US Politics: Sing us a song, you're the Tariff man

[James Arryn]

12 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

And there is a Secret Society involved, according to Senator Johnson. Yes, a U.S. Senator said that, embarrassing as that is.

Oh, is this the lizard people I keep hearing about?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Giuliani sent a tweet about the G-20 meeting where he made a typo, forgetting to put a space after a period and thereby creating an inadvertent hyperlink. Ie G-20.in 

‘in’ is the abbreviation for India, and some very sharp-eyed person jumped in and purchased the rights to the link. The link led to a white on black message that said ‘Trump is a traitor to our country’.

Guiliani, your country’s head of the cyber security task force, then raged that this was more evidence that Twitter was run by ‘committed cardcarrying anti-Trumpers’.

No, I did not make this up.

There’s also an article in The Atlantic detailing how Giuliani has been lying for months about having a report countering Mueller’s investigation. They’ve got nothing, and this might be the best part:

Quote

Giuliani said it’s been difficult in the past few months to even consider drafting response plans, or devote time to the “counter-report” he claimed they were working on this summer as he and Trump confronted Mueller’s written questions about the 2016 campaign.

“Answering those questions was a nightmare,” he told me. “It took him about three weeks to do what would normally take two days.”

 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

But that begs this question: Would you prefer to combat the trend or jump feet first into it? I definitely want the former, because my fear is that Trumpism will last long after his presidency is over absent an event that wakes every one of his supporters up. His long term damage could be catastrophic, and we should combat it rather than going with it for our own political gain.

That question is based on the wildly false assumption that this started with Trump.  Like I said, Citizen's United exacerbated the limited time in which MCs even get the chance to care about policy due to the expense of campaigns and corresponding weakening incumbency, but your standard has always been a pipe dream.  You think machine politicians cared about policy or didn't flagrantly distort facts?  How bout before the Pendleton Act was passed - the Jacksonian era was great for extending suffrage to poor white males but do you think the patronage system he established lived up to your standards?  In The Federalist, Madison spoke of "men of virtue" presiding in the legislature - as in the elite would serve a short period of time as their civic duty - but the ink from that had barely dried before him and Hamilton created the first two party system by viciously attacking the other side with propaganda in their respective newspapers.  Hell, even the impetus to hold the Constitutional Convention in the first place was based on grossly exaggerating the 'threat' posed by Shays' Rebellion.

Call me a cynic, but ambition and avarice is always going to trump this elitist ideal.  It heavily informs how our system was structured in the first place.  Further, and more importantly, how is abiding by a standard your opposition isn't going to follow "combating" anything?  This reminds me of the West Wing episode where Sam doesn't want to use soft money to fund attack ads because he opposes soft money.  I will never understand the liberal urge to play by rules that only limit themselves.  It's the political equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face, and they don't give you extra votes for "doing things the right way."

[Mexal]

While all the below is true about Barr, I think he's about as good of a pick as we could hope for. He's done the job before and from all reports, competently and when faced with classified and investigative information and data, I suspect he'll do the fair and right thing by law. It could be a whole lot worse.

 

[Kalbear]

18 minutes ago, DMC said:

Call me a cynic, but ambition and avarice is always going to trump this elitist ideal.  It heavily informs how our system was structured in the first place.  Further, and more importantly, how is abiding by a standard your opposition isn't going to follow "combating" anything?  This reminds me of the West Wing episode where Sam doesn't want to use soft money to fund attack ads because he opposes soft money.  I will never understand the liberal urge to play by rules that only limit themselves.  It's the political equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face, and they don't give you extra votes for "doing things the right way."

A while back I took a quickie  course on metrics and using metrics. The biggest takeaway from that has stuck with me for a while, in a lot of ways: every system designed (and measured) will be gamed to maximize the measurement, so make sure that the gaming of the system is itself a good thing too. 

Right now, we have a system that is going to be gamed, and honestly has only been heavily gamed like this in the last 30 or so years. Biparty systems with presidents go this way as a rule, because it's the natural way things go in a winner-takes-all, loser-gets-none, no value in compromise type of system. There are other weird things that get gamed as a result in our specific system - campaign finance, districts, third party as spoilers, rules about the senate, executive power, judicial power - but those are small potatoes compared to how a two party system with an executive elected official will always go. 

The counter to this is that I'm not sure how much money directly in elections matters when partisanship is so high and getting higher. It clearly does matter - winners still outspend losers after all - but spending MORE doesn't seem to affect winning incredibly well, and there appears to be some big diminishing returns. 

[Maithanet]

6 minutes ago, Mexal said:

While all the below is true about Barr, I think he's about as good of a pick as we could hope for. He's done the job before and from all reports, competently and when faced with classified and investigative information and data, I suspect he'll do the fair and right thing by law.

I agree.  Sadly, we've regressed to the point where "Bush Administration-level Terrible" is about the best case scenario for White House officials. 

[DMC]

20 minutes ago, Mexal said:

While all the below is true about Barr, I think he's about as good of a pick as we could hope for. He's done the job before and from all reports, competently and when faced with classified and investigative information and data, I suspect he'll do the fair and right thing by law. It could be a whole lot worse.

I have no idea how he'll act in regards to the Mueller investigation.  As that tweet shows, he has certainly seemed sympathetic to Trump in almost all of his public statements relevant to the investigation - albeit in a measured manner (e.g. Comey deserved to be fired for the way he handled the Hillary investigation, which is, well, true).  Like I said, he's almost certain to get confirmed for the reasons you state.  What happens next?  We'll see.

19 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Right now, we have a system that is going to be gamed, and honestly has only been heavily gamed like this in the last 30 or so years. Biparty systems with presidents go this way as a rule, because it's the natural way things go in a winner-takes-all, loser-gets-none, no value in compromise type of system.

Well, to be fair, I think it should be emphasized the governmental system was specifically designed to encourage compromise.  It's just, as you cite, the electoral system and subsequent party system do not - particularly when the electorate is polarized (it should be noted PR systems don't do too great with polarization either).  And, as I mentioned the system has certainly been heavily gamed in the past, but ultimately thwarted.  The progressive era abolished the spoils system; political machines were rendered inert with the institution of the primary.  There have been ebbs and flows throughout American history.  Is this the last "ebb" (...or flow, I dunno)?  Could be, but there's precedent for it being beaten back.

26 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The counter to this is that I'm not sure how much money directly in elections matters when partisanship is so high and getting higher. It clearly does matter - winners still outspend losers after all - but spending MORE doesn't seem to affect winning incredibly well, and there appears to be some big diminishing returns. 

Yes, campaign funds having diminishing returns is well-founded in the literature.  What the research pre-Citizen's United showed was that the marginal returns for incumbents diminish much more rapidly than for challengers.  But this was based on the reality that incumbents almost uniformly outspent challengers by a significant amount (so, there really wasn't much difference between an incumbent outspending her challenger 3 to 1 rather than 2 to 1).  Now, SuperPACs can make up that disproportionate advantage - which is why the increasing expense of campaigns and weakening incumbency advantage are inextricably linked.  Consequently, incumbents must spend more time fundraising to keep up.  The "good" part about this is it actually encourages more competitive contests.  Is that worth it?  That's a pretty interesting normative debate.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Mexal said:

While all the below is true about Barr, I think he's about as good of a pick as we could hope for. He's done the job before and from all reports, competently and when faced with classified and investigative information and data, I suspect he'll do the fair and right thing by law. It could be a whole lot worse.

 

R-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ght.  Here's more:

Quote

.... Barr served in the same position under the late George H.W. Bush—and, as it happens, during that tenure, Barr recommended to Bushthat he pardon six individuals involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, four of whom had already been convicted of lying to federal and congressional investigators about the secret illegal operation.

Here’s Barr describing his role in a 2001 interview:

I asked some of my staff to look into the indictment that was brought, and also some of the other people I felt had been unjustly treated and whether they felt that they would have been treated this way under standard Department guidelines. I don’t remember going through the pardon office, but I did ask some of the seasoned professionals around the Department about this, asked them to look into it. Based on those discussions, I went over and told the President I thought he should not only pardon Caspar Weinberger, but while he was at it, he should pardon about five others.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/trump-william-barr-attorney-general-iran-contra-mueller.html

And in the meantime those here who keep on bashing AOC are in such excellent company.   Keep bangin' on  about how unqualified she is (especially compared with yourselves) and this is where you end up.  Feel proud for stickin' to yr guns, ya'all  

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/420191-trump-jr-makes-fun-of-ocasio-cortez-by-sharing-meme-that

 

[Rippounet]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

But that begs this question: Would you prefer to combat the trend or jump feet first into it? I definitely want the former, because my fear is that Trumpism will last long after his presidency is over absent an event that wakes every one of his supporters up. His long term damage could be catastrophic, and we should combat it rather than going with it for our own political gain.

Hmmm it seems you're assuming that I, or you, or we, can do something about it. As you may recall, I'm somehow cynical as to the nature of our "democracies." Since the only power we kinda have is to vote, do you propose to not vote for candidates who over-simplify or misrepresent issues, at the risk of seeing much worse people come to power? Or are we talking about taking a stance on the internet for appearance's sake?

[Trebla]

Trump seems to be handling the pressure well!

 

[S John]

7 minutes ago, Trebla said:

Trump seems to be handling the pressure well!

 

Hahaha.

Man, one of many days over the last 2 years when I wonder if he's finally cracking up for real this time.  

[Fragile Bird]

So the guy who ran Exxon was as dumb as a rock? I wonder what Rex says about Trumpiethinskin?

[Morpheus]

Tillerson just slammed Trump in an interview and said he had to stop the president from doing illegal things. This twitter outburst is the usual lashing out at critics.

[S John]

Just now, Fragile Bird said:

So the guy who ran Exxon was as dumb as a rock? I wonder what Rex says about Trumpiethinskin?

I believe he said he was a fucking moron a while back.  But I think this latest tweet is in response to this:

https://www.chron.com/business/article/Rex-Tillerson-13448868.php

[Fragile Bird]

Aargh, I actually came here to say this: so your new UN ambassador is the dude who said D-Day was an example of the good relationship the US has had with Germany.

[Morpheus]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

Aargh, I actually came here to say this: so your new UN ambassador is the dude who said D-Day was an example of the good relationship the US has had with Germany.

New UN ambassador is a former FOX anchor turned state department spokeswoman. She is wildly unqualified.

[Morpheus]

All the best people ended up being crooks, losers, and idiots. And here is poor Donnie, just a victim as usual.

[Fragile Bird]

4 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

New UN ambassador is a former FOX anchor turned state department spokeswoman. She is wildly unqualified.

Yes, I know, I had just forgotten that astonishing comment of her’s.

I guess they got to her, though. She hasn’t said anything about Pearl Harbor being a good example of the US’s great relationship with Japan.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Even world renowned d-bag Tucker Carlson said he was disappointed in Trump, so I feel something big is about to happen.

[S John]

6 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Even world renowned d-bag Tucker Carlson said he was disappointed in Trump, so I feel something big is about to happen.

Perhaps McConnell and Murdoch feel that the sponge has been wrung dry.  Time to toss it aside for the future of the party.