes to American deaths, most independents, and a lot of conservatives, start balking.

Posted by: Ace at 11:10 AM | Comments (539)
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1) It seems to me that the only retail politics that have flown over the last five years have been the Oprah "Here's your free shit" stuff.

2) We seem to lack true believers among much of our professional political class on our side. And I don't mean you, Rick. I mean the folks inside the Beltway in particular.

3) Drew brought up a good point in a phone conversation during last year's NHL playoffs... there's a big gap between that which works in terms of getting elected to the House and that which works in the Senate and presidential runs. I think it's less a question of message and more a question of polish. Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock are shining examples of that.

4) We've reached a point that all of us dreaded- I question whether we can sell austerity to a country that has gone whole-hog for free shit. Depending on the outcome of the popular vote, that may be underscored further.

5) To my horror, the nation has decided that it makes most sense to punish producers. As you'll recall, the Bush tax rates expire January 1st. We're not France (yet), but watching John Boehner's track record gives me very little cause for optimism. At this point, the question will be more of who can manage entitlements better.

6) We're going to spend the next four years praying that the conservative wing of the Supreme Court stays healthy and hangs in there, in the faint hope that the Senate can be flipped (for all the good that did us this time) and that a conservative president can be elected.
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:27 AM | Comments (463)
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