US Politics: Red Whine Hangover

[TrueMetis]

7 minutes ago, Frog Eater said:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/12/12/16767426/alabama-voter-suppression-senate-moore-jones

If you are talking about the closures in Alabama, they ended up not closing them

I'm talking about it among other things yes. Though I'm not sure what the point of you posting this is other than "the Republican's are attempting to stop black people from voting but suck at it" isn't a refutation of my point. So are you now accepting that the Republicans are attempting to stop black people from voting?

And this still ignoring the broader point that the Electoral College system is designed to prevent proper representation. Anyone who values democracy should look at the EC system in disgust.

[Martell Spy]

23 minutes ago, Altherion said:

There have been relatively few deaths thus far because that would force the authorities to get involved, but there's plenty of violence and some of it certainly had the potential to result in death. For example:

If you read the rest of the long article, the guy who committed the attack (the comments say he got off with 3 years probation) was, hilariously, a professor of ethics. The student seems to have recovered, but this is no in general guaranteed -- being hit in the head with a metal object is often enough to either kill or permanently disable; he was simply lucky.

It's three-quarters of the states (two-thirds of either Congress or States to propose, three-quarters of States to ratify). Interestingly enough, the one and only thing that can't be changed this way is equal representation in the Senate -- that has to be unanimous.

So, you mean there were zero deaths.

[Martell Spy]

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

That's true - and do you know why? 

Because people spoke out, heavily and openly, about it. The attempt was made. 

I guess they want credit for being cowardly and backing down from public outrage. Much like they want to credit Antifa for deaths that did not happen.

[Altherion]

12 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

So, you mean there were zero deaths.

I have not heard of any.

On a different topic, Trump is pretty good at milking a victory:

Quote

“I would like to begin tonight’s proceeding differently than perhaps any other event of such magnitude,” Trump said Monday evening in the East Room of the White House, where he announced Kavanaugh’s nomination three months ago.

“On behalf of our nation, I want to apologize to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure. Those who step forward to serve our country deserve a fair and dignified evaluation, not a campaign of personal and political destruction based on lies and deception,” Trump said. “What happened to the Kavanaugh family violates every notion of fairness, decency and due process. In our country, a man or a woman must always be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.”

Trump added: “And with that, I must state that you, sir, under historic scrutiny, were proven innocent.”

 

[Darth Richard II]

Lol, OH NO THEY FOUND OUT IM FULL OF SHIT QUICK CHANGE THE TOPIC!

[The Anti-Targ]

2 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

I'm talking about it among other things yes. Though I'm not sure what the point of you posting this is other than "the Republican's are attempting to stop black people from voting but suck at it" isn't a refutation of my point. So are you now accepting that the Republicans are attempting to stop black people from voting?

And this still ignoring the broader point that the Electoral College system is designed to prevent proper representation. Anyone who values democracy should look at the EC system in disgust.

Those of us living outside the USA look at it with confusion. I'm pretty sure that confusion covers all political stripes, I don't think there's a left / right, urban/rural divide. Seems to me like there is plenty of representation at the federal level even if one gets rid of the electoral college.

Also, the president, ideologically, only really ever represents about 50% of the population. So people claiming representation from a single person who is elected nationally, regardless of the mechanism, are just wrong. For almost half of US history the president has not been politically aligned with any given individual. So half the time they have not been represented in the office of the President, or his administration. It's a dumb argument.

[karaddin]

I know this isn't going to do anything to change minds that are clearly on the other side of this divide, but the domestic terrorist recently convicted for stopping an Amtrak train is heavily linked to the various other Nazis that have been demonstrating across the US. The threat will continue to be dismissed but try remember how brazen all this shit is while the government has purged the FBI to the point it accepted the absurd restrictions on the Kavanagh investigation and placed a compromised liar on the SCOTUS, and POTUS won't even condemn these guys.

 

[Rippounet]

5 hours ago, Serious Callers Only said:

Soon, probably dozens with all the false flags. This is not hard to figure out -> defanged, corrupted FBI -> false flags -> suspended election to round up 'leftists'.

I'm only surprised that mysteriously russian accented men aren't killing people yet (probably women's marches for maximum insult) and mysteriously escaping or being 'captured' while shouting ANTIFA yet. Eh, rightwing nazis and Erik Prince blackwater, sorry 'academi', sorry, some other name i forgot, serve well enough i guess.

I am starting to expect something along those lines as well. Perhaps for the 2020 elections.

[IamMe90]

4 hours ago, Altherion said:

I have not heard of any.

On a different topic, Trump is pretty good at milking a victory:

 

"relatively few" =/= zero

[OldGimletEye]

16 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I disagree that the hyperpartisanship is at a 90/10 split, just like I disagree that it is only conservative policies that cause destruction,

Hmm well let me see.

1. The Republican Party's biggest legislative achievement of late, the corporate tax cut is a flamin' mess. There is about zero evidence it's boosted business investment. It's pass through and territorial provisions are nonsensical.

If the Democrats were to do something relatively mild and sensible like raising the corporate tax to about 25% and broadening the base, making the cut at least revenue neutral, and fixing it's pass through provisions and ditching it's nonsense territorial provisions, the boys and gals at the Heritage Clowndation, the Republican Party, and the clowns at the Chamber of Commerce would cry bloody murder. There would be little common ground to be had, as I'm pretty sure the Republican Party would want to keep the bill in it's current awful form. The likely best thing to do to fix that bill and make it somewhat sensible would be to ignore Republicans.

The average Republican still likes to think, "Hey remember when we cut taxes with Reagan and the economy boomed!" Except that little conservative fairy tale has about 0 basis in reality. A topic I've mention in several prior posts.

2. For ten years the Republican Party talked complete nonsense during the GFC. You had dumb asses like Ted Cruz running around talking about the gold standard, when anybody with a brain knew inflation wasn't a problem. Yet Republicans just couldn't get out of the 1970s.

3. The Republicans for years talked complete nonsense about healthcare. I remember the days when Republicans talked about the US having the best healthcare system in the world and then moaning and complaining about how Obama messed it up. When the truth is that the key distinction between the US healthcare system and those of other advanced countries is that the US's system is just more expensive. And then they around talking about "acrosss state lines" when people have tried to explain to Republicans, over and over, it doesn't work.

4. Jeb Hensarling's financial bomb act was complete nonsense. Evidently conservatives are big believers in rational asset pricing theories, until they try to blame poor minorities for causing financial crises.

5. On immigration,, Republicans are completely way off based. DACA should have been a done deal long ago. There was no good reason to hold that up.

6. The Republican Party is virtually absence on the issue of climate change.

7. On the issue of free trade Republicans either adopt Trump's crude mercantilist views or engage in mindless free market fundamentalism. They are incapable of understanding the issue with any bit sophistication or nuance.

8. They don't take the issue of sexual harassment seriously. They don't take the issue of police force against minorities seriously.

9. Republicans, along with their clown buddies at the Chamber of Commerce, have devastated unions and there is growing evidence that unions did a lot of good for working people. 

10. Then Republicans go out and elect one orange clown that runs around endorsing birther theories. That's not in the ball park of the run of the mill fibs that politicians tell. That's wacko, nutball stuff.

11. And lets not forget the massive conservative screw up over Iraq. I still remember General Shinseki trying to tell a bunch of conservative idiots about realistic troop deployments which the Bush administration, along with conservative clown crew rejected. Even if you thought the geo political reasoning behind that invasion was solid, which it wasn't, the actual invasion was massively botched. And then you had Bush, that idiot, running around an aircraft carrier with sign saying "mission accomplished" and conservatives just eating that shit up like it was candy, when anyone in their right mind would have known that conflict would turn out to be a very long conflict.

12. And then conservatives talked out of their asses about Obama's Iran Deal, having no realistic serious alternatives, other than perhaps and outright invasion, which no sane person should want. And even if an invasion were necessary, the last people I'd trust to run it would be conservatives given their screw ups in Iraq.

It seems to me that conservative policies cause a hell of lot more destruction than the other sides and are much more detached from reality.

And regarding conservative sorts of people getting salty about people not taking a very kind view about the conservatism, just remember conservatives were very successful at making the word "liberal" a very dirty word. So when conservatives hear a bit of push back and get upset about it, like, you know, just go and cry me a river.  

[mormont]

9 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

I don't think so.

That's nice for you, but unfortunately nothing in your rather waffling post provides any reason for anyone else, or even you, not to think so. 

So I guess that's that. 

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

 This is a repudiation of the democratic principle (which, as we here are discovering to our cost, is pretty much based on the idea of the "rule of the 51%").

I'm going to have to say 'nope' here. There's a lot more to the democratic principle than that. Democracy is not the rule of the majority. True democracy equally includes safeguards, rights, and protections. That can include the rights of smaller states not to have their interests ignored by the larger ones. I'm not taking a strong position on this either way, merely noting that the argument that having two senators per state is inherently undemocratic is not necessarily a gimme. 

[felice]

58 minutes ago, mormont said:

True democracy equally includes safeguards, rights, and protections. That can include the rights of smaller states not to have their interests ignored by the larger ones. I'm not taking a strong position on this either way, merely noting that the argument that having two senators per state is inherently undemocratic is not necessarily a gimme. 

Having the interests of larger states ignored by the smaller ones is clearly worse, though, since that's more people having their interests ignored. And there's the question of whether state of residence is of that much importance in determining the interests of individual people anyway; eg I'd say poor people in California and poor people in Wyoming have far more interests in common with each other than they do with rich people living in the same state.

[mormont]

3 minutes ago, felice said:

Having the interests of larger states ignored by the smaller ones is clearly worse, though, since that's more people having their interests ignored. And there's the question of whether state of residence is of that much importance in determining the interests of individual people anyway; eg I'd say poor people in California and poor people in Wyoming have far more interests in common with each other than they do with rich people living in the same state.

All legitimate points. However, the issue is balancing these with, for example, the issues in which (say) Iowans of all income levels do share an interest. The current system might not be the best way to do that. But it's overly simplistic to just dismiss it as undemocratic. 

[SeanF]

8 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

1. The author is quite clear that he doesn't think today's authoritarian types will operate like the fascists of the 1930s did. Today's authoritarians will be much more subtle than their 1930s forebears.

2. It's true that many Germans, and not just Nazi's were stunned by the the loss in World War 1. Germany had only become a united country in 1871. With it's large population and large industrial base, it looked like it was going to be the top dog in Europe, until it suffered a defeat. That surely bummed out lots of Germans. One might say that Hitler ran on platform of "making Germany great again."

It's true the United States has never suffered a military defeat as large as Germany did in World War 1. But, I submit, that US's power will go into relative decline in the 21st Century. It maybe the leading power, but it won't have same kind of power it found itself after WW2.  Principally because of the rise of China. For  some or many Americans, that prospect is a bit terrifying. Assuming that Make America Great Again isn't just code for "Make America White Supremacist Again", evidently some people believed that Trump was going to ensure American hegemony into the 21st century. Nobody has any clue how, but gosh darn it, he's going to do it somehow. Evidently by stirring up shit with the US's long term allies.

Also, it appears that the biggest single factor for the Trump vote was white resentment. Evidently some people fear a loss of status, perhaps something like how the loss of status played so heavily on the German Psyche after Word War !.

Also, I'd note that one of the most vicious and untrue lies that came out of World War 1 was the "stab in the back" theory. The theory went something like: The Germany Army was winning on the front, until they were stabbed in the back by the Jews. Never mind the fact that many Jews fought bravely in the German Army and something like 2000 or so had been awarded the Pour Le Merite, more popularly known as the Blue Max, many Germans believed it, particularly after Ludendorf gave it as an excuse, and the Nazi's milked that lie for all it was worth.

Similarly Trump has made false and untrue claims against immigrants, claiming they commit crimes when there is about 0 evidence they commit more crimes than the native born.

As far as economic factors. This is a topic that has been covered extensively among the left and as it stand now, it seems the primary factor in Trump's election was racial resentment. Right now, the US, like every other country is crawling out of the GFC, which has scarred the economy mainly because of the Republican Party's insane gold buggism, and austerity, etc. However, a recession is in our future. I don't know when it will happen, but it will. And with interest rates low as they are, we could easily find ourselves right back into a ZLB or liquidity trap situation, again. And you know when that happens, the shit really hits the fan. Right now this is something that concerns central bankers around the world. And there is a lot of discussion about what monetary policy should do (Price Targeting, Negative Interest Rates, QE and so forth), since the assumption is that fiscal support won't be forthcoming. As you know Heinrich Brunning was the original austerity fuhrer, making the depression worse in Germany by telling stories about Swabian Housewives and such. The Republican Party are his progeny, The point here is don't count out a bad economic situation just yet and with our lovely Republican Party in control it could be very bad.

And Trump may not be exactly like ol' Shicklgruber. But, you know, you don't have to be at his levels of jack assery to be a jack ass.

I take your points, but it seems to me that when one has many plausible charges that one can make against Trump, why should one make the implausible argument that he and his supporters are like the Nazis?

[OldGimletEye]

1 minute ago, SeanF said:

I take your points, but it seems to me that when one has many plausible charges that one can make against Trump, why should one make the implausible argument that he and his supporters are like the Nazis?

I'd suggest that wasn't exactly the author's claim.

[butterbumps!]

16 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I disagree that the hyperpartisanship is at a 90/10 split, just like I disagree that it is only conservative policies that cause destruction, but you basically make my point...you see 90% of the problem is with the other side, this is the first step in dehumanizing your opponent and deciding that 'any means necessary' to defeat them is fine, because, hey they're Nazis anyway.  If this is 'both sides ism' so be it.

 

11 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

I don't really know, me, I am made pretty jittery by the ideas of abolishing the electoral college, changing the senate, because 2 from every state now isn't fair to high population states, moving to a straight popular vote for president, and packing the supreme court II.  This from my perspective sounds like a desire to destroy a whole lot of American institutions in order to get power. I am sure you know, a lot of these 'checks and balances' and levels, etc. exist for exactly the reason of not having a society run by 51%.  Gerrymandering is done by both parties, so that's a draw.  I find this all very troubling, and it's weird to me coming from people who spend 24/7 in semi hysterical rants about Trump suspending elections and turning into Hitler/Stalin/Pinchochet that these ideas don't strike anyone as problematic, or that would create a negative impression for conservatives.

I would say it probably all started to go seriously downhill with Watergate, then you saw  overall belief/trust in U.S. institutions. Bork was a big turning point.  The liberals went nutty when Reagan won, and then the conservatives went just as nutty when Clinton won.  There are lot of other smaller issues, like the various tinkerings that have been done w/how Congress works starting in the 70s, that yeah, they took power away from the chairs and now nothing gets done, so was that really, in hindsight, good? or not so good.  We're in a very bad place right now on almost any form of measurement and I don't expect that to change.  Sometimes societies go crazy and ruin themselves.  It's always totally obvious who was the real 'villain' in hindsight and what were the missed chances for a correction, but that's only in hindsight.  Like I said yesterday, liberals think conservatives are evil and conservatives think the same, and no one is interested in finding a common ground.  But, I appreciate the polite exchange.

I also tend to think the 90/10 split is pretty charitable toward Republicans.   I mean, what are your thoughts on something like Fox News?   The left doesn’t have anything close to a Fox News equivalent, which acts as a mouthpiece for Republican administrations, and also whips the base into a frightened, victimized, grievance-stricken, self-righteous army for cultural preservation, and substantiates itself with “facts” that are disingenuous, and misleading, if not outright lies, giving these people a fever vision of the world that doesn’t resemble reality.     They are not even working with real facts or willing to accept non- Pravda generated truth.   So is Fox News something the libs should endeavor to make better in this “both sides do it” thing?

 

[Ran]

Pew had some relevant polling.

I think the idea that "liberals went nutty" when Reagan won is a bizzare rewrite of history. Have we forgotten the "Reagan Democrats"?

The real history of increasing partisanship goes far back, but in the last 30 years you have to really look at conservatism as exemplified by Newt Gingrich, who did tremendous damage to Congress, and the rise in conservative partisan outlets like conservative talk radio and (especially) Fox News. 

I was recently following a Twitter thread discussing Norm Ornstein. He is a conservative, a member of the American Enterprise Institute, and he was and is famous for his close study and reporting of government as process. For many years, his reporting was seen as non-partisan and very balanced, simply looking at the process in which bills rose and fell, things got logjammed, etc. Very technical analysis, the sort of things that wonks love.

But this decade, Ornstein (and Thomas Mann, a colleague at the Brookings Institute) have started calling a spade a spade: the GOP is substantially more polarized, and substantially more abusive of power, than the Democrats. Ornstein wrote a fine piece at the Atlantic on this subject five years ago. Things have only gotten worse since then.

[Ice Queen]

I didn't see this touched on anywhere,, but did anyone see Graham's interview on Fox?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/10/08/lindsy_graham_third_term_for_trump_is_looking_better_and_better.html

[aceluby]

11 hours ago, Frog Eater said:

the values of Los Angeles are not the same as Alaska, or Idaho, or Alabama. Not everyone should be held subject to the wants of Los Angeles and New York. 

But everyone should be subject to the wants of Alaska, Idaho, and Alabama?  

[Frog Eater]

2 minutes ago, aceluby said:

But everyone should be subject to the wants of Alaska, Idaho, and Alabama?  

Alaska, Idaho, and Alabama deserve a voice in the discussion, and if you went with mob rule democracy, their voice would be ignored