I work for a college that has a board and President that I vehemently disagree with on social issues. If I want this paycheck I just have to deal with it.

What's not to agree with about higher pay and better benefits?

Do you really think anybody is against that??

Unions are really politically active though, right? (I don't actually know much about unions, I've never been in one or associated with one in any way).

This happens far more than you think it does as many corporations donate money to political parties & candidates. That money is, of course, in some way coming out of the money that your efforts make for the corporation. Unions don't make money, so they get dues instead.

Glad to see Rice step out of the way. Kerry is far more qualified than Rice.

Rice removes name from consideration for secretary of state | Fox News

Unions don't mean higher salaries and better benefits for everyone, just on average. The most skilled/talented get shafted in a union many times.

True - fair point.

Kerry's an idiot. It's embarrassing that he will get the nod. Somebody blew it for Rice whether it be her, Obama, or the CIA but she can't get the position after what she said. Just can't do it.

Not to mention the red tape to get something done when a union is involved.

I'm sure Obama will find her a plum assignment for her loyalty.

A bit of a reach with this comparison.

Lot of hoopla over nothing. I'm glad that while this country is heading to financial apocalypse the Republicans can stick a feather in their cap over this...

If Congress doesn't get a Farm Bill done, things are going to get crazy. Our milk pricing scheme will revert to 1949 rules where I would see prices around $38 per hundred pounds of milk (current price around 20). Sounds great for me, right? Not really. That kind of price will kill demand when prices for dairy products double in stores.

Meanwhile the NYC Teacher's Pension Fund has so much excess capital that they are donating $1 BILLION to Sandy Relief:

NYC teachers' fund pledges $1 billion in Sandy aid

Pretty sure what I read was that they're investing not donating flat out. Yep.

You're correct:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-1...ebuilding.html

"The Teachers Retirement System, with board members chosen by the union, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city Comptroller John Liu, will make investments in the form of bonds purchased from owners of the projects or by taking an equity stake, said Liu, who acts as custodian of New York’s $128 billion pension system. The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP."

Good to know. The minority and women votes are going to bode well for the Dems and the GOP better figure it out.

Three lessons from the near-final popular vote - latimes.com

The GOP died in 2008 at the national level. They simply have no connection with a vast majority of blacks, asians, and hispanics. And since they refuse to even address that, I see no reason to believe the GOP will ever rebound.

That's ridiculous. All you have to do is to remember your history. Remember just a short time ago in 2004 when everyone, including the shill Carville, was saying the Democratic party was dead and will never win another election? Politics is cyclical and in an institution where there is so much corruption, arrogance and greed, those will always be among the leading causes for downfall (or the agent for change).

Yup- a brief recalibration and the GOP will be just fine. It's just how these things work.

SI

Not what Obama wanted but it shows movement. Not alot of details or quantative analysis yet.

Fiscal cliff talks: Speaker John Boehner pitches millionaire tax hike - John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman and Carrie Budoff Brown - POLITICO.com

The GOP will be fine, but the Southern influenced Christian conservatism that has been driving the party for the past thirty years will become less and less dominant. At some point the GOP is going to have to change enough policy ideas to appeal to the changing face of America.

Exactly. Maybe nobody's noticed, but the blacks, asians, and hispanics vote as entire groups for Democrats and their voting numbers go up each election cycle, never down. There is nothing cyclical about it.

Yep...they seem to want to appease the minority right wing minority of the platform, while killing themselves nationally. If the same-sex marriage cases that go before the court rule in favor of same-sex rights, it would be interesting to see how the GOP reacts. Will they feel less pressure to carry the "torch" against same-sex marriage, and allow them to be able to play that card down a bit since the court would had the decision for them?

It looks as if it will be Kerry. Have to think he is qualified and well respected in the senate.

Source: Obama to tap Kerry to be next secretary of state - CNN.com

Boo

Hard to go from Condi to Hillary to this milquetoast.

I'm debating whether to buy an AR15 before the ban happens. I think its a given now.

Obama vows action on gun violence: 'These tragedies must end' - First Read

I still don't see how it gets through Congress

SI

Or even solve the problem of the culture of violence.

They might get SOMETHING through Congress to say they did something. Something like an Assault Weapon ban seems like both a super-long shot and something that barely addresses anything. I think that's why Obama hasn't really bothered with trying to push gun control legislation. Really difficult "wins" in this area won't do too much. Now though, there may be more of a political reason to push SOMETHING. We had a federal assault weapon ban in this country for 10 years - the sky didn't fall, the government didn't run wild, and big scary legal guns were still readily available after manufacturers made appropriate modifications - I doubt many people noticed either way unless they were collectors or gun dealers.

It won't solve the whole problem, but we can do things to lower the odds of this happening again while still allowing hunters and shooters access to firearms. Just because we can't fix everything doesn't mean we shouldn't fix anything.

But like a lot of things, it won't lower the odds in reality, not in our culture. There is so much out there already and so accessible to anyone who really wants assault rifles to shoot up one more place, even if a ban is put back in place (which I favor, of course). But of course you're right, they will try to "fix" things because they have to DO SOMETHING because people look towards Washington for solutions. The true solution lies in our own families and communities and standing up against violence and against the promotion of violence in our culture, as well as mental illness apparently. I just lost my train of thought so that'll have to do for now...

I agree with the second part completely.

On gun safety, I think it will make a difference over time. It won't eliminate all assault rifles and high capacity magazines, but it will reduce access. There is no quick solution to any of this, but little steps add up.

Worth pointing out that in 2000, then-President-elect George W Bush won something like 70%+ of Muslim-American voters. President Obama won 68% of those voters in 2012.

In 2004, President Bush carried something like 45% of Latino voters. President Obama carried 75% of Latino voters this year.

Even the Asian-American bloc, President George H.W. Bush carried 55% of in 1996, compared to President Obama's 70%+% in 2012.

These have not been, historically, monolithic voting blocs the way the African-American demographic has been (first for the Republicans between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Era, and then for the Democrats since the late 60s).

These are voting blocs that have, within the lifetime of most college students, gone from being at least competitive for Republican Presidential candidates to being demographics where the Democratic candidate will run up the margins.

Some of that is because of Republican-proposed or Republican-implemented policy, but a LOT of that is going to be because of Republican rhetoric. As I said before, GWB carried 68% of the Muslim-American vote in 2000. The best figures I can find for 2004 are that John Kerry won between 70-80% of that bloc in 2004.

It's not *just* demographics. It's easy to say that the minority voters are outbreeding white voters and try to call that the end of the story, but it's really not.

You're absolutely right. There's nothing cyclical about it; these are not groups who are going to wake up in ten years and just come home to Saint Reagan. It's a direct result of Republican rhetoric in the last 20 years. The harder the Republican Party tries to hold on to the aging white voter with rhetoric, the more the rest of the country is going to slip through their fingers.

FWIW, did some research tonight and am thinking about Colt AR15 LE6920 or LE6940. I get majority of folks on the board will disagree with me but (1) I am a law abiding citizen (2) figure I won't be able to buy one in the next couple years (3) I am good with increased gun controls (4) Katrina did show how society ahd law enforcement can fail and ... for comic relief (5) Dec 21 is coming up.

They might come home to Saint Rubio or somebody else though.

The growth of the Hispanic population in the U.S. isn't cylindrical, but the power balance of a two-party system will always be. We're not going to become a 1-party system in the U.S. In a free Democratic society, change will always be on the table as a potentially desirable thing. The other party can always blow opportunities to be that alternative in a given year, but not permanently.

If I knew anything about guns, owned enough land, and had a ton of money, I'd buy a whole arsenal and lock it up on the property somewhere. Why not. I'm not afraid of zombies or 12/21 but I figure there's at least a 1-2% chance for total economic collapse in my lifetime, firearms could be a great currency, like a cooler version of gold. My only concern would be people thinking of me as a "gun guy", so I'd hide it in a secure locked up shed somewhere. More practically, I keep meaning to buy a handgun just for when I'm in the Idaho wilderness alone with my dog (mostly to scare off mountain lions or whatever might see my dog as a threat/prey), but I don't even really know how to do it. I guess I could just go to a pawn shop and buy a gun, though I'd feel really shady and defensive doing it. The CCW process would entail taking a class and I'm not sure I want to get that involved.

It's not as simple as "speaks Spanish, gets Latino vote."


That doesn't mean the GOP is going to be that second party. That's kind of my point. They've taken three or four growing demographics that were at least competitive for Republicans and completely driven them into the arms of the Democrats in the span of a generation. That's not something one man, whether it's Marco Rubio or Bobby Jindal or whoever, is going to turn around just by running for office.

Can the GOP recover their status with those demographics? Certainly. But they're going to have to stop demonizing minorities just to appease the aging white demographic. More to the point, it may not, at this point, even be enough to stop demonizing said minorities. If they manage to kill the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric tonight, overnight, is that going to be enough to repair their bridges with those communities?

I don't think so.

I think you're right that this is a two-party country, but I don't think the nature of the two-party system is such that the GOP is guaranteed survival just because of cyclical politics. I think it's entirely possible that a schism happens at some point and the rational members of the Party split from the lunatics, either because the lunatics get frustrated with a Party that won't drink the ideological purity Kool-Aid, or because the rational members recognize that the only way they're going to rebuild the GOP as a party capable of winning national elections is to figure out a way to tell the non-whites "Hey, these assholes don't speak for us."

Maybe not quite THAT simple, but if Bush could get 40% of the Hispanic vote, a strong Hispanic Republican would have to be able to pull a strong majority. As a group, Hispanic-Americans are still somewhat socially conservative.

I saw an article about how the "Bush got 40% of the Spanish vote" thing isn't exactly accurate. I don't recall the specifics...let me see if I can find it real fast.

I've probably said it before here, but if the Republicans think they can win the Hispanic vote by courting Cubans in Florida it's probably not going to go as well as they hope.

True, whatever mileage GWB got with Mexican-Americans wouldn't necessarily translate to votes for a Cuban-American candidate. I'm more talking bigger picture, future of the Republican party. Things looked much worse for the Dems in 1988 than they do for the Republicans today, things will balance out one way or another. That may take big leadership and philosophical changes, but America just isn't setup for a 1-party system (thank god).

Here's just one article, from Business Week. There's plenty of others out there I'm sure.

Did Hispanics Really Surge To Bush? - Businessweek

But that Bush figure doesn't mean anything without looking at the attitudes and policies that have changed since then. To many the GOP stands for harassment and being asked for papers for being latino, the immediate deportation and break up of families and making it a million times harder to cross the border between the two countries - whether that's true or not

Unless Rubio could actually win the nomination while repudiating all of that (and in today's GOP there no way IMO) it's not going to make a damn but of difference what his surname is

If it was really true that Hispanics just couldn't ever support the current incarnation of the Republican party, than the Republican party will change. That's my point. I'm a little disturbed by the amount of American who would PREFER a one-party system at this point, but I don't think that'll ever happen.

Oh, I agree with that. I guess I'm just interested to see whether that happens in the next 4 years or not. But ultimately losing elections does interesting things with principles, no doubt about that

That's a really impressive showing for Bush, considering he wasn't even running :D

SI

I used to work with a gun collector who operated under that theory. He knew enough about the market to deal in ones that would continue to appreciate in value. Meanwhile, he figured that if society ever did collapse, he had something which was both usable and liquid. Seemed like a really sound theory to me. However, I don't have expertise in that market to take advantage as he did.



I would think it would be better, not worse to take a class. I've been meaning to take a CCW now that I live in Texas. Better to know how to use it than to just have it and fumble around with it. You're much more likely to hurt yourself if you don't know what you're doing.

SI

I have a 9mm handgun and a 22 rifle and feel comfortable with them. However a AR15 will be a step up so I do plan on taking a class at the gun store.

SI, you said it better than me "both usable and liquid". I'm not sure the AR15 will appreciate in value, but it should do a good job in maintaining its value.

Molson, my suggestion is don't go to a pawn shop. Go to your local hunting store to buy a weapon new (e.g. I go to www.adventureoutdoors.us in GA). You may pay a premium but you know its functional, under warranty etc. Most of these stores will have classes where they will teach you how to use the firearm. Another place is your local shooting range. They will have classes you can take.