Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Lord Liaden]

Guys, just remember that this isn't the first time American society has been deeply divided, nor that politicians have exploited those divisions for their own purposes. The Vietnam war. The civil rights movement. McCarthyism and the "red scare." The fallout from those was even worse than what we've seen from Trumpism to date, yet American society has proven resilient enough to bounce back each time, arguably stronger than before. Some of your current president's actions definitely need to be publicly opposed, and he'll probably leave a big mess that will take time and much work to clean up; but so far he's just a brief hiccup in history.

[unclevlad]

I remember the Vietnam era, which also overlapped good chunks of the civil rights era.  You're wrong, by and large.  Things are much worse now. 

 

--Trump is eviscerating senior leadership and expertise by driving them away, or appointing dismantlers (EPA).  

--Fake news has been a political weapon for a while now, but Trump has sanctioned it by giving it Presidential legitimacy.  This has, IMO, severely increased the polar segregations.

--On the world stage, the damage done to our alliances, and to our trustworthiness, is incalculable.  We have no moral standing in the world at all.

--As someone pointed out, Trump's brought the radical racist factions back into the game.

--Neither Johnson nor Nixon ever publicly sank to the trash-talk radio levels Trump routinely uses.  Trump's a sewer and every so often he has to find a wind tunnel to use as he flushes himself out.

 

I'll agree to a point that things may not be irreversible *yet*.  As I mentioned, I think we have 1 last chance in a month.  If the election doesn't repudiate Trump and the entire Republican Party...if they keep both houses...then there's 2 more years where they *also* have the Supreme Court.  I am *seriously* worried that in 2 more years, the economy will be crushed from the consequences of his trade war.  Immigration policies will only be more punitive.  Race hatred will only grow.  

 

The Vietnam protests were arguably healthy...divisive, yes, and the vets of that era were major victims.  You could call them knife cuts.  Trump's poisoning everything...the damage isn't as visible but it's a heckuva lot more extensive.

 

Last point:  a side aspect of the damage is that, even once he's gone, the fight to undo any of this is going to be equally vicious.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

I'll agree to a point that things may not be irreversible *yet*.  As I mentioned, I think we have 1 last chance in a month.  If the election doesn't repudiate Trump and the entire Republican Party...if they keep both houses...then there's 2 more years where they *also* have the Supreme Court.

 

And if they pick up a few more state legislatures they can rewrite the Constitution.

 

Sleep well!

[assault]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

The Vietnam protests were arguably healthy...divisive, yes, and the vets of that era were major victims.

 

Veterans were a major part of the opposition to the Vietnam war.

Virtually every march was led by veterans. Nearly every US military base in the world had anti-War coffee shops, usually staffed by veterans, just down the road. There was a whole network of publications by and for veterans and serving personnel. And so on...

 

The stories of anti-war protesters spitting on returning veterans are essentially Reagan era slanders.

Veterans did, however, get shafted, but not by anti-war protesters. Conservative politicians, naturally, cut and minimized their entitlements in the traditional way, the same as veterans have always been treated - heroes in wartime, disposable trash afterwards. But of course being able to blame this on anti-war protesters, "liberals" and so on is a godsend.

[Starlord]

6 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Guys, just remember that this isn't the first time American society has been deeply divided, nor that politicians have exploited those divisions for their own purposes. The Vietnam war. The civil rights movement. McCarthyism and the "red scare." The fallout from those was even worse than what we've seen from Trumpism to date, yet American society has proven resilient enough to bounce back each time, arguably stronger than before. Some of your current president's actions definitely need to be publicly opposed, and he'll probably leave a big mess that will take time and much work to clean up; but so far he's just a brief hiccup in history.

 

In a way, that makes things more frightening because, after these situations, often we can only be unified in love and/or hatred by horrifying events like assassinations, wars, space shuttle explosions, or the rise of disco.

[csyphrett]

12 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Which local postal service is this, if you don't mind my asking?

i don't know if they were all couriers or from the office itself. They had set up at the library, two blocks down from the post office with US MAIL NOT FOR SELL signs and T-shirts. They were walking from the library to the corner and back again. I was dropping my kid off and asked some of them what was going on. They said that the government was trying to privatize the USPS. That's when I said Early voting is next week. Vote against these people.

CES 

[BoloOfEarth]

5 hours ago, Starlord said:

 

In a way, that makes things more frightening because, after these situations, often we can only be unified in love and/or hatred by horrifying events like assassinations, wars, space shuttle explosions, or the rise of disco.

Are you trying to say that our only hope for renewed unity is the return of disco? 

[Cygnia]

Y'know, given disco's early acceptance of women, PoC and LGBT folk, maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing...

[Hermit]

I worry that the Democrats aren't going to take the House. The democratic voters seemed more invested than the Republican ones in the mid terms, but props to the GOP, they certainly are making an effort to energize their voters using the recent Kavanaugh hearings to pus h their "See, the Dems will do anything to stop us! no matter how dirty handed this poor innocent man" :roll eyes: never mind it wasn't a criminal trial

 

And I worry that at least in my state it Is working. I worry Blackburn is going to win.

 

I really loathe her.

 

 

 

 

[Starlord]

21 minutes ago, Hermit said:

I worry that the Democrats aren't going to take the House. The democratic voters seemed more invested than the Republican ones in the mid terms, but props to the GOP, they certainly are making an effort to energize their voters using the recent Kavanaugh hearings to pus h their "See, the Dems will do anything to stop us! no matter how dirty handed this poor innocent man" :roll eyes: never mind it wasn't a criminal trial

 

And I worry that at least in my state it Is working. I worry Blackburn is going to win.

 

Not if the Swifties have anything to say about it. 

 

[megaplayboy]

30 minutes ago, Hermit said:

I worry that the Democrats aren't going to take the House. The democratic voters seemed more invested than the Republican ones in the mid terms, but props to the GOP, they certainly are making an effort to energize their voters using the recent Kavanaugh hearings to pus h their "See, the Dems will do anything to stop us! no matter how dirty handed this poor innocent man" :roll eyes: never mind it wasn't a criminal trial

 

And I worry that at least in my state it Is working. I worry Blackburn is going to win.

 

I really loathe her.

 

 

 

 

The Senate is still a long shot, but I seriously doubt that Republican voter enthusiasm will remain high 4 weeks after Kavanaugh's confirmation.  

[Lord Liaden]

12 hours ago, unclevlad said:

I remember the Vietnam era, which also overlapped good chunks of the civil rights era.  You're wrong, by and large.  Things are much worse now. 

 

--Trump is eviscerating senior leadership and expertise by driving them away, or appointing dismantlers (EPA).  

--Fake news has been a political weapon for a while now, but Trump has sanctioned it by giving it Presidential legitimacy.  This has, IMO, severely increased the polar segregations.

--On the world stage, the damage done to our alliances, and to our trustworthiness, is incalculable.  We have no moral standing in the world at all.

--As someone pointed out, Trump's brought the radical racist factions back into the game.

--Neither Johnson nor Nixon ever publicly sank to the trash-talk radio levels Trump routinely uses.  Trump's a sewer and every so often he has to find a wind tunnel to use as he flushes himself out.

 

 

I don't deny the accuracy of anything you claim. But you don't yet have rioting in the street over these issues, in which protestors are dying. You don't have large numbers of your citizens fleeing your country to avoid being drafted. And to go beyond Vietnam, you don't yet have major elected politicians proclaiming that an entire ethnic minority should be denied access to the same opportunities as other Americans, and turning a blind eye to acts of violence against that minority within their jurisdictions. You don't see the label, "liberal," being used to silence and ostracize citizens critical of government and society, the way "communist" was once used. You also don't see political tensions between superpowers threatening to plunge the whole world into nuclear devastation at any moment, while those superpowers use the rest of the planet as their chess board.

 

I'm not saying the current situation isn't bad in its own ways, but I caution against the temptation to say it's worse than ever.

[Hermit]

9 minutes ago, Starlord said:

 

Not if the Swifties have anything to say about it. 

 

 

3 minutes ago, megaplayboy said:

The Senate is still a long shot, but I seriously doubt that Republican voter enthusiasm will remain high 4 weeks after Kavanaugh's confirmation.  

 

First, props to Taylor Swift! I don't get that much into the fandoms so I missed that! But I have enjoyed some of her music so good to see her utlize her power to motivate folks to vote. I hope it doesn't bite her  career in the butt but hey Thanks for sharing that.

 

And Mega, I hope you're right. But early voting is also going on so.. mmm

[Doc Shadow]

What really worries me is a quote from Stalin:

 

Those who vote decide nothing.

Those who count the votes decide everything.

 

This takes on even more relevance in view of the Russian tampering in '16.

[Old Man]

And we'll see more of the same this year, as nothing has been done to address the problem.

[Cygnia]

Why More Dictators Are Killing and Abducting Dissidents Abroad

[archer]

On 10/8/2018 at 12:40 PM, DShomshak said:

 the Sep. 22, 2018 issue of The Economist...

 

(The article also mentions that the "Originalist" claim is, not to put too fine a point on it, an utter fraud.)

 

Dean Shomshak

 

Can you elaborate on what the Originalist "claim" is?

 

To the best of my knowledge, both branches of Originalism are a philosophical viewpoints of how judges and justices should approach cases involving constitutional matters.

 

What "claim" has been made?

[megaplayboy]

Well, for one thing, the Framers/Founders(They Who Walk In Shadow, Those Whose Wisdom Must Not Be Questioned, etc.) were not originalists.  They believed in a system of common law and binding precedent, not a hypertechnical examination of language which almost always, by sheer coincidence, matches the policy preferences of whatever the current version of political conservatism is.  

[DShomshak]

I oversimplified or overstated.. Here, I'll type in the paragraphs from page 26 of the article:

 

On more general matters of judicial philosophy he was, for what it's worth, more forthcoming. When he interprets the constitution, Mr Kavanaugh told the judiciary committee, he considers himself bound by the document's "original public meaning, of course informed by history and tradition and precedent." This view, that the constitution has one meaning, the one it was originally taken as having by its readers, and that singular meaning is best found by close study of the text, is known as originalism. Scalia was for a long time its most prominent exponent on the court (its most ardent advocate now is Clarence Thomas). Partly because Scalia regularly and persuasively expounded on its merits it has gained much currency. This is particularly true on the right--Mr Thomas is the court's most conservative justice--but holds to some extent across the ideological spectrum. Justices pay far more heed to specific wordings today than they did in the Warren Court's heyday. As Elena Kagan once put it, "We're all textualists now."

 

Associate justice, no peace

However some, such as Eric Segall of Georgia State University the author of an upcoming book on originalism, worry that originalist language is often used by justices to uphold positions quite at odds with the philosophy's seemingly hand-off tenets. "Justices use the rhetoric of originalism to mask political judgement," Mr Segall says. Past proponents of originalism argued that courts should strike down laws only in cases of clear textual error. Today, argues Mr Segall, proponents of originalism want to "shrink the federal government and deregulate the economy, but there is no reasonable originalist argument for that kind of strong judicial interference with our political system."

 

So, the article itself does not say originalism is a fraud; it quotes someone who seems to be saying that originalism is used fraudulently. I grant it's an important distinction. Other people who know more about these things than I do can perhaps supply examples.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

Only peripherally political, but when I came across this SportChek sporting goods listing I had to share it here. There's a Canadian version of the infamous Vuvuzela telescoping horn, but in use in this country for over fifty years. Only now it's being marketed as, The Trump.

 

[Iuz the Evil]

Probably already posted, but I really like it so...

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

Left here without comment: My Private Oval Office Press Conference With Donald Trump, Mike Pence, John Kelly, and Mike Pompeo

[unclevlad]

43 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Left here without comment: My Private Oval Office Press Conference With Donald Trump, Mike Pence, John Kelly, and Mike Pompeo

 

scary...............

[Joe Walsh]

It's so sad how needy Trump is.

 

[Sociotard]

Did she have a voice recorder going? I can't think of any other way to get those long stretches of text, but I'm surprised the President allowed it.