Reny of Storms End Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 1 hour ago, DunderMifflin said: I wonder if back in the day Republicans were like "where does FDR find all this time be on tv!" Why do you care what Democrats say about how Trump spends his time? You aren't a Republican. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DunderMifflin Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 8 minutes ago, Reny of Storms End said: Why do you care what Democrats say about how Trump spends his time? You aren't a Republican. What? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IheartIheartTesla Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 13 minutes ago, aceluby said: It's a stupid analogy regardless. It's just extra stupid because it was so incredibly wrong on top of it I bet Republicans also wondered how JFK had the time to update his Instagram account with pictures of his time at Camelot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheKitttenGuard Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 21 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said: Any early tv era president works. Early radio would also work Radio was more mature by the time Roosevelt was President. It is the reason it was a very effective form of Mass Communication. TV was in the early stages and will be available to far smaller numbers to be an effective form of Mass Communication. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGimletEye Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2017/02/brexit-and-trump-are-fundamentally.html Quote Of course globalisation and inequality are important in explaining the proximate causes of Brexit and Trump. But neither event is an aberration: a moment of madness in an otherwise sea of rationality and evidence based policy making. And after each of these events, you do not find those from the political right doing all they can to return to political sanity. History is often as much about those who let things pass as about those who made them happen. Only one Conservative MP voted against triggering Article 50, even though probably a majority of Tory MPs support remaining in the EU. Forget having to respect the ‘will of the people’. These MPs were not just agreeing to leave the EU, they were also agreeing to a hard Brexit which meant leaving the Single Market and giving up any say in how we leave the EU. None of that was on the ballot paper in the referendum. If they had wanted to, they could have joined with Labour in voting for amendments that put some limits on the power of the executive. An executive that has openly speculated about going for the hardest Brexit possible. But almost all chose not to. It is also no accident that the only Conservative MP to stand up to the Brexit bandwagon and vote against triggering Article 50 was Ken Clarke, a Conservative of bygone days. In the US, once Trump had been elected, the Republican party largely rallied round ‘their man’. This might be normal behaviour, but Trump was no normal candidate. If ever there was a man temperamentally ill-suited for the office and totally unprepared for it, this was Trump. Yet their attitude before the election and in his few weeks in power seems to be that as long as he passes substantial tax cuts for the rich and deregulates banks, they are prepared to keep their fingers crossed that he does not do anything stupid like start a war with Iran or China. To be a bit fair, the Democratic Party is seemingly incapable of organizing a piss-up in a brewery. That obviously needs to change. But, yeah, Donald Trump wasn't some kind of random aberration that hit the Republican Party. He was the result the intellectual shit hole that conservatism has been heading towards for a long time. Now, when Trump fucks up, and he will, standby for the No True Scotsman defense. "Trump messed up cuz he wasn't a 'true conservative' man!" Conservatism can't fail, it can only be failed. That will be the lame ass excuse offered by the "constitutional conservative" crowd. Quite frankly I don't see conservatives changing their ways unless forced too. They will just continue with their supply side nonsense and union busting ways, although their promises of superior growth just never pan out. Plus they will continue to pander to white nationalist bullshit to get what they want. For these reasons, I am not fan of playing real nice with conservatives or at least I'm pessimistic that playing nice with conservatives really is going to get you anywhere. The incentive structure just doesn't seem to be there for Republican Politicians. Now there is some evidence out there, that says basically Democrats have become more liberal, while Republicans have become more conservative. And you could argue, that the increasing liberalism of the Democratic Party justifies the increasing conservatism of the Republican Party. But, I'd argue that the increasing liberalism of the Democratic Party has largely been over social matters and not economic matters. Now, liberalism should push for the greater acceptance of people that aren't white, male, and heterosexual. Liberalism loses much of it's ethical basis if doesn't. Liberalism should avoid "brogressivism". We've been there and done that, since let's face it the New Deal primarily benefited white males the most. But, on the economic front, I'd say liberals have made several concessions to the Republican Party. That was largely the point of Bill Clinton's "triangulation" strategy(and even under Carter who was a de-regulator). And the result of that strategy is that the Republican Party doubled down on things like supply side idiocy and union busting. For these reasons, I do think liberals and Democrats should put their foot down and be less willing to compromise with the current crop conservatives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aceluby Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 I also wonder if Republicans cared that FDR was giving his fireside chats during intelligence briefings?!?!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DunderMifflin Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 Seems better than acting like Batman as President. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ormond Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 2 hours ago, Fez said: Republicans successfully defended a state house seat in Minnesota last night. However, the Republican only won it by +6; this is a district Trump won by +29 and Romney had won by +12. It could be a one-off or there could be special circumstances to that district, but from 2013-2016 the usual story in special elections was Democrats suffering severe drop-off from Obama 2012; and in retrospect that should've been seen as a warning sign for 2016. The real test will be the congressional special elections in April: KS-4 (Pompeo's old seat) and GA-6 (Price's old seat) are both the types of districts that Democrats can and need to win if they want to have a House majority again. That will be the test of if all this is really hurting the GOP (there's also CA-34, but that'll be an easy Democratic hold). I would suppose that the "special circumstances" would be that the Republican candidate for this district in the November election was found to not live in the district and so was disqualified, but this happened too late in the fall for his name to be taken off the November ballot. So the results of the November election for this district were declared void and the new election had to be held. This probably made some voters in the district upset at the Republican party for allowing this to happen, plus the Democratic candidate was the same person as in November so people were a bit familiar with her name. Still, this is somewhat positive news. I will be very interested to see how the Omaha mayoral election turns out this year. The primary election is held the first Tuesday in April. The general election is held the first Tuesday after the second Monday in May. Like elections for the Unicameral legislature in Nebraska, this election is officially nonpartisan with no party affiliations listed on the ballot. I think the majority of voters, though, know that the incumbent is a Republican and the main challenger is a Democrat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fez Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 The Senate has voted to overturn another Obama-era regulation, this time it was the one that prevented social security recipients with a severe mental illness from purchasing firearms. I don't know if the House has voted in favor yet, but I assume they will soon. Its really upsetting that these CAR bill are not subject to a filibuster. Also upsetting is that there had been only a single CAR bill in history prior to this Congress; there's now been at least three since Jan. 20. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 What is the argument in favour of people with severe mental illnesses being allowed to tool up? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkynJay Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 1 minute ago, Werthead said: What is the argument in favour of people with severe mental illnesses being allowed to tool up? So shootings can always be blamed on mental illness and never on guns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fez Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 Just now, Werthead said: What is the argument in favour of people with severe mental illnesses being allowed to tool up? Republicans claim the regulation stigmatizes mental illness. Bastards. Worth nothing, five Democrats voted in favor as well: Donnelly, Heitkamp, King, Manchin, and Tester. Hard to know if they are just running scared, or if they think gun supporters care about this issue just as much as every other gun issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 What a ridiculously stupid idea. But okay. Latest news: the White House is saying that they are no longer wedded to the Two State Solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Strangely, they have not proposed any viable alternative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 Been thinking a lot about the classified info vs. public need, and I think I've come down to it being a bad thing. This lawfare blog helped clarify my thinking on this - namely, Flynn has an excellent case to go to the ACLU: Quote The sharing of Michael Flynn’s name or title is almost certainly permissible under existing minimization rules. Indeed, sharing his name was a crucial element to understanding the foreign intelligence value. Separate from violations of classified information handling rules, the minimization rules permit dissemination only to “a recipient requiring the identity of such person for the performance of official duties”—a category that surely does not include the press. Whether we approve of the motive or not, it is an abuse of surveillance for national security officials to leverage legitimate foreign intelligence collection to reveal public information in order to damage individuals they do not believe should serve. In fact, these kind of abuses (among others) led to the passage of FISA in the first place. Richard Nixon’s National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, requested wiretaps on White House staff to uncover news leaks involving classified information. The “White House wiretaps,” as they were known, were reviewed by Senator Frank Church’s investigative committee. There have long been suspicions that Kissinger, who received the FBI transcripts, requested the wiretaps not for security purposes—which were not his purview—but instead to keep tabs rivals and to gain an advantage in policy disputes. The bolded parts are the ones that really got me. Would we have accepted leaking of classified information in order to take down, say, Obama? Or Clinton? Was it acceptable for Comey to say that he was investigating Clinton publicly? The outcome heavily favors my personal biases, and I suspect most people on the boards, but the notion that intelligence agencies can basically act as arbiters of who should and shouldn't be in power and do so by leaking classified information at their discretion is a dangerous thing to be on board with. Similar with privacy rules in general, in fact, because in general people are fine with violating other people's privacy so long as a good outcome is reached, but are suddenly VERY afraid of violations of privacy when someone like Trump gains office and can abuse that power. The important thing here is not the specific outcome - though that was a big deal. The important thing is that people have this much power, period, and that is dangerous to a functioning democracy. If the deep state of intelligence agencies and civil servants is doing the job that congress is supposed to be doing, we may have already lost whatever vestiges of democracy the US has. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JGP Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 27 minutes ago, Kalbear said: The important thing here is not the specific outcome - though that was a big deal. The important thing is that people have this much power, period, and that is dangerous to a functioning democracy. It's interesting. I was thinking about this, tangentially, the other day. Like, I was quite vocally against PM Harper's majority government, as it essentially issued him a carte blanche to do as wished-- and he did, gagging scientists, deregulating protections, etc. So I kind of stood on any type of fence when it was made available, to argue for an empowered Senate (amongst other checks, but our Senate doesn't have teeth, really). Flip it though, and I'm generally ok with PM Joe Trudeau's majority government, because I largely agree with his positions and proposals. Majority Governments aren't functioning democratically at all-- but we're fine with the imposed surrender as long it's to groups whose policies confirm our particular bias, philosophy, whathaveyou. Otherwise, it's to the mat with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 And heh, the RoguePotusStaff webpage is having a bit of fun on their source. Quote <!-- password: 8PKR[9n}#B\/nk88!z6U --> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorral Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 2 hours ago, aceluby said: It's a stupid analogy regardless. It's just extra stupid because it was so incredibly wrong on top of it Those weekly radio Fireside Chats were enormously popular with the country at large, including my great great grandparents, one of whom had damaged hearing from being kicked by a horse as a child, and another from nerve gas in WWI. They made special arrangements each week for the broadcast on their midwest farms to have their chairs right up by the radio -- a big floor standing console models encased in wood, very classy -- and the sound turned all the way up so they wouldn't miss any of the words. One of them was a Dem and the other was a Repub. One was a radical (the one who'd seen WWI) and the other most definitely wasn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorral Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 2 hours ago, aceluby said: I also wonder if Republicans cared that FDR was giving his fireside chats during intelligence briefings?!?!? Look at the photo record for the Fireside Chats, which you can easily do on google images and other site, including LOC.gov. You have no idea what it took to do a live radio feed simultaneously back then-- even when there weren't that many national broadcast networks -- otherwise you wouldn't say something that stupid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reny of Storms End Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 2 hours ago, DunderMifflin said: What? You complained that Dems talked constantly about the amount of time Pres. Trump spends on Twitter. Your counter was to bring up whether or not Republicans complained about FDR and his fireside "tv"'chats. Normally people don't try to defend or make excuses for the actions of groups or parties we do not support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DunderMifflin Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 7 minutes ago, Reny of Storms End said: You complained that Dems talked constantly about the amount of time Pres. Trump spends on Twitter. Your counter was to bring up whether or not Republicans complained about FDR and his fireside "tv"'chats. Normally people don't try to defend or make excuses for the actions of groups or parties we do not support. Repeating....What? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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