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US Politics: A Sinematic view on voting rights and the filibuster


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To be about as fair to the NYC Board of Elections as possible, these are mostly internal numbers that would never be used in the final tally (even if there was no error, they can't be used because the ranked choice algorithm has to be run from the start whenever more ballots are added).

That said, I don't understand how they published this when the total number of votes is off by more than 10% or 100K votes from what they published before. It's the most basic of sanity checks.

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The NY BOE is beyond incompetent to even hold a politico's beer.  But until the state's politicians and legislators finally get off their asses to fix this byzantine mess of corruption and incapacity, we will go through election after election effing the voters.  Voter suppression can morph into many many forms, even unintentionally, but applauded, nevertheless.

This is one of the reasons I like the tv series Billions so much: it scrapes away all the veils of NY's corrupt political and legal deal making and maneuvers for all to see.  No West Wing political fairy tale here.

In the meantime, the very thought of Taney's bust/statue(s) being removed warms the very cockles of mine heart.  He should never have been so honored in the first place, just like none of the other proponents of slavery should have been -- and that includes Francis Scott Key.

 

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On 6/29/2021 at 12:33 AM, larrytheimp said:

And yet you just did so, apparently without difficulty, in half a sentence.  

I'd say that the best slogans require no explanation; nobody ever wondered what "Who Decides---You or Them?" meant. In fact, the vagueness of "them" helped make the slogan work, because "you" and "them" could be whoever the listener wanted: government, religion, police, family, etc.

"Defund the police", on the other hand, requires you to explain that you don't really want to do what you just said. 

In any case, I don't know how effective slogans are in terms of reform. I doubt that anyone who is OK with what happened to George Floyd is going to care how you market reform; they just don't care.

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C-SPAN's occasional survey of presidential historians to rank the presidents is out (previous surveys were in 2017, 2009, and 2000): https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall

Pretty much the same as 2017 at the top of the list, though Obama moved up from #12 to #10. 

Trump is tied with Franklin Pierce as 3rd worst. Apparently presidential historians still consider Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan to be quite a bit worse than Trump. I get the Buchanan argument, but as terrible as Andrew Johnson was, I'd say Trump was worse than him.

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I think it's just no one wants to seem biased by ranking him last. That said I think Buchanan was worse and I might rate Jackson worse as well though that depends what "worse" means. So I guess number three seems reasonable. 

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6 minutes ago, Darzin said:

I think it's just no one wants to seem biased by ranking him last. That said I think Buchanan was worse and I might rate Jackson worse as well though that depends what "worse" means. So I guess number three seems reasonable. 

What other President lied vociferously about winning an election they lost and stood by doing nothing while their supporters attempted to seize control of the US Capitol to coerce the US Congress into granting the sitting President a term in office… they didn’t earn?

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41 minutes ago, Fez said:

C-SPAN's occasional survey of presidential historians to rank the presidents is out (previous surveys were in 2017, 2009, and 2000): https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall

Pretty much the same as 2017 at the top of the list, though Obama moved up from #12 to #10. 

Trump is tied with Franklin Pierce as 3rd worst. Apparently presidential historians still consider Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan to be quite a bit worse than Trump. I get the Buchanan argument, but as terrible as Andrew Johnson was, I'd say Trump was worse than him.

Well, there’s a lot of terrible to sort through down at that end.  Johnson was pretty terrible.  Trump is more immediate to my life, so I’d like him to be below Johnson, but WOW, Johnson was really bad.  I might have put him tied with Johnson?

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44 minutes ago, Fez said:

C-SPAN's occasional survey of presidential historians to rank the presidents is out (previous surveys were in 2017, 2009, and 2000): https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall

Pretty much the same as 2017 at the top of the list, though Obama moved up from #12 to #10. 

Trump is tied with Franklin Pierce as 3rd worst. Apparently presidential historians still consider Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan to be quite a bit worse than Trump. I get the Buchanan argument, but as terrible as Andrew Johnson was, I'd say Trump was worse than him.

How the fuck is Andrew Jackson ranked 22nd? And he was 13th in the 2000 poll?

Jimmy Carter is 26th? WTF?

... REAGAN IS 9TH?

WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS SURVEY MEASURE?

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43 minutes ago, Darzin said:

I think it's just no one wants to seem biased by ranking him last. That said I think Buchanan was worse and I might rate Jackson worse as well though that depends what "worse" means. So I guess number three seems reasonable. 

Likely yes. Also possible that there was one or two MAGAs in the survey sample that pushed him up a bit in the rankings. Though I suspect that's pretty rare among the demographic of presidential historians.

Just now, TrueMetis said:

How the fuck is Andrew Jackson ranked 22nd? And he was 13th in the 2000 poll?

Jimmy Carter is 26th? WTF?

... REAGAN IS 9TH?

WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS SURVEY MEASURE?

It's a ranking of 1-10 on the various dimensions of:

Quote

 

Public Persuasion

Crisis Leadership

Economic Management

Moral Authority

International Relations

Administrative Skills

Relations with Congress

Vision / Setting an Agenda

Pursued Equal Justice For All

Performance Within Context of Times

 

The full methodology is within the link. But it means that how effective a President was at accomplishing what they sought to do is important too, not just what they accomplished (which is inherently more subjective). So with Jackson, sure he'd get a 1 on Moral Authority and on Pursuing Equal Justice, but a 10 on Vision/Setting an Agenda and probably pretty high on Public Persuasion and a few other metrics.

5 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Well, there’s a lot of terrible to sort through down at that end.  Johnson was pretty terrible.  Trump is more immediate to my life, so I’d like him to be below Johnson, but WOW, Johnson was really bad.  I might have put him tied with Johnson?

Yeah, the last 15 or so are all different brands of terrible, and even most of the middle is just pretty 'meh'. We've had a lot of bad presidents in our history. I do think Trump has done more lasting damage than most of them though, and combine that with being directly responsible for a large number of unnecessary COVID deaths and the only president I think is worse is the one who let a civil war happen and did nothing to stop it.

My biggest quibble with the rankings is that I think Polk is being heavily undervalued. He accomplished literally every campaign promise he made in a single term and didn't bother running for re-election. And he did that while being in the middle of a run of other presidents from 1837 to 1861 who were otherwise all bad at their jobs and politically weak. Not everything he accomplished was good, but again these rankings are meant to try to more objectively be about leadership rather than subjective accomplishments (with a few exceptions).

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Cosby freed. sentence overturned.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/arts/television/bill-cosby-release-conviction.html

Quote

. . . .The ruling upended the legal case against Mr. Cosby brought by prosecutors in Pennsylvania that began with his arrest in 2015 on charges of drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his home in the Philadelphia suburbs eleven years earlier. At the end of the trial in April 2018, the jury convicted Mr. Cosby, who for years had brightened America’s living rooms as a beloved entertainer and father figure, of three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, to whom Mr. Cosby had been a mentor and at the time a Temple University employee. . . .

~~~~~~~~~~

One big difference between Johnson and tRumpty is that the latter had a full four years to wreak his havoc, w/o any Ulysses S. Grant to stand adamantly against his destruction of every federal government agency and appointment, and facilitate the impeachment process, along with the 'radicals' such as Thaddeus Stevens.

Evidently a lot more people got educated into as Andrew Jackson the slaver and genocidal murderer, and destroyer of economy since 2016.  The only bigots and racists etc. I know who were anti-trump were anti-trump only because of threats to their family fortunes, particularly during his facilitation of the pandemic killing off elderly relatives  (though they inherited ....).  Otherwise they were all OK with everything, and o lordessa did they and do they hate and loathe AOC and Elizabeth Warren.  These particular folks are all heavily invested in the market and inherited investment and real estate wealth, if that tells us anything.

 

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Gads Cosby's conviction overturned, and then this, "Finally! About time!" news, but. while "Trump Organization expected to be charged with tax-related crimes on Thursday. It is not clear whether the company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, will also be charged".  What in the world is the justice/legal system in this country?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-organization-expected-be-charged-tax-related-crimes-thursday-n1272711

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Yeah, and last week, all the pundits were like, "Weisselberg is going to flip on orange guy!" Riiight... Now they might not even charge W.

Well, and Billyboy got away with it, on an effing technicality.

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26 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

nvm.

Ninja'd.

Oh, and no further prosecution of Cosby, either.

That was a surprise on a Wednesday afternoon. I just read the PA Supreme Court's decision, and I can't disagree. Prosecutors already wield incredible power through their charging authority; we can't have them playing bait-and-switch in this way. It's a tough one, though; Cosby has all but admitted he did this.

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7 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

That was a surprise on a Wednesday afternoon. I just read the PA Supreme Court's decision, and I can't disagree. Prosecutors already wield incredible power through their charging authority; we can't have them playing bait-and-switch in this way. It's a tough one, though; Cosby has all but admitted he did this.

It doesn't matter whether he (all but) admitted it or not, the amount of victims who came out is overwhelming.

I can already see Cosby's book. Give it one year at the most and he'll make millions off this.

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"The Long Authoritarian History of the Capitol Riot" by Rick Perlstein, the historian of Reagan and the right wing extremists.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/long-authoritarian-history-january-6-insurrection.html.

Quote

 

. . . What Democrats have been slow to understand is that this is an insurgency against democracy with parliamentary and paramilitary wings. The parliamentary wing is represented by McCarthy and others who have voted to overturn a free and fair election as well as lawmakers who have passed or proposed laws in nine state legislatures since the 2020 election shielding drivers from liability if they plow vehicles into protesters. These abet the work of the paramilitary wing’s latest tactical innovation: vehicular assault. Everyone knows about the 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer who killed Heather Heyer by driving his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter-protesters at the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 — the incident was a national outrage. A near-identical event this past month — a white man accelerated his Jeep into a crowd protesting a police shooting in Minneapolis, killing a mother of two — received far less attention. A University of Chicago researcher tracked 72 such attacks, in 52 separate cities, in a six-week period in 2020 alone. . . . 

. . . .The violent menace displayed at the Capitol riot, in Trump’s anti-immigrant fantasies, and in these vehicular attacks has been coded into conservative politics for a long time. . .

 

 

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29 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Gads Cosby's conviction overturned, and then this, "Finally! About time!" news, but. while "Trump Organization expected to be charged with tax-related crimes on Thursday. It is not clear whether the company’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, will also be charged".  What in the world is the justice/legal system in this country?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-organization-expected-be-charged-tax-related-crimes-thursday-n1272711

It's working as intended, merely following the Golden Rule.

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18 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

That was a surprise on a Wednesday afternoon. I just read the PA Supreme Court's decision, and I can't disagree. Prosecutors already wield incredible power through their charging authority; we can't have them playing bait-and-switch in this way. It's a tough one, though; Cosby has all but admitted he did this.

Yeah, I think this is where I come down on it. It fucking sucks that he's getting away with it. But it's vital to maintain the principle that prosecutorial assurances are ironclad guarantees; otherwise far, far more people are going to be grievously fucked over by the criminal justice system.

Hopefully there can at least be another civil action Cosby and he winds up destitute. Though I assume he'd end up in Florida like OJ did.

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