prole

You could say the same thing about Reagan and Bush2 Obama. Fixed that for ya Yeah, except Obama actually has his shit together.

I thought this thread was going to be about the FBI raiding Michael Jackson's house in Bahrain.

Uh yeah, if these people are going to be running shit for a while (and they are), they damnfuckingskippy need to be held to a higher standard. They're not hooker-beating college football players or child diddling pop stars, they send people into wars and make billion dollar deals with our money. If their wives can't trust them not to immolate their own families over a piece of trim, we probably should think twice about their other "lapses in judgment". Is this news, am I way out on a limb here? I don't want my elected leaders to be "just like me". That kind of bullshit thinking coupled with celebri-tizing politics is how our standards and expectations have been so degraded as to allow someone like Sarah Palin to actually be taken seriously on the national stage.

You can define it how you want, but real life is not like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Without severely restricted, publicly funded elections, politicians are like mercenaries - they respond to whoever pays them the most. "Payment" can be take many forms, so think campaign contributions, votes (ie, keeping them in power), sex, etc. But VERY few politicians are out there standing up in public and saying things that most people don't want to hear, even if those things are just and honorable. Uh, I know you haven't been around here long, but trust me, I "get it". Just because existing politicians are corrupt, doesn't mean we have to accept it. I find influence peddling and the revolving door between the State and corporate capital far more egregious betrayals of the public trust. Hell, I think this Sanford is a much bigger asshole for refusing emergency money on behalf of his constituents than for anything else, but I'm not going to suggest that cheating on your wife and skipping the country is no big deal or what happens in Argentina stays in Argentina because "well Gawd, he's a politician, what'd ya expect?" Come on.

There is an assumption that they should?

Clinton's a scumbag but the impeachment was a transparent, cynical farce and never should have gotten as far as it did. I'm not saying screwing an intern or cheating on your wife (or husband(?)) should be an instant disqualifier for public office, public censure seems about right. What bothers me more is permissive cynicism that accepts corruption and hypocrisy as a given or that politicians should be free to party like oil sheiks because "that's what powerful men do".

If his own wife, with whom he shares the closest emotional bond a human being can have, can't trust him not to fuck her over, how can he be trusted not to fuck over people he doesn't even know? It's not about legislating morality, it's about holding a someone with an enormous responsibility to represent people to a higher standard of trustworthyness. "They're all hypocrite parasites anyway so..." isn't an acceptable standard to hold an elected representative to. A functioning democracy demands more.

wait, the world works? say what you will about the current system, but the age-old reality of power struggles can never go away, just change form - the rich have always fucked the poor, and each other, to maintain their position, and the poor won't miss a beat to do the same themeselves - modern debt slavery, though now based on shiny pieces of modern plastic, still has its moorings in the ancient past - none of this will change, unless we kill everybody in the world - the modern system has its huge flaws, but do you really think the avergae man was better off a 1000 years ago? do you really think we hairless monkeys are capable of casting off all of ancestral baggage and creating a utopian society? fuck it, i'm going to 7/11 and buying some nachos - on credit Wow, this is light years ahead of your "we're all cockroach food anyway, so fuck it all" post from a couple days ago. Ugh.

Farrah, Michael, Sarah...That's three!

Economists were predicting we'd hit 10% employment in '09 before Obama was even elected, you dumb cluck. No. Obama was predicting we'd be below 8% by summer's end. While your dude's economic advisor (and architect of the meltdown) was telling us that it was all in our heads, that we were just "whining". Pure gold.

Economists were predicting we'd hit 10% employment in '09 before Obama was even elected, you dumb cluck.

Get a raise, dumbass.

Anything Glenn Beck hates this much must be good. [video:youtube] Pick up a copy HERE.

Freedom isn't free.

Ha-ha, when you look around at the state the country's in and at what these guys have accomplished since '94: shrinking the middle class, increasing inequality, multiple quagmires, financial meltdown, etc., believe me, THEY'D RATHER YOU LOOK AT THEIR PERSONAL LIFE!!

Obama should cut taxes and slash government spending. I'd recommend starting the cuts with volcano eruption monitoring for the "Tacoma Area".

Tremble before...TRIG THE USURPER!!!!

You guys are so focused on the past! We need to look towards the future... [video:youtube] [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voAHRKlh7RQ [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auQJVhNH99c

R.I.P Little Death and Espectrito Jr.

You're of course referring to behaviors like prostitution and drug use that have been outlawed in countries with strong public healthcare systems, right? I hate to bring any sense of irony into this Jay, but if actually existing history is any guide (you know, as opposed to your dystopian fantasies or theo-rhetorical nonsense about "motives"), when it comes to regulating social behavior, Americans have far more fear from the puritanical halfwits and corporatists that make up your own political party.

Was this guy on the Project for the New American Century? If not, he would've fit right in.