Hey, there! Log in / Register
That's one way to get attention for your state-senate race
By adamg on Sat, 07/02/2016 - 7:48pm
Ted Busiek is a Republican running for the Middlesex and Worcester state-senate seat now held by Jamie Eldridge (and once held by Paul Cellucci). Today, he tweeted:
DONALD TRUMP. Putting self-righteous faggots in their place since 1993. How I love this fellow.#MAGA https://t.co/wqCxfa4pI2
— Ted Busiek (@TedBusiek) July 2, 2016
And then doubled down with:
Just imagine what an unsafe world we'd live in if not for the language police to tell us what words we can't say. https://t.co/k7xurz3aOe
— Ted Busiek (@TedBusiek) July 2, 2016
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Guess....
He is not talking about cigarettes.
No...
In Britain "faggots" are meatballs, "fags" are cigarettes.
Self-righteous meatballs are
Self-righteous meatballs are the worst kind of meatball.
What do people know about Ted Busiek now?
I don't think I've heard the word faggot since I was in high school. Kids I know from a job I have who are ages 13-17 don't use it. There is one gay boy in the group. The rest of the kids in the group accept him as they do each other. Another boy teased him once. I asked him if that bothered him. He said no so I let the kids work it out. I think asking the question made my point: Don't tease to oppress.
Ted Busiek is allegedly a grown ass man. Using the word faggot as a cudgel against liberals, Indeed praising Trump's disregard for ethnic and sexual pref. groups as what he likes about him. Disrespecting Mexicans, Muslims and gay people seems to be high on Ted Busiek's list of things to admire. In truth, Trump has not shown the disregard for gay people Busiek has.
I don't know how you represent your constituents when you disrespect many, not because you know them, but because they identify as a person of Mexican heritage, Muslim faith or gay. To me, this is simply ignorance. As a campaign tactic I find it cynical, off point and destructive.
Check out his campaign site
His "Issues" tab will entertain you for 5-10 minutes.
http://www.tedbusiek.com/
Lowlights
From the "Issues" page:
Wants to prohibit same-sex couples from adopting children, since we have so many "healthy normal couples" available
$15 min. wage for workers who don't reside in MA and reduce min wage for state residents to Federal minimum, so residents are more attractive to employers
Anti-choice, it probably goes w/out saying.
We can all agree to eliminate daylight savings, right??
As it turns out my wife and I just move from Rozzie to Acton. So we have the power to not vote for, how do they call Trump in Scotland, ah yes, this jizztrumpet.
It might be easier for this knucklehead to relocate to NH instead of trying to bring NH to us.
On one condition
We stay "daylighted", as it were.
I will not tolerate 4am sunrises with 7pm sunsets. We are geographically in Atlantic time.
So, we just
move the clock half an hour the next time the change comes up and leave it there. People will adjust to the new cycle pretty quickly.
There are some sensible ones in there
But mostly stupid ones.
It's like he doesn't actually want to get elected, but wants attention. Does he have a talk radio program or book coming out?
More entertaining....
are the replies on his twitter account.
Issues
Yeah, this guy certainly has "issues."
*sigh* I will never get that
*sigh* I will never get that time back.
Ted Busiek is a pathetic
Ted Busiek is a pathetic excuse for a politician.
I would like to see if anyone from the Acton Republican Town Committee has anything to say about this. According to Wicked Local he was elected to the committee in 2008.
Welcome to Donald Trump's Republican party!
And everyone who votes D just because is to blame
You can't have it both ways.
You can't keep on re-electing Democrats and letting them run unopposed, equating conservative politics with racism and bigotry as a knee-jerk reflex, shutting down debate with PC language codes that go way beyond simple propriety and politeness, and then complain that what's left of the opposition is weak and composed solely of people who aren't shy about being angry racists and bigots.
Democracy is a two-way street.
Oh please, don't blame this
Oh please, don't blame this on the Democrats for the stupidity of candidates like this. Maybe this state is mostly Democrat because the National Republican party is way too extreme and lots of the reasonable semi conservative people have either jumped ship to the Libertarian Party, became unenrolled or in some cases became Democrats.
There you go again
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the attitude is that only nutters and racists could possibly vote Republican, then guess what: only nutters and racists will be on the ballot as Republicans.
And So
The Libertarian Party rises.
One might hope
I can tell you I'll be voting for Johnson if he gets on the MA ballot, even though I'm in no hurry to see weed legalized or Snowden get a pardon.
He'll be on the ballot in 49
He'll be on the ballot in 49 states.
https://www.reddit.com/r/libertarian
50, plus DC, Guam, Puerto Rico
Johnson and Weld will be on every ballot.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
That's a neat trick
Guam and Puerto Rico vote in D and R party primaries but not in November.
OK, I Overstated (excuse the pun)
The point is he'll be on every available ballot, not just 49.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Overterritoried
to be exact
Why not?
Those both seem like eminently reasonable (and libertarian) positions to me.
Not a Snowden fan
Not a bulk-surveillance cheerleader per se, but just plain not a Snowden fan. And that's all I'll say about that on an online forum.
Weed? Idunno. I hear the liberatarian argument for it, but in my head it just sounds like a bunch of stoners wanting to get The Man Off Their Backs. I could come around to it, but I'm just not there. I voted against the ballot question in 2012 for pretty much the same reasoning.
Not much of a user myself
However, the vast majority of problems caused by marijuana are not caused by using it per se, but arise as a result of its illegality. That illegality, in turn, is vastly disproportionate to the hazards posed by using the drug itself.
In other words, it is both a waste of money to make a very benign substance illegal, and a waste of resources to end up combatting the crime that arises because it is illegal. Legalization and taxation is a far saner route of control that (as we have seen already) raises money for other things - like that heroin epidemic mess.
And that may all be true
but in my mind at least, context matters. Legalize marijuana, and then it'll be on to decriminalizing (for instance) cocaine for reasons of safety, or revenue, or unburdening the legal system, or whatever.
Like I said, I'm not disagreeing with your facts, but I'm not there. Not enough to not vote for Johnson, but enough to not be in a hurry to legalize weed.
No, it wouldn't
Slippery slope is a fallacy, for starters.
Look up the work of a UK doctor David Nutt, who pissed off politicians because he got law enforcement and medical and addiction experts to determine the risk levels for various drugs, then attempted to set policy accordingly: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_cause_most_harm
Cocaine, Meth, Heroin, etc. are highly dangerous (as is alcohol, but we have run that prohibition experiment before with dim failures).
Science and law enforcement and medical science taken together should determine drug policy - not the agendas of idiot politicians grandstanding on dated and irrelevant moral arguments and erroneous beliefs about drugs.
I'm not grandstanding on anything
I'm saying I don't like the idea of legalization and am voting for Johnson despite of, and not because of, his stance for it.
I'm also allowed to have my own moral opinions and am not required to conduct scientific measurements to justify them to ten decimal digits of precision.
Edit: your link says Nutt asked experts to rank the drugs' harmed based on their experience. Naturally alcohol would be at the top of the list since it's commonly consumed. In other words, that's not exactly a scientific measurement either.
Who said that you were?
Politicians, however, do grandstand on their "moral standards", and that gets in the way of systematic, scientific thinking on the subject.
And, yes, Alcohol would be at the top BUT marijuana is pretty commonly consumed, too, and it is near the bottom of the list.
Do some googling and you will find a separate rating scale of "net harm to society" in one of the peer-reviewed papers. This was just the lay friendly version from the Economist, a known liberal lefty rag ;-)
Nutt was a cause celebre after some indignant politician decided that he was not doing his job at his post because he was supposed to do only science that supported the government policies ... wrap your head around that one.
You do realize that alcohol
You do realize that alcohol is deemed the most dangerous drug out there?
Let me just say this: I have worked since I was 14 - I won't go into how many decades that is. I am a tax paying homeowner in the state of MA. I give to charity. I am a great neighbor. I give to my community. I shop locally. I'm a vegetarian (this really isn't a point but I'm feel self righteous right now:) I do not drink or smoke ciggies. I smoke weed and yes, I like it.
It's not a gateway drug. You could say anything is a gateway drug. Caffeine, cigs and alcohol are promoted to kids/people far more than pot will ever be and yes, those are the gateway drugs you should worry about.
The only thing wrong with pot is the lies a handful of handful of white men decided to tell lies about it over 50+ years ago.
Are you seeking validation?
You're not going to get it from me. I don't really care how you spend your free time, but I'm not going to tell you it's all OK either.
Hint: arguments that end with blaming everything on a group of white men, especially dead white men, aren't really arguments. They're dogwhistles too. Except they're not really good ones, since the other side can hear them loud and clear.
Hey Roman
If you are capable, please read about the real history of marijuana and why is was criminalized. It was in fact due to racist white men going after black and Latino users of marijuana for racist reasons. Facts matter. And denial of racism is one of the most virulent forms of racism.
And prohibition was racist against Jews and Irish
and guess what: I don't care. Legalizing it is just plain not a priority for me, especially not in a presidential election.
This is so sutpid
Charlie Baker is the most popular governor in the country so from the word go, your argument is stupid and reductive.
Complete and apparently uncurable delusion
Roman
You cant possibly believe the words you are typing unless you are totally delusional or trolling us all. Today's Republican Party welcomes with open arms...... religious bigots, racists, homophobes, misogynists conspiracy theorists, the profoundly stupid, gun nuts, and other haters and wackos of all kinds. As a result you have Republican leadership saying they don't agree with anything Donald Drumpf has to say, but they support him and will vote for him anyway. You cant make this stuff up.
And your theory is that Democrats are to blame? Reminds me of the concept of Bizzaro World in the old Superman comics. Black is white, up is down, wrong is right, and Democrats are to blame for what Republicans say and do.
Republicans, and their propaganda machine of Fox News, Brietbart, Drudge, etc all are reaping what they have sown. It's ugly, dangerous, and frightening. And no, it's not the fault of Democrats
Libertarianism is just another branch of the Republicans, despite placing themselves on some kind of "intellectual " pedestal. Racism is racism, even when it is "justified" by allegedly lofty idealism. The truth is that Libertarianism is fundamentally fraudulent.
No, Democrats are not to blame. Your line of reasoning is breathtakingly bizarre.
There's that impedance mismatch on full display
I'm not saying individual racists and nuts aren't responsible for their opinions. I am saying that the concerted and continued campaign of delegitimizing all right-of-center positions (on fiscal policy, on guns, on trade, on defense, on everything) by conflating it with racism and homophobia, a campaign that's on full display on college campuses right now, and has been there for a good deal longer than a news-cycle memory...has succeeded in starving the Republican Party of anyone other than the nuts. That's not bizzaro world, that's reality.
Ha!
That's hilarious, and also not true. The right of center positions you enumerate stand on their own lack of merits.
Prove it without accusations of bigotry
ad hominem atracks, or left wing dogwhistles. Otherwise, hold your peace
Republican state and federal economic policy and soocil issues
Kansas Tax Cuts: A Close Look https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xliMwipXoiA
These policies don't help anyone but the top 1% who fund GOP campaigns. The budget director of the Reagan Administration has called trickle-down a fraud.
Women's right-to-chose to have an abortion. GOP passed trap laws in 23 states to effectively block that right. The supreme court struck down their cynical attack after half the clinics in Texas were closed.
Using the bill to fund CDC & NIH research and response to Zika as a vehicle to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, a Medicaid provider, and permit the placement of Confederate flags in military cemeteries. The president was already on record about vetoing cuts to planned parenthood funding (Medicare reimbursement.) A baby was born in Florida with Microcephaly and GOP house is on summer break, no Zika funding appropriated 6 months after request was made for $1.6 billion.
Wants to cut funding for free school lunch for poor kids in school. Over half of the kids in the US in school are from poor families. Income Inequality in America is as high as it was in the 1920s. GOP passes tax cuts for the rich cuts free lunch for kids living in poverty.
Republicans refuse to vote to raise the min wage at all, never mind to a living wage thus placing all low wage workers on taxpayer funded assistance for food, housing, healthcare and if they want education to get a better paying job, debt they would otherwise have no means to pay back.
Will not authorize war against ISIS. Will not authorize the closure of Gitmo a successful recruiting factor for ISIS. Will not work with President Obama. Will not advise and consent on SCOTUS nominee.
It isn't accidental or incompetence, it's malicious. I find it hard to believe anyone supports this.
Your post sounds like daily
Your post sounds like daily talking points. I'm not going to argue all points, but there are some that are just vague enough to fit your narrative.
policy critque
it's a policy critique on the merit. feel free to respond to the policy critique with a policy critique
Okay, point by point
Has jack shit to do with fiscal conservatism and was not being discussed. Next.
And why is it the Federal government's job to pay for "free" school lunch? And how much is enough, exactly? Whom do you declare to be "poor?" I got fifty cent lunches when I was a kid. Then my parents got on their feet and got normal jobs. But the way the statistics keep flying around, people making 50k+ would be eligible under some proposals. That's not what the social safety net is for.
Minimum wage doesn't help anybody except for grandstanding politicians. Prices will either rise to the point where the new min wage is worth the same as it is today or work will be driven to the black market, composed of both illegals and native-born unable to be hired otherwise.
I thought to you libs didn't like foreign wars. Also, do you remember what happened last time we meddled in an Arab civil war? Hell, do you remember what happened when we last kicked over a hornet's nest in Iraq (and pulled out too damn early?). Do you mean to tell me that Afghanistan is a pillar of stability now (and that one was out-and-out 100% justifiable revenge, not nation-building).
You've got it turned around, pal. It's the president's job to work with Congress. Holding press conferences (from foreign countries, no less!) that complain about how Congress isn't doing its job without actually sending them bills and negotiating with both parties for bipartisan support does not count as making an overture.
Even a broken clock is right every once in a while.
100% wrong
So minimum wage doesn't help anybody except grandstanding politicians?
This is an obvious lie. You should be ashamed of telling lies like this, but you obviously have no shame and no moral compass. Disgusting.
That's because...
...he's a troll. No point in arguing with it.
I think....
... this guy actually BELIEVES the heartless, Ayn-Rand-inspired rubbish he spouts.
Bbbbut...bbbut
how could anyone believe something that I *don't* believe? :'-(
I'll play along: what's heartless?
Is not chomping at the bit to jump into the middle of yet another Arab civil war heartless?
Is not wanting to spend more money than we have coming in is heartless?
Is not pretending that artificial hikes in the wage floor will magically turn burger-flipping into a solid middle-class career and produce absolutely no downsides heartless?
Is not believing that families making six figures deserve government freebies heartless?
OK. Guilty. I'm heartless. I even have a copy of Atlas on the bookshelf to prove it! And having no heart, I hereby declare myself immune to emotional appeals. I will only listed to actual arguments from now on.
Your turn.
There you go again
Even when a Republican is admittedly at fault, the real reason is because a Democrat made him do it. Now that's some powerful logic. Awesome.
Make reading comprehension great again
I'm saying it's the Dem's fault the nut is the only one left standing. I'm not absolving anyone of any responsibility for their statements and actions.
Straight from the Republican playbook
Make something up that's not true, deny you said it, pretend you said something else, and criticize or insult anyone who points it out. Rinse, repeat, ad nauseam
Yes, I'm a Republican
I'm registered as a Republican, I voted in the primary, and everything.
Are you really so sheltered that you think of 'Republican' as an insult that can work against...wait for it...an actual Republican?
I can't even
So, equating Republicans with bigotry and racism is wrong, because the guy running as a Republican in Acton is a big ol' racist bigot? And that is somehow the Democrat's fault for pointing out that he's a big ol' racist bigot?
If the Republican party wants to pull itself back from the margins, it can start running on platforms that aren't dogwhistle racism and economic games of chicken. It can do that with or without the help of the other party. So far, the MA GOP has done a pretty OK job locally (see: Baker, Charlie), but can't hope to compete nationally because the average Republican voter outside of the northeast is completely unhinged.
I thought the same thing. Don
I thought the same thing. Don't blame the Democrats for the Republicans being out of control lol. Classic Republican answer though. Blame everything on the Democrats, even when their own party malfunctions.
Oh no
You don't get to twist out of it so easily.
It's the left's fault for delegitimizing right-wing positions by repeatedly and incessantly conflating them with bigotry and playing the race card with abandon.
Example I've seen on this very forum in regards to Baker, Charlie:
Putting the brakes on a billion-over-budget greenline extension for a fiscal reassessment, not going all-in for a north-south rail link, and imposing a fiscal control board on the same MBTA that screwed up so fantastically in 2015. Good management? Careful evaluation? Sensible caution?
Nope. All racist against the poor people that ride the T and aren't white.
The purpose is quite deliberately to starve the opposition of talent by making smart people embarrased to vote or run for office as Republicans. And guess what, you've won. The national party got itself Trumped because it couldn't come up with anyone better. Now you get to enjoy your victory.
Projecting much?
Seems to me that you are doing in this exchange exactly what you accuse the Democrats of doing.
The Republican party has been marginalized by its own name calling - not because Democrats reframed anything. Dogwhistle and teaparty politics were fine with the leadership so long as they didn't get funny ideas about actually taking over the party - which they appear to have done.
The GOP wasn't framed as a monstrosity - it turned itself into a monstrosity.
Not much. Just the right amount.
Tea party is a perfect example. It started out as generic grass-roots anti Obamacare. Obama's surrogates deemed the them racists (Obama's the first black president, you see). And it turned into the Michelle Bachman Show (remember her?).
Even now, Obama still gives interviews where he ascribes nearly all (not some, not a bit, but nearly all) of the opposition to his policies to the fact that he's the first black president. When he doesn't give campaign speeches in foreign countries, that is.
The Tea Party was a grassroots movement for about five seconds
before it was co-opted by professional astroturfers Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity, both funded by the Kochs. I would be amused by the irony that the monster is now terrorizing Dr. Frankenstein, but there's nothing funny about the prospect of Trump getting elected.
Tea Party was never grass roots,
not even for 5 seconds. It was fully created by, and funded by Republican and right wing money, and fully promoted by the Republican propaganda machine, Fox News, assisted by CNN, because "both sides" nonsense.
Yeah, five seconds.
And just after those five seconds rolled over Scott Brown won in '10 because the vast right-wing conspiracy did it. It had nothing to do with winning a majority of votes cast in of all places Massachusetts.
Sometimes you need to be at peace with the fact that your side did something stupid and got boxed on the nose for it by the voters.
Brown didn't win because of a grassroots movement,
whether real or a fake one like Tea Partyism. He lucked into running against Martha Coakley, who was jaw-droppingly awful.
She was awful enough to win state-wide before
and his campaign platform explicitly and repeatedly stressed his planned 'no' vote for Obamacare. Spin it how you want (and I don't disagree that Coakley phoned it in) but Brown won the first time around because people generally liked what he was selling.
Coakley didn't just phone it in: she was actively terrible.
When Brown took his alleged Tea-Party populism up against a slightly more formidable candidate, he showed his juvenile, Trump-level-taunting true colors, and got his ass handed to him. Buh-bye, featherweight. Maybe that shit will play in your real home in New Hampshire? Errrr....
Not wrong, but not relevant
We're talking about '10, not '12 here. And yeah...I was more than a little disappointed when Brown brought out 'Fauxcahontas' as his campaign platform when there were so many other good and substantive ways to go after Warren.
Yes, I know '10 vs. '12: my point was
that if Brown allegedly rode a grassroots wave in '10, it had utterly fizzled a mere two and half years later. I imagine part of it was that MA voters got to see how much of a boot-licking Wall Street toady he turned out to be, mint-in-box barn coat notwithstanding.
I'm not disagreeing with you
Obama won in '12, didn't he?
My point was that first came the grass roots, then came the charges of racism, and then came the nutters, in that order.
The Tea Party, even in its first five seconds, always
stank of racism to me. Just curious timing, that the great populist debt and deficit hawks stayed quiet during eight years of W, only to suddenly emerge the moment the brown guy got in.
Thanks for making my point for me
And for accusing me of supporting W's socialism. Kerry would've definitely held the line on the deficit.
Take it easy. I wasn't accusing you of anything.
But I stand by my observation about the very odd timing of the rise of the Tea Party. W started ballooning the debt and the deficit (from the starting point of a Clinton surplus) very early in his administration. Where were all those angry old white people then?
Oh no?
To borrow your phrase, there's a very odd timing to your repeated allusions to racist motivations for opposition to Obama. And it's odd for you to keep referring to any opposition to large-scale deficit spending as the sole provenance of "angry old white men," who incidentally would have been voting against W in the '00 primary.
To the point: The timing of the opposition is not odd at all. Obama ran on a platform of more spending, more taxation, casually flirted with the idea of authoritarian imposition of single-payer healthcare and mandatory national service, and made no effort to dispel any notion that he was some messianic figure who would turn back the oceans and heal the planet.
McCain ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism. McCain lost, Obama won. The opposition that voted for McCain was still there and still had the same opinions. Obama said he didn't care and didn't feel like compromising because he thought he had a mandate for Hope And Change. And it was only racism that could possibly motivate continued opposition.
Sorry, but if the angry old white people who clearly
made up the bulk of the Tea Party early on were purely deficit and debt hawks, they had plenty to squawk about for years before 2008. But suddenly, the month Obama was inaugurated, before he had a chance to make a single policy decision. out they sprang. Do you really find it so difficult to connect those dots?
Yeah, I do
Because it wasn't the first, nor will it be the last time that the fiscal hawks remained politely quiet while the Republicans were in power only to come out of the woodwork, as it were, when their party isn't in charge anymore. Call it hypocrisy if you like (I certainly do), but don't call it racism just because the guy in the oval office isn't white.
Certainly the GOP party elites demonstrate that kind of .
naked hypocrisy: ask Dick "Deficits don't matter" Cheney. But the rank-and-file angry old white people who came out to those early Tea Party rallies, with their clearly racist signage? I don't ascribe the same sophistication to their motives that you do.
Regardless, you're still pretending that the GOP hasn't been playing dog-whistle racist politics since the Civil Rights era, and that is clearly patently false. The only difference between Trump and every GOP leader since the LBJ administration is that Trump has dropped the whistle.
What racist signage?
The made-up kind? Or the one that says "I disagree" which is clearly racist if a white man says it to black man?
TROLL
TROLLTROLLTROLLTROLLSKINNYSKINNYTROLL.
just checking
what happens when you reply and it's gotten down to one letter per line already?
Conspiracy
This reply is now right wing. It's a conspiracy!
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
WALL
|
•|
|•||
•||
•|•
|•||
Still in denial ? We all see what you did there.
It's only "charges of racism", because there is no real racism in the Republican Party. Right.
MA has the best test scores
MA has the best test scores and wages in the country. The least educated and poorest states are MS, WV, AL, LA, KS, etc. All red as hell and all shitholes. I'm perfectly happy being in a democratic run state because I like being literate and not having type 2 diabetes.
WV is blue
And MA also has the third highest cost of living after NY and CA. And ranks quite low on govt transparency. Keep on enjoying the echo chamber, though.
Edit: Oh yeah. Now that I recall, two Speakers in a row convicted of corruption and a third one who willed away the term limits for the post. And a state senate president whose brother...well you know.
Compare to, say, my home state of PA where the (Republican) president of the senate got primaried and lost his job for voting himself a pay raise.
WV is blue? Funny, but it voted W, W, McCain and
Romney in the last four Presidential elections. Governor: D, AG: R, both houses of the state legislature: R, US Senators, 1xD, 1xR, US Reps, 3xR. That doesn't seem very blue to me.
Yeah, if you want high quality of life from public services, it comes at a tax cost. There's no free lunch. But MA ranks 31st of 50 states on tax burden. Our high cost of living is driven more by our relatively thriving economy, how desirable it is to live here, not our tax rates.
Sure, you could live a lot cheaper in Fort Wayne or Tucson or Boise, but then you'd have to live in Fort Wayne, Tucson, or Boise.
OK not bright blue
but not deep red either.
And who said anything about tax burden? I did say (on several other threads) that the roads suck, and tax dollars aren't being spent wisely as evidenced by said disrepair, but I said absolutely nothing about taxes being too high.
But now that you mention it, the centralization of revenue collection as disbursement as "local aid" is also an easy mechanism for corruption and abuse of power.
Also, snob much?
My job has taken me all over the USA, including many places
you presumably envy for their low cost of living. You can have them.
I suppose Boston isn't for everyone, but I've lived here for 30 years, high cost of living and tough winters and corrupt State House speakers and all, and there aren't many places in the States I'd trade it for.
And why exactly were you going on about red and blue states and cost of living if not to correlate the two somehow? If not tax burden, how else do you connect our political makeup to cost of living? I think we're among the lowest dozen or so states in unemployment. Our big growth drivers, tech biotech and healthcare, are thriving. We ranked in the top 20 business-friendliest states.
Feel free to move to Idaho for its low, low cost of living. I'm happy paying for high quality of life here.
You're just looking to change the subject
The topic of conversation was the less-than-robust and less-than-responsive government in Mass, which lurches from silly scandal (Olympics, F1) to not-so-silly scandal (DCF, Annie Dookhan). The fact that a whole bunch of smart people live here and a whole bunch of profitable corporations are headquartered here doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that this is a single-party state with the aforementioned objective deficiencies.
You're the one who turned the discussion to how well-ranked we are on education and tax burden (which you will note I did not dispute).
I guess I'm not clear on your point.
You seem to be trying to connect blueness with awfulness in terms of quality of life. I think that's ridiculous, based on my own anecdotal experience of living in MA, seeing a lot of the rest of the US, and citing a lot of third-party indicators that suggest that quality of life in the Commonwealth outperforms 80% of the rest of the country.
If it sucks so bad here, why aren't you moving to Indiana, or some other imagined paradise where you don't have to pay taxes for public services, and state and local politicians aren't somehow corrupt? Let me know what state that is, and how that works out for you when you get there.
My point is that Mass isn't a worker's paradise either
and that despite all the good, there are some glaring deficiencies in governance that you libs just want to pretend don't exist. And my claim is that what is essentially a one-party political system is less apt to respond to and remediate those problems than a balanced two-or-more party system is.
Roads I've talked about before. In this case, I claim that a state with a healthy major party opposition would not have an utter nut like this guy running for office on the ticket of that major party.
worker's paradise? change the MA house
What have Republicans done for workers?
Right to work means you can work in a union shop and not pay membership dues or even agency fees-- you can freeload, benefit from higher wages and better benefits and not pay the union whose negotiations won them. Nobody can afford to work for free. Right to work is a cynical attempt to defund unions. Republicans do it for politics but the victims are workers.
Remove the right to collectively bargain and limit raises to less than or equal to inflation for public workers. Scott Walker passed this with Act 10.
US Senators opposing workers voting to unionize a VW plant in Chattanooga. VW wanted a union and a work council. They believe labor should be at the table with management to discuss strategy to meet goals. Germany has the most robust economy in Europe.
List Republican proposals to address income inequality.
Any? Bueller? Bueller?
Federally funded research, like the kind that produced the Internet (DOD) and Velcro (NASA) has been cut back to pre WWII levels.
GOP policy is formed almost exclusively by the self-interest of the richest Americans. Political science professors from Princeton and Northwestern have determined that public opinion has negligible influence on public policy, only the very rich who fund campaigns matter. This is called oligarchy. The Republican party enables it.
When DeLeo said he'd raise the min wage if we cut unemployment insurance workers spoke up loudly and said screw you, the unemployed shouldn't pay for low wage pay increase. The MA house is owned by the business lobby. If you want to make Mass a better place to work, you have to change the MA house.
Wow!
This isn't just stupid burning, but stupid accomplishing nuclear fission!
Is he the same guy with the Obama/Pelosi truck with the expired tag?
We need to get some Scots on twitter to properly describe him.
Belligerent Cypher
He doesn't mention any experience or qualifications anywhere that I could find on his web page. No idea where he works or has worked, what he does, etc.
Graduated from high school in
Graduated from high school in 2004 which puts him at around 30. He moved in 2006 to work for a Congressional candidate (turns out the candidate was anti gay, what a shock.) Looks like he spent some time in the military , some time in sales and is currently pursuing a degree.
http://acton.wickedlocal.com/article/20160329/NEWS/160325963
Oh, I found that, too
However, one would think that he would have worked that all into a coherent story line for his campaign web page.
I also don't get the pictures of Boston splashed around when I believe there are other landmarks in his own district to preen beside?
Oh, there certainly are
Let's see ... there's the Town of Concord's water supply, Nagog Pond -- it's very scenic, but if you loiter near its shore, the police will interview you. Maybe they would pose for some photos with the candidate before hustling him off the property. Could bolster his Law n' Order cred, if he can keep the context quiet.
There's a town arboretum, but I suspect our candidate would try to avoid being associated with that. Some tree-huggers or flower children might spoil his photo op.
There's a nice Children's Museum, but that doesn't seem to resonate with the candidate's message.
The Kelly's Lanes bowling alley is popular for kid's birthday parties, but again, no real support for the agenda.
I guess a random photo of some Boston buildings is as good as anything for a background on his website.
Arabic Translator
Worked as Arabic translator in Air Force, A.D. from Defense Language Institute. Currently studying electrical engineering at Merrimack College.
Sounds just like Hillary.
:-0
Can't believe he left out Volvo-driving,
latte-swilling, quinoa-and-kale-horfing, NPR-donating, bike-lane-loving, and terrorist-coddling. I suppose one can blame the limits of Twitter. But at least he led with his risibly backward, playground-level homophobia.
Watching Trump supporters vent is clearly analogous to hearing post-Brexit chavs feel Free at Last to air their nastiest, most loathsome bigotry. That's instructive, useful.
Arugala-Eating
That's the one that's missing
Never heard of TFG before,
Never heard of TFG before, but be sure to ascribe his views to everyone who's voting against Milhous McPantsuit.
I liked the description of Hillary I saw
somewhere online as the person in the office who is really good at her job but that no one invites to the happy hour after work.
I'll take the unlikable, highly competent, extravagantly experienced, and modestly corrupt candidate over the racist, vindictive, narcissistic sociopath who lacks the faintest grasp of macroeconomics, realpolitik, science, the Geneva Conventions, and the Constitution any day of the week.
I missed you...
Highly competent?!?!? Only modestly corrupt?!?!? I can't even reply to that...Your comments confirm what I've always thought about you and your contributions. You frighten me....Please seek help immediately. Please stick to your worthless food reviews if possible. Thanks in advance.
It's all relative, I guess.
I suspect you and I share some of the same qualms about Hillary.
You may well contend that she is only modestly competent, only barely more qualified by experience than anyone else who has run for the job in the last twenty years, and maybe even speculate that she is extremely corrupt.
If your argument is that you would prefer a more pure alternative, I'm with you. But as grownups, we have to make a responsible choice between two less-than-savory alternatives, a douche and a turd. At the moment, that's our system: it's all we've got. Too bad it's a fallen world.
I'll even give Trump credit for being a successful businessman, even if it's obvious that his empire was built on getting a huge head start in life, repeatedly fucking over his investors, committing outright fraud, and puffing up an empty brand through canny media exploitation. It's the American way! (Of course if you really believed in his yuuge success, you'd be calling for him to release his tax returns. Funny how you're not doing that, sucker.)
Want to talk me into Trump over Hillary? You'll have to convince me that he's not a racist, vindictive, narcissistic sociopath who lacks the faintest grasp of macroeconomics, realpolitik, science, the Geneva Conventions, and the Constitution.
Go ahead. I'm listening.
Third option
Others point to johnson weld above. Not perfect, but given a choice between the crackpot and the crook, I pick the other guy.
The Dems publicly aren't troubled by a potential indictment, but if it were such an open and shut non-case, I'd think tge FBI would long since be done with their investigation. Hard to run the country from jail.
If she skates, it'll be typical Clinton. On a technicality.
That's what I mean by "That's our system": that
third-party candidates are so marginalized by our process that a vote for them ends up as a meaningless protest gesture, or worse, helps get the shittier of the two major-party alternatives elected (see Nader and W).
If W can skate on deleting five million emails, Hillary shouldn't get indicted for a private email server, either. It's a commonplace that pols at that level never pay the price that ordinary citizens would for flagrant misbehavior, as long as it doesn't involve getting caught "in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy."
I think the FBI has already signaled that an indictment is likely not forthcoming. To my mind, that prospect was always a right-wing fantasy.
Not so sure
First, this is why we'll get either a crackpot or a crook as our next prez. Hillary is winning MA even if she's outfitted with a federally provided orange pantsuit.
As for an indictment, I doubt they'd be interviewing her for 3.5 hours if this were an easy case. If she escapes, it will be on a technicality. No question she wasbtrying to avoid FOIA laws. Thst was the intent. not a lawyer, but this reeks. She may be competent. She's also a total scumbag that will do ANYTHING to further her career.
If she gets elected and the Republicans control congress, they'll call politics and I think she'll be impeached 5 minutes after she takes the oath.
"Hillary gets indicted before the election. Hillary gets
impeached if she wins."
I think both of those are pipe-dreams. In the latter case, are they going to impeach the Democratic Vice-President, too?
No
But pay close attention to who the VP is. He/she could soon be your next prez.
I think a lot of Dems are underestimating the chance she's indicted - on more than one charge.
If I or one of my employees did what she did, we'd be fined out of existence by the government. A) she did it specifically to avoid public records laws and B) this was a HUGE potential security breach. If it was a slam dunk, this would have been dismissed a year ago. There's a reason she was interrogated for 3.5 hours yesterday. Could be just smoke and no fire. We'll see.
And that's before we even touch the Clinton foundation stuff which sounds even sketchier.
Hillary Clinton is the Democratic incarnation of Richard Nixon.
DIRN
I guess I should have put $50 behind my
opinion that a Hillary indictment over the email server was a rightie pipe-dream.
Meanwhile, my wager on Scott Brown as Trump's VP pick is looking not-so-prescient. I suppose he can always sell dubious fitness supplements.
Trump tax returns
I'd like Hillary to release her Goldman transcripts or at least address that... And also address the sketchy as fuck contributors to her "foundation".... I don't know why his tax returns are such a hot button issue with liberals. What do you suspect it will show? There are a million reasons why I will vote for Trump, some of which are as follows: Hillary is one of the worst human beings of all time, the "establishment" on both sides are so against him because they're all deathly afraid that he will open all of the closet doors and the number of skeletons that will fall out will make your head spin... I hope he wins and exposes the massive fraud and lies and everything else by both sets of elite scumbags..... The entire system will be turned upside down, and this terrible system will be a thing of the past... We can then hopefully start anew and come up with a better system... A vote for Hillary is a vote for the crooked establishment scumbags and they all win again, and the 10000 existing scandals stay in the closet just like they want...
I'm well aware he's no angel. I'm not even a fan but she is so horrific and the establishment so badly doesn't want to be exposed that it's a no brainer....
Trump's tax returns are important for a few reasons.
1) First and foremost, it's a basic cost of doing business for major-party candidates, an essential exercise in transparency with the American citizenry. Trump would be the first to refuse to do so in fifty years. He has no excuse not to do so. The one he has offered ("I'm being audited") is bullshit; the IRS has already publicly stated that he can do so with no consequences to its investigation, and previous Presidents have done so despite being audited.
2) One of Trump's chief arguments for his candidacy is that he's a successful businessman, yet many sources (like Fortune magazine, which routinely compiles stats on the world's richest people) have challenged his assertions about his earnings, suggesting that he greatly exaggerates them. Releasing his tax returns would either put these questions to rest, or reveal that he indeed has been lying about the size of his fortune. (I think this is the real reason he is afraid to release them.)
3) It would also help settle questions about Trump and his charitable donations, which he appears to make a habit of lying about. He also appears to have violated tax laws in how he does it (Google Trump and Tebow's helmet). There was also that business earlier this year where he ducked a debate at Fox News, held a fund-raiser for veterans instead, but didn't live up to his promise to donate to it until the press embarrassed him into doing so. How do you feel about a rich candidate who dishonestly brags about his generosity to charity?
4) It is always instructive for voters to understand the mechanisms by which the very rich end up paying far lower tax rates than ordinary workers. Trump has bragged about this, too.
(I agree with you about Hillary and her speeches to Wall Street, by the way. She already released her tax returns.)
If you're a Trump supporter, you should be insisting that he live up to the same standards that every Presidential candidate since Nixon has. Or are you also afraid of what Trump's tax returns would reveal?
Fair points...
I'm less of a Trump supporter and more just voting for him because Hillary is awful in every way. I don't know what the tax returns will show, I don't think there's a smoking gun in there like some do but who knows....You're probably right that he exaggerates his earnings, he tends to exaggerate things... Regardless, he is a successful businessman... You don't get to be as rich as he is by accident.
I'm pretty sure he already put the whole veterans benefit donations issue to rest. Most of the media attacks the guy and has done so since day one before he made any of his asinine comments, so I don't blame him for not cooperating with them at every turn....
I'll check the Tebow's helmet bit soon...how could he violate tax laws and the IRS hasn't called him on it yet? Again, your points are fine and I don't really care one way or another whether he releases them.... But if that's the norm he should release them like everyone else.
I don't think Hillary will do a damn thing if she's elected (except line her pockets and do favors for elites)...maybe he won't do anything either, but I'm going to be optimistic.
Come on dude
Vote for Johnson. There's a happy medium between business as usual and swallowing a lit firecracker. This year, the closest thing to that happy medium is Johnson/Weld.
I get the idea of promoting third parties, but Johnson/Weld is
problematic to me on a lot of the issues. Many Libertarian ideas strike me as nuts: complete deregulation of capitalism, moving away from public schooling, abandoning trying to manage climate change, repeal of the income tax, a completely free-market health care system, privatizing Social Security, no gun control in any form, etc. There's a naivete to a lot of these positions, a "bunch of college sophomores solving all the world's problems at 2am after ten bong hits" quality to them.
Meh
Johnson and Weld have both been around the block enough to know the limitations of pure ideology. Like I said, I'm not voting for them because I drank all of the LP kool aide and want seconds, it's because they're the most experienced and responsible people running this year.
Everyone lies on their campaign platform specifics, so you have to vote on your estimation of people's judgment and high-level values. I looked over his platform when it became clear that Trump was going to win the nomination, and while I don't really think a national sales tax to replace the income tax makes that much sense (for instance), I can get on board with his philosophy of "have government be good at what it needs to do and no more."
We can disagree on the details, but that's not a bad way to frame the debate, is it?
Adam I have a serious
Adam I have a serious question. When you post articles that are secretly written in a way that favors liberal minds, are you surprised when people with other opinions than you respond? I can tell it bothers you by the way you respond. So my question is are you surprised with such pushback or do you bait it so you can force a life lesson in liberal leftness down our throats?
Secretly written?
You've cracked my secret code fnord! Yes, of course, I sit here on my throne in Castle Grayskull plotting how I can force my evil lib-brul agenda down your throat as I twist your arm behind your back and make you read Universal Hub post after post. And it's working, mwahaha! fnord
Okay
You mean grammatically correct and well organized and reasoned posts with actual facts in them?
You tell 'em Swirly
Nothin's gonna set a fella straight like an out-of-the-blue snarky comment from an ordinarily cool, calm, just-the-facts type such as yourself. And I see it's getting later in the evening, meaning that your comments can only grow more subdued and lethargic as the night wears on. So this was a rare treat to see your sharp tongue on display. When will we have the honor of your seeing your next snarky post, the world wonders?
This guy Busiek
Is a master troll. Now, if only he made a mean spirited comment about bicyclists, and endorsed Trump/Baker, we'd have a Uhub trifecta.
Anyone want to take my $50 that it's going to be Trump/Brown?
I predict we're going to get that 500-comment field day on uHub when Scotty gets the veep nod. Trump needs someone who won't outshine him intellectually or in the truth-telling department, and that makes for a very short VP list, with Former Senator Himbo of the Uncertain Address at the very top.
Nope.
Trump/Sessions
I'll Take That Bet
I really don't believe there's a chance in hell Brown is Trump's VP candidate.
I don't know who it's going to be, but I can't see Brown.
By the way, I don't want your $50 if I win. I want you to promise to vote for Gary Johnson. Bet?
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
I think the current favorites are Giant Albino Baby-Head
and the Belligerent Jersey Lap-Band, a/k/a Gingrich and Christie. I suspect Trump knows that a two-hideous-old-white-guys ticket is not a winning look.
It would also be classic Trump: choosing a running mate based on surface, not substance, a reality TV mogul's choice, not a thoughtful consideration of who would be most qualified to step into the Presidency if necessary.
I threw away a vote on a third-party candidate once; not gonna make that mistake again.
You sir, are part of the problem
It's not possible to "throw away" a vote any more than it is possible to "throw away" an opinion. No one has the monopoly on your mind or your vote. If you can stomach Johnson better than you can Hillary, you should vote for him.
Sorry, but I am no longer the kind of starry-eyed idealist
who believes that any third-party candidate has a ghost of a chance in 2016. I've seen what that lack of pragmatism has done before. I will not waste my vote on Johnson/Weld.
Then don't complain
when you get a nut or a party hack sworn in.
I think I already explained my calculus here.
Hillary has her issues, but Trump would clearly be a four-year shit hurricane. He doesn't grasp the fundamentals of how our government, economy, or the world works and is entirely incurious about learning, never mind the sociopathic bigot stuff.
Too bad it's a fallen world, instead of one where idiots on smartphones don't walk blindly into traffic, people STFU in movie theaters, and third-party candidates have a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected.
Not Wasted
The electoral college system being what it is, your single vote will be a cipher in Massachusetts via a vote for either Clinton or Trump. Clinton will win the state whether you vote for her or not. Trump will lose the state whether you vote for him or not. Votes for a third party - especially in this year, where they will likely total 10+% - will at least register your dissatisfaction with the current system (as well as set up a third-party run in 2020 that may have a real chance of winning.)
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
That may be true in MA, but I don't want the Johnson/Weld
movement to get any traction, as I deem it likelier to hurt Hillary than Trump. I see at least two serious issues that could get Trump elected: one is complacency on the part of liberals, who think that Clinton's strong polling from sources like Nate Silver lets them feel safe about staying home on Election Day. (I don't trust the polls: I think there are a ton of closet Trump supporters out there who are embarrassed to admit they're voting for him.)
Another is that Johnson/Weld could siphon off just enough votes from Hillary, say, from disaffected Bernie supporters, to give Trump the edge he needs, a repeat of W/Gore/Nader.
I'm not interested in registering a protest vote in hopes of building credibility for a third-party option in 2020, as I honestly don't believe our system supports their viability as anything but spoilers. I'm worried first and foremost about who gets to fill those two or three pending Supreme Court vacancies.
Huh?
How does one go from Bernie to Johnson exactly? My understanding of leftie logic is admittedly thin, but I'd assumed the Sanderistas would be voting for DOCTOR Jill Stein.
FTFY
Clever
Now be honest, that just made your week, didn't it?
Plenty of socially liberal ideas in the Libertarian platform to
appeal to Sanders supporters, despite the obvious problems with the rest of the platform. You may be right, maybe more will vote for Stein, but this is just another example of the third-party problem as I see it.
Do you think Johnson / Weld is more likely to attract Republican voters who can't bring themselves to support Trump? Seems like the social and anti-interventionist facets of the Libertarian agenda would be repugnant to many of them.
Exactly
I checked Johnson out last time, if only because I knew that Obama had a lock on Massachusetts and third-party voting can help certify additional parties in this state.
Honestly, yes
I do. I also think you overestimate the right's appetite for war and underestimate Hillary's appetite for intervention.
I'm not interested in
The system doesn't support their viability because people such as yourself refuse to grant them that viability. You fulfill your own prophecy.
Understood that you may want a different option than Johnson/Weld. That's certainly your choice to make. But your logic concerning third parties in general is faulty. There is no logical reason for a third party to not become successful other than the ingrained pessimism and illogical actions of voters who refuse to buck the system because they believe - mistakenly - that the system cannot be bucked.
If the system cannot be bucked, we are screwed no matter for whom we vote. Do you believe that? If so, then why vote at all?
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Maybe a third party could somehow climb into relevance,
building up the requisite fund-raising and infrastructure and grassroots power base. Would that be a good thing? I suppose it would have to be; it couldn't be worse, could it? The problem is getting from here to there.
I'm not willing to support that move today because I believe giving momentum to a third-party candidacy in 2016 will help get Trump elected. Talk to me in 2020; not this year.
You conflate state with national votes
There isn't much chance at all that Trump will win MA. That's all that you really need to know.
The electoral college system makes it work that way - winning MA by a large margin doesn't offset close vote tallies elsewhere. That extra 20% in MA is not going to swamp voter preferences in Idaho.
If it looks like a decisive win for Candidate A in MA, and I don't really like candidate A but despise Candidate B, I might look to vote for Candidate C in order to make sure that they get the 5% that they need to kick them over the top.
In other words, my vote for Nader didn't matter because Gore won MA by a solid margin. It wouldn't have offset a close race elsewhere. Similarly, Romney and Baker were on track to win >50% of all votes, so supporting Stein and Falchuk meant that their parties had a better chance of attaining official standing without changing the outcome.
A third option
If you're willing to do a little legwork, you can do what I did in 2012, and arrange a vote-swap. Find yourself a third-party voter in a state where R/D numbers matter, and convince them to send an establishment vote their way so that it actually influences the electoral vote total. In exchange, you agree to vote for a third party of their choice in a state that will go blue in almost any imaginable circumstance. Especially in this election, it helps get a third-party candidate to the magic number of votes where federal funding becomes a possibility, without risking opening the seventh seal and immanentizing the eschaton.
God help me, but: PM me if this sounds interesting, because I'm going to try to do some of the legwork myself and set something up between swing-state voters and bastions of liberal homogeneity such as ourselves. I voted for Gary Johnson in 2012 to move a D vote to Virginia. If I can hold my nose and do it, so can you.
Did a swap back in 2000
I did a Gore-Nader swap in 2000, as a voter in our liberal bastion, as you say. My Naderite friend laughed at me and said she thought many Nader voters on those sites were just "stealing" votes and not swapping them. I notice people haven't really tried out the idea since, since we got so burned w/ Dubya.
I'm voting for Stein though, since I still enjoy wasting my vote, but would switch to Hil in a NY minute if there were any doubt of her winning MA's electoral votes.
What a rookie
He reached for his dog whistle but found his dick horn instead.
Check his salutation on OCPF
http://www.ocpf.us/Filers?q=busiek&cat=C
Also he has no money.
Hey, let's watch the Tiny Trump Wannabe of Littleton
explain how his homophobic slur is pretty much cool with all the people he knows, so what's the big deal? https://twitter.com/crystalhaynes/status/750515962231812096
Cowardly nobody running for MA Senate tries to softshoe around
using a gay slur: http://commentmagazine.net/22 Hilarity in the comments ensues.
D-bag Trumpie, Jr. repudiated by MA State Senate President
From today's Herald.