Wrath of Dagon

You have summarized succinctly the issues I have with the Republican party and what they need to do to change in order to win the necessary demographics, nice one I read stuff like that all the time, but what you have to understand is that any party is a coalition. Take away one piece of a coalition, and all you have is a minority party. Evangelicals are 27% of the electorate, take them away and there's no Republican party, not that it matters as it's dead on the national level anyway. Btw, the 80's may have some surface similarities to now, but that's all it is. For one thing the number of swing states is vastly smaller now, the country is pretty much locked in and moving in only one direction.

I know that because the country is very polarized. Tio win the Presidency, Republicans have to win Virginia, Colorado, Florida and Ohio, there's no other way. All of these states are now trending Democratic, and this will only continue. There are more minorities, more singles, more secular, all of those heavily favor Democrats. The next election cycle it's very unlikely a Republican can be elected, the one after that almost impossible. You might say that if Democrats really screw up a Republican can still be elected. But consider that 2008 was as a bad a year for Republicans as can be imagined, and yet only a couple of red states went blue. I don't expect the blue states to be any different. Republicans haven't changed their tune, some in the leadership have. If they do amnesty, all it'll do is add another 20 million votes for the Democrats, and antagonize the Republican base to where they'll probably not vote at all. Hispanics are going to credit Obama anyway, and it'll only increase their support for Democrats. You also have to remember at least half of the Republican party is very conservative, and any moderation in the leadeship will only lose the base so that Republicans will become even more of a minority party than they already are. Like I said, it's not a question of a one time vote, it's a question of never being able to select your candidate. Right now we have half the country that's de facto locked out of selecting the President.

If you have no chance of ever again picking the President, then you're a colony, as I posted earlier. @Hurl I didn't make the projection, again it's based on demographics. People in Texas who are conservative now aren't just going to magically change , and they will be without representation. You should know what happened to California, it used to be a swing state, now it has a Democrat super majority.

It isn't really appropriate to compare the two. Japan's problems are fundamentally different from those in the US- the Japanese oversave rather than overspend, their currency is greatly overvalued and they have a historical problem with deflation. That's pretty close to the exact reverse of the situation in the US. Not really, we also had a huge real estate crash, their debt to GDP is even much higher than ours, and our interest rates are also near 0 thanks to money creation by the Fed. And are you saying our currency is not overvalued? With our trade deficits it would've collapsed except the rest of the idiot world is still using it as reserve currency. I really don't see a civil war happening. This is the 21 century, we don't resolve domestic problems with violence, and our economies are tremendously intertwined. However India separated from the Empire, Scotland might separate from England, and all peacefully. It's not the fashion these days to rule people against their will, or to have colonies. We better hurry up though, I saw a projection today in 12 years Texas is supposed to go Demorcrat, so the whole thing will be moot.

Most of it is in one day though, plus people are just now finding out about this. There is also the possibility you might wind up on the no-fly list by signing, I had to think a bit about that.

By running up the debt until we can't even pay the interest while the Fed keeps creating money out of nothing. Look at Japan, they've been following the same policies US is following now for 20 years since their real estate bubble burst and they're still mired in recession, while their debt is astronomical. To answer that question, consider which states people are leaving and which states they're moving to. It's the Federal government that betrayed us by ignoring the Constitution. It's only supposed to have limited and enumerated powers, with the rest reserved for the states. Texas never signed up to be dictated to on every issue under the sun. Plus now that we're locked out of selecting the President, we're a colony, not a state. Btw, the Texas petition is currently closing on 50000 sigs

If the economy collapses, real estate prices will collapse also. Plus it's very non-liquid. The dollar will collapse if we stay the same course, you can not pump out huge amounts of new money and still have its value stay the same, it's simply not possible. Right now the Fed balance sheet has already gone from 800 billion to 3 trillion. None of the things you listed have anything to do with being able to manage the currency. The problem with the US as I said before is we want to have our cake and eat it too, and right now we're spending 50% more than we're taking in, and it only gets worse in the outlying years.

I think it all depends whether a budget deal can be made or not. During one debate Obama said he's going to do Simpson-Bowles (the deficit reduction commission plan) We'll have to see whether it was just another lie or he's serious. If all they do is punt again and just pile on the deficit then by spring or so I'm planning to look up the 5-6 most competitive countries in the world and put most of my money in their currency, because the dollar will be wiped out.

Is that really the case? Or does it just look that way because the Republicans lost the previous two elections? What changed from Bush's era to now? Demographics have changed, and will keep changing against Republicans. Virginia and Colorado were Republican leaning states, and now lean Democrat. Ohio might still be a toss up, but Florida will probably be leaning Democrat next election. So Republicans have no path to victory.

I'm guessing, and really hoping, that the Republican party will be making some big changes to become more relevant in the next election. A good first step would be to jettison some of the crazier elements. They've already run two cadidates who are much more moderate than the party itself in 2 consecutive elections, how much more can they concede? I'm talking about the electoral map math, there are simply not enough Republican leaning states to produce a Republican president under normal cicumstances.

This makes the assumption that Obama is entirely and completely not representative of the voters that didn't vote for him, and prevents any situation of "I think Obama would be fine, but I think Romney would be better" from factoring into voter decisions in any capacity. It means that voters could not have voted for Romney because of 1 (of many) specific issue that they highly value, but rather that someone that voted for Romney must be 100% opposed to everything Obama will do (and that Romney himself would take the exact opposite decision that Obama makes). Given that the country also sees national representation with Congress, and that your statement would still be validated for any group of voters that didn't vote for the winning election, it's a bit of a trivial and inaccurate statement. My point is not that they're not being represented in this particular election (which would be trivial as you say), my point is they will never get a chance to set the agenda in any election because selecting a Republican president is now all but impossible. So the "red" part of the country isn't in the game. http://www.politico.com/2012-election/map/#/President/2012/

Don't know if it's already been discussed, but it looks to me like Republicans are no longer viable in a presidential election. Which means half the country has no representation at the national level.

So the global warming is mostly a threat to animals, is that it? As is noted in my quote above, the Little Ice Age lasted 400 years, the Medieval Warm Period 300 years, not thousands of years. And if you look at the tree ring article I posted earlier, temperature was peaking in a matter of years, not thousands. In fact there was a peak just in the 30's, remember the Dust Bowl? So basically you're just making stuff up at this point.

Anyone who says they're certain about what's going on with the climate is lying http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/04/new-paper-from-markonis-and-koutsoyiannis-shows-orbital-forcings-signal-in-proxy-and-instrumental-records/#more-73752

Bertrand Russell said (better red than dead) while advocating for the unilateral disarmament of the West. The left always wants us to give up our way of life because of some theoretical threat they found (also see "nuclear winter"). Me, I'd rather take my chances.

Why would they be? Romney is center right, nothing to do with libertarians.

Because they feel superior to everyone else and feel like there needs to be a ruling class, namely them. Engineers on the other hand are one of most conservative groups in society, think about that.

Are you really suggesting that climate change is scientific community indulging in environmental bias if not outright conspiracy? Yes, and Climategate proves it. US passed laws which made someone go through every line of code looking for any date references, because that's how they were required to certify the software. 10's if not 100's of billions of dollars were wasted. Meanwhile, some other countries did nothing about Y2K, and guess what, nothing happened. Yes, you can always use a hammer to kill a fly, but that doesn't make it a good idea.

Well, there're tree rings too : http://wattsupwithth...s-in-ther-data/ The problem with claiming scientific consensus is that academics are overwhelmingly leftist, and thus can't be trusted on issues touching public policy. They have a huge confirmation bias. Plus I remember the Y2K panic and the alarmism over Kuwait oil fires, and I'm still waiting for Krezack's giant solar flare to destroy civilization.

5 el niño years in the last 10 years where before they'd be 5 every few decades, and never twice in a row. Half truths and junk science typical of the warmists. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=119847&page=1

Well, I'm convinced. Of course there has never been a disaster before this global warming thing happened, how could I have been so blind?

That is such bull. They themselves decided to sell out, they've reaped the predictable results. I'm all broke up about their feelings while they swim in swimming pools filled with money.

All he's saying is that people without insurance still get medical care, not that it's necessarily the best solution. Also, the "poor" are covered by Medicaid in every state. Oh nonsense. He doesn't bloody well know what he is saying - as evident by the flip-flopping exposed by his previous quotes in that link. I'd wager a guess that, like Aeroplane windows and air pressure, or income taxes for the poor/elderly/soldiers, Romney doesn't have a clue how emergency rooms work - or how exorbitantly expensive they are. I mean, it's not like he's ever likely to be in one himself given how stinkingly rich he is. Emergency rooms are there, generally, to prevent death and other unforeseen and potentially permanent complications. THEY ARE NOT PROPER MEDICAL CARE. They are NOT preventative! They are there to patch up immediate problems, charge people a fortune (as I understand it goes in the USA), and then send them on their way only to return later BECAUSE THE UNDERLYING HEALTH PROBLEM HASN'T BEEN SOLVED! Talk about a burden on the public health system. Emergency rooms are not health insurance. By implying that they are a viable substitute for people who can't afford health insurance, Romney is yet again showing just how ****ing clueless he is when it comes to the conditions people poorer than him (which, coincidentally, is like 99% of the population) have to live with. But he's also showing how ****ing clueless he is when it comes to basic medicine. Prevention saves the economy and public purse loads of money! It prevents sick days for employers, thus increasing productivity, and it lowers the load that emergency rooms have to deal with by eliminating problems before they grow into larger, worse, more expensive and time-consuming to solve complications. You might take a breather from your rant and notice he was talking about someone having a heart attack, emegency room is where they'd take you if you had insurance or not.

All he's saying is that people without insurance still get medical care, not that it's necessarily the best solution. Also, the "poor" are covered by Medicaid in every state.

Part of the reason the revenues are so low is because of the moronic temporary payroll tax cut that Obama pushed. They love their Social Security, just don't want to pay for it. Also, using a bankrupt country with a shrinking economy as a model for us, the guy who wrote your article has some balls.