U.S. Politics: Great Men Master trends

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I recall the only way Gore wins is if “Overvotes” are counted.

Right, which SCOTUS stopped from happening.  Because Florida judges have gone on record saying they would have allowed them to be counted - or at least the ones where voters clearly tried to correct their mistake, which clearly would have been enough for Gore to win.  Which is why SCOTUS stole the election.  This is really old hat.

[DMC]

9 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Ty's OP questioned whether any VPs came out of the office with their image enhanced.

Same point.  HW's image wasn't "enhanced" by being VP, nor was Mondale's nor Gore's.  Or at least, any more than Harris' is.  Again, this is a dumb and unfounded argument.  VP's are almost always chosen because they've already established an "image" - including Harris.  They don't "enhance" it in office in any way other than the simple fact they are VP.

Same thing with this century's examples.  Cheney's "image" certainly wasn't enhanced when he left office.  Biden left office without running for the Dem nomination when he clearly wanted to.  Pence's "image" may have been enhanced among sane people because he didn't agree to cooperate in a coup, but it certainly hasn't helped him politically.

9 hours ago, Maithanet said:

I would agree that of the options available to democrats in 2028, Whitmer seems like a very strong choice, as well as Kelly and Warnock.  The Democrats actually have a pretty strong bench of proven winners in swing states, something that the Republicans really lack (because they keep losing key senate/governor races). 

I really don't see much of a distinction between Whitmer and Harris at the national level.  As for Kelly and Warnock, uh, no, I don't see either as presidential candidates.  Especially Kelly.

Edited May 3, 2023 by DMC

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

29 minutes ago, DMC said:

Right, which SCOTUS stopped from happening.  Because Florida judges have gone on record saying they would have allowed them to be counted - or at least the ones where voters clearly tried to correct their mistake, which clearly would have been enough for Gore to win.  Which is why SCOTUS stole the election.  This is really old hat.

When did Florida judges go on record to that effect?  Why would Florida Judges go on record about that? No Florida Counties were doing this.  Why would they have started?  They went on record before or after BvG came down from the SCOTUS?

Edited May 4, 2023 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[A Horse Named Stranger]

2028 is a long way off.

Who knows if there would be another election after Trump's second term.

On a more serious note, we don't know whether Whitmer will still be Governor of Michigan in '28 (or have any other office that provides her with a base for running). Maybe somebody will emerge from Senate floor, maybe AOC has switched chambers of congress and changed her current view of prefering legislatiion to administration.

That dude from Maryland, Moore, may develop a national profile, or lose the next election.

I don't think the US senate offers much in terms of Presidential hopefuls atm. Fetterman's health seems to strongly disagree with his prospects. Booker will still be Booker. He might win it, in a weak field.

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

When did Florida judges go on record to that effect?

Look it up.  I don't have the time right now and frankly even if I did I don't have any interest in literally relitigating Bush v Gore.  SCOTUS stopped the recounts when they did precisely because they knew if the recounts continued they were going to lead to Gore's victory.

[Zorral]

17 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

When did Florida judges go on record to that effect?  Why would Florida Judges go on record about that? No Florida Counties were doing this.  Why would they have started?  They went on record before or after BvG came down from the SCOTUS?

But they did, partly because a mob stopped the count.  Do you not recall that either?  This is not being said to snark or sneer or even to scold, my friend.

OTOH, in those days your vision of what was going on was likely more optimistic and trusting than it is now.  You may not have noticed but your attitudes about many things have been changing (gradually) in the years since I joined this board.  You're a lot more open to the ideas of corruption and collusion and crime being committed across the board, that democracy and our way of government is in danger, than you used to be.

Not saying this is a good thing, because it shows how much blatantly, no longer hidden, this stuff has gotten.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

40 minutes ago, Zorral said:

But they did, partly because a mob stopped the count.  Do you not recall that either? 

Never let Alex Penelas slide away quietly in these conversations either.

Profession: lawyer turned shady politician. 

Edited May 4, 2023 by Tywin et al.

[DMC]

46 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Profession: lawyer turned shady politician. 

It's called a promotion!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, DMC said:

It's called a promotion!

Not sure it worked out that well for him in the long run.

[Varysblackfyre321]

a lot of “surely there’d be an exception” In the responses. 

[Phylum of Alexandria]

15 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

I do think there’s a risk of leftists or mainly liberals thinking they can just point to the Majore Greene’s the world who are evil to galvanize support and all they just have to be better slightly to demand absolute loyalty and prompt action.

Also there’s a risk of people ignoring takes that can and do demand ousting in order to preserve the movement.

Sure, it's not a simple problem. Pretty much all of the articles I've read tackling this problem among progressive political organizations have acknowledged that there are valid complaints about ossification, unfairness, and mistreatment present in the mix as well as the more illiberal stuff. And even the people proving to be the most toxic can sometimes have valid concerns, they're just taking courses of action that do more harm to the cause than good.

15 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

The anti-war movement in the 30s was filled with genuine pacifists—who decided to work with fascists because although they disagreed on most things they did think America shouldn’t give military aid to the enemies of the Nazis.

For most of history, the word "alliance" did not mean a union of perfectly worthy souls; it meant a temporary staying of conflict for the sake of specific practical action. Hopefully you can acknowledge how far that word has drifted in terms of a standard for working with people. And hopefully you can also acknowledge that fellow members of a progressive organization, and people elsewhere on the left, are nowhere near anything like a fascist. If you can't, well, that's a pretty good litmus test for orthodoxy right there.

15 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Post the bits you find most relevant/persuasive of the article  if you will.

I'm hoping you realize that your comment here has a strong whiff of "I don't really give a shit, but I'll shoot off an opinion if you present it to me." I'll just say that I'm happy to have an informed discussion with someone who seems earnestly invested in the matter. So to that effect, I'll supply even more links for those interested, and those who care to find out what I'm talking about and discuss them can do so, and will hopefully engage with me.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/opinion/sunday/cancel-culture-call-out.html

http://adriennemareebrown.net/2020/07/17/unthinkable-thoughts-call-out-culture-in-the-age-of-covid-19/

https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture/

https://forgeorganizing.org/article/building-resilient-organizations

 

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by Phylum of Alexandria

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Totally normal behavior. Nothing to see here:

Seriously, this dude's entire financial history needs to be investigated. And Congress should refuse to give the SC a penny until they start having a real ethics process instead of the BS honor system they've been enjoying. 

Edited May 4, 2023 by Tywin et al.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

29 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Totally normal behavior. Nothing to see here:

Seriously, this dude's entire financial history needs to be investigated. And Congress should refuse to give the SC a penny until they start having a real ethics process instead of the BS honor system they've been enjoying. 

Agreed.

[Ormond]

20 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Fair enough (I thought you said you taught both though before you retired). But, um, don't tease me about typos when you misspelled your own field, lol. 

I had to teach social psychology about three times during my career when there was no actual social psychologist available to teach it that term.  It was a fun class to teach, but it's not my area of expertise. 

[Ormond]

16 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

You'd be surprised, I heard law students complaining about it well after you graduated (and yes when everything was either online or easy to order). Hence why I've assumed it's baked into the culture at some schools, the Ivys obviously being the worst. 

 

You know, it is quite possible for people to have heard an "urban legend" story and believe it without actually having any concrete evidence of it themselves, and then "complain about it", assuming the reason they couldn't find a book right away when they were looking for it is because some supercompetitive jerk had destroyed it when there was actually another explanation. And yes, law students would be just as likely to make incorrect assumptions based on urban legends as other human beings. 

[TrackerNeil]

21 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

For me, it presents a political crisis. How can we face the Sauron of the right wing if our fellowship is fighting itself, calling each other orcs? We can't. It's the self-cannibalizing dynamics that I can't stand, because it leaves us most vulnerable to a movement that wants to wipe us all out.

Good gods, yes. We're busy fighting people who essentially agree with us, instead of the people who want to destroy us all. It's like Rivendell going to war with Lothlorien over the exact shape of the lembas, while the Nazgul are setting both places on fire.

More than that, though, these internecine struggles don't start with mere disagreement; they come from a feeling of utter certainty mixed with an almost evangelical zeal to either convince or destroy all opponents. Wrongheaded righteousness like that is what gets people crashing planes into buildings.

[Martell Spy]

Four Proud Boys members found guilty of seditious conspiracy

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/04/politics/proud-boys-seditious-conspiracy-verdict/index.html

Quote

 

Four members of the far-right Proud Boys have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy by a jury in Washington, DC, for their roles to forcibly prevent the peaceful transfer of power from then-President Donald Trump to Joe Biden after the 2020 election.

Defendants Enrique Tarrio – the Proud Boys longtime chairman – Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola faced a range of charges, including three separate conspiracy charges, obstructing the Electoral College vote and tampering with evidence. 

The guilty verdict marks the third time that prosecutors have secured convictions for seditious conspiracy in the Justice Department’s historic prosecution of those who breached the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Four Proud Boys members found guilty of seditious conspiracy

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/04/politics/proud-boys-seditious-conspiracy-verdict/index.html

 

Fuck yes!

[TrackerNeil]

23 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Fuck yes!

I am normally very incarceration-skeptical, but these guys need to see the inside of a prison cell for a good long time.

Edited May 4, 2023 by TrackerNeil

[Zorral]

https://jessica.substack.com/p/texas-is-fabricating-abortion-data?

Also, total state surveillance of women:

Quote

 

.... Sue, a pseudonym, is an emergency medicine physician at a major Texas city hospital. Ever since Roe was overturned and the state’s trigger law went into effect, Sue and other Texas doctors have been required to submit patients’ private medical information into a state-run website without their knowledge or consent—adhering to a mandate that forces them to report women as suffering from abortion complications even when they’re not.

This rarely reported on section of Texas law lists 28 medical issues as abortion complications—conditions that reproductive health experts point out often have nothing to do with abortion. Still, doctors are required to tell the state about any woman who develops one of these issues if she happens to have had an abortion at any point in her life. 

Doctors who don’t make these reports can be fined for each ‘violation’; after three violations, they could lose their license. Sue, who got conflicting and often confusing guidance from the large health system that runs her hospital and dozens of others in the state, was terrified not to comply. “For all I knew, I could be one that [Attorney General] Ken Paxton made an example of,” she says. 

This reporting mandate is a central and insidious part of Republicans’ strategy to paint abortion as dangerous despite decades of evidence to the contrary. It’s a policy that forces doctors, under threat of losing their license, to lend their name and medical credibility to the collection of false data—‘research’ that will be used by the state to claim abortion is unsafe.

“They want to force us to report a complication so they can submit and advertise bad data,” Sue says. 

The list of ‘complications’ that Texas doctors are forced to attribute to abortion are vague and nonsensical. Some, like “adverse reactions to anesthesia,” are risks associated with having any medical procedure. (As Sue points out, it’s not as if there’s a state commission on adverse reactions to colonoscopies.) 

Others, like “infection,” could develop in a patient for a reason completely unrelated to abortion or predate the procedure, yet would still be counted as a complication. The law also lists complications like “pelvic inflammatory disease,” which is a type of infection and therefore could be double-counted.

Other ‘complications’ would require reports to the state years after a patient had an abortion. I’ll use myself as an example: My daughter was born three months early after I developed severe preeclampsia. If I delivered her in Texas tomorrow, and happened to mention that I ended a pregnancy a few years previous, my doctor would be required to report my daughter’s early birth as a complication of abortion. Never mind that there’s no link between preeclampsia and abortion; because “preterm delivery in subsequent pregnancies” is on the law’s list of reportable conditions, my physician would have no choice. 

What’s more, it wouldn’t be just one doctor reporting my supposed complication to the state. Texas law requires that every single physician involved in a patient’s care fill out the state’s abortion complication form. Even the hospital itself, as an entity, has to file a report. It’s a policy that encourages double, triple, even quadruple duplicate reports for a single person. (Again, a patient who may not have an abortion complication at all!) ....