Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[ScottishFox]

9 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

Hierarchy. One group of people very definitely ruling, and everyone else very definitely being ruled.

 

Both parties 100% believe in this.  They will say and do whatever gets them enough votes to hang on to the only thing they care about - power.

 

Motivating the voters is pure theater.  Say and do whatever riles up your base(s) to get them into the voting booth and then continue to put public money in private pockets while bankrupting our grandchildren.

 

Debt is at 23 trillion and climbing like there is no tomorrow.  That's about 70,000 per person.  Hope the average family has 280,000 cash and another 1.3 million coming in for unfunded liabilities.

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

 

 

[TrickstaPriest]

2 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

Motivating the voters is pure theater.  Say and do whatever riles up your base(s) to get them into the voting booth and then continue to put public money in private pockets while bankrupting our grandchildren.

 

Not just bankrupting our children.  Destroying the planet.

 

The literal cost in damage from environmental degradation and other issues are going to easily cost trillions... because frankly, the country can and will abandon any location hit by 'too many' natural disasters or struggling too hard without external support.  How much and how many times will we have cities repaired before the state or country says "eeeh you deal with it".  Or "its too much work to maintain roads and ship goods to your little town, sorry."

 

This is long before we consider food production, wars in remote locations.  If you happen to be concerned about immigration from South America, boy howdy you haven't seen anything yet.

 

And how will a government handle these costs and resources?  By shoving them onto people and abandoning those people.  The immigration thing is the early complaint, but it won't stop there...

[Joe Walsh]

55 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

And how will a government handle these costs and resources?  By shoving them onto people and abandoning those people.

 

If that's what voters want, then sure. But it doesn't have to be that way. We turned from Hoover's approach to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl to FDRs, for example.

[megaplayboy]

I think Congress has been effectively paralyzed from accomplishing major change, since about 1994.  It feels like there was a sea change in the attitude of the parties, Republicans in particular, regarding the principle of "bipartisan cooperation and compromise".  Specifically, Republicans decided that, when they were in the majority, it was politically expedient for them to just stonewall all Democratic legislative proposals (typically by abusing the filibuster) rather than try to seek consensus and compromise to solve societal problems.  They could then campaign both on the Democrats "scary" proposals and also on their inability to get things done.  It's a supremely amoral, cynical strategy, but it has definitely been effective for them, at least in 2010 and 2014.  The only possible counters to this would either be to decisively defeat them at the polls in spite of this strategy, or alternatively to abolish the filibuster and just pass whatever it's possible to pass.  The latter strategy seems more viable, imo.  

[Starlord]

Term limits, term limits, term limits....

[DShomshak]

One small bit of hope from today's All Things Considered: At least some young Evangelicals are breaking from their parents' hostility to environmentalism and adopting "Creation Care" as both religious and political approach.

 

There was also a rather jolly story about how Moore County, Texas is coping with demographic shift from all the migrants and refugees moving in to work at the beef slaughterhouse. Of course you have the people who are upset at walking into a store and finding everyone, including the staff, speaking Spanish. But... Without the immigrants, the slaughterhouse closes. As a local judge put it, people are learning tolerance from necessity. He compares changing attitudes to gaining weight: You put on a few pounds and don't think about it, then a few more, and one day you find your clothes, or social habits, don't fit anymore. So you change them, hardly even noticing how they've changed.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

Environmental activism today is being driven by youth, around the world. Whatever their background, they're well informed due to access to the Internet. They recognize that their elders are not taking needed action, but that they're the ones who will suffer the consequences. So they're stepping up.

[Pariah]

10 hours ago, DShomshak said:

One small bit of hope from today's All Things Considered: At least some young Evangelicals are breaking from their parents' hostility to environmentalism and adopting "Creation Care" as both religious and political approach.

 

I'm not an evangelical (and some evangelicals probably wouldn't even consider me a Christian) but this makes perfect sense to me. We read the Parable of the Stewards the other day. If you belive that God, through whatever mechanism, created the Earth as a place for His creations to live, it only makes sense that part of your accountability for your life on Earth would be how well you took care of the place.

[Hermit]

32 minutes ago, Pariah said:

 

I'm not an evangelical (and some evangelicals probably wouldn't even consider me a Christian) but this makes perfect sense to me. We read the Parable of the Stewards the other day. If you belive that God, through whatever mechanism, created the Earth as a place for His creations to live, it only makes sense that part of your accountability for your life on Earth would be how well you took care of the place.

Yup. I know a lot of Christians who read "custodianship" or even "Guardianship" as part of the "Dominion of all the Earth" so hence pick up trash or the like.

Good to see it getting even more steam against Clime Change specifically though

[Lord Liaden]

18 hours ago, GM Joe said:

 

If that's what voters want, then sure. But it doesn't have to be that way. We turned from Hoover's approach to the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl to FDRs, for example.

 

For that to happen effectively, the United States needs a leader with a positive vision, the ability to articulate it in a way that makes Americans believe it, and the courage and skill to take the hard steps to make it happen. At first many of us thought we got that in Barack Obama, but it turned out he didn't have what it takes in those last two qualities. I'm sad to say I don't see a comparable candidate on the horizon.

[Joe Walsh]

5 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

For that to happen effectively, the United States needs a leader with a positive vision, the ability to articulate it in a way that makes Americans believe it, and the courage and skill to take the hard steps to make it happen. At first many of us thought we got that in Barack Obama, but it turned out he didn't have what it takes in those last two qualities. I'm sad to say I don't see a comparable candidate on the horizon.

 

Yeah, BO was such a disappointment. His rhetoric soared, but he clearly had no clue how to handle an opposition party that wanted him to fail at any cost. At first I thought it was just his inexperience as a politician that was hurting him, but as the years wore on it just seemed that he was temperamentally unable to deal with the reality he'd been dealt.

 

As for the future, I think we'll need to do the work of electing people to Congress who share our philosophy if we want things to really change, rather than just looking to the Presidency as a means of change. And of course we'll need the President and Senate to work together to make sure the courts aren't filled with people who want to block progress.

 

There's a big job ahead, in other words, and I fear that even under the best-case scenario it will take more than my remaining life to get things back to where they were when I was born.

[DShomshak]

2 hours ago, Pariah said:

 

I'm not an evangelical (and some evangelicals probably wouldn't even consider me a Christian) but this makes perfect sense to me. We read the Parable of the Stewards the other day. If you belive that God, through whatever mechanism, created the Earth as a place for His creations to live, it only makes sense that part of your accountability for your life on Earth would be how well you took care of the place.

 

That's more or less what the former Evangelical lobbyist said in the program. How can someone claim to love God when they show such contempt for His creation?

 

He actually described this realization as a conversion moment.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Starlord]

I think we would need a whole different thread if we wanted to discuss the enormous level of hypocrisy involved with so-called 'Evangelicals'.  Did any of them actually read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

[Joe Walsh]

It's really remarkable.

 

I realize the Bible's a dense document that was written in times and places far from here and now, and then translated by various people at various times and with various worldviews and agendas.

 

In my youth, I went to a private Christian school, and then of course to Sunday School on the weekend.  I studied the Bible six days a week and heard from the pulpit three days a week.

 

A lot of what's in that book still makes no sense to me.

 

But it's not hard to get the gist of the New Testament: Be nice to other people. Telling people of your good deeds means you've chosen earthly rewards instead of heavenly ones. Storing up earthly treasures makes it harder to get into heaven. And so on.

 

Yet, the message is so easily muddied by those with an agenda. There are companies promising to help you invest your money on the stock market in a Biblical way. And the other day the TV was tuned to the 700 Club in the office building's shared breakroom and they were saying that if you donate to them, God will make you wealthy. The more you give, the more you'll get. 🤨

 

Hmm. Maybe we do need another thread. 😁

[TrickstaPriest]

24 minutes ago, GM Joe said:

Yet, the message is so easily muddied by those with an agenda. There are companies promising to help you invest your money on the stock market in a Biblical way. And the other day the TV was tuned to the 700 Club in the office building's shared breakroom and they were saying that if you donate to them, God will make you wealthy. The more you give, the more you'll get. 🤨

 

Hmm. Maybe we do need another thread. 😁

 

Another thread prone to arguments and giving Dan headaches

 

I've been working on writing a small RPG game involving your character being unknowingly part of a cult.  Writing it is going to be... difficult.  It's inspired directly from channels like Telltale and his various stories.

 

----

 

In general, I do appreciate all the attention the environment is getting from the younger generation.  The big obstacle is the existing power base, and I think it's just going to take far too long for anything substantial enough to happen.

 

But I'm more hopeful than I was a couple years ago.

[Pariah]

It puts me in mind of two songs that came out in the early 90s: "Ticket to Heaven" by Dire Straits and "Jesus He Knows Me" by Genesis.

[Joe Walsh]

8 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

In general, I do appreciate all the attention the environment is getting from the younger generation.  The big obstacle is the existing power base, and I think it's just going to take far too long for anything substantial enough to happen.

 

But I'm more hopeful than I was a couple years ago.

 

It is nice to see! I hope they're able to maintain their commitment as they get married, have kids, and slide into middle age instead of turning away from such things like most seem to do.

[Ternaugh]

47 minutes ago, Pariah said:

It puts me in mind of two songs that came out in the early 90s: "Ticket to Heaven" by Dire Straits and "Jesus He Knows Me" by Genesis.

 

 

I'd add the 1987 song, "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex" by Ray Stevens to the list as well.

[csyphrett]

3 hours ago, Pariah said:

It puts me in mind of two songs that came out in the early 90s: "Ticket to Heaven" by Dire Straits and "Jesus He Knows Me" by Genesis.

it puts me in mind of Land of Confusion, but I will take Brothers in arms so we don't have to have Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner

CES 

[Lawnmower Boy]

On 11/4/2019 at 2:25 PM, megaplayboy said:

I think Congress has been effectively paralyzed from accomplishing major change, since about 1994.  It feels like there was a sea change in the attitude of the parties, Republicans in particular, regarding the principle of "bipartisan cooperation and compromise".  Specifically, Republicans decided that, when they were in the majority, it was politically expedient for them to just stonewall all Democratic legislative proposals (typically by abusing the filibuster) rather than try to seek consensus and compromise to solve societal problems.  They could then campaign both on the Democrats "scary" proposals and also on their inability to get things done.  It's a supremely amoral, cynical strategy, but it has definitely been effective for them, at least in 2010 and 2014.  The only possible counters to this would either be to decisively defeat them at the polls in spite of this strategy, or alternatively to abolish the filibuster and just pass whatever it's possible to pass.  The latter strategy seems more viable, imo.  

 

"The liberum veto (Latin for "(I) freely oppose") was a parliamentary device in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was a form of unanimity voting rule that allowed any member of the Sejm (legislature) to force an immediate end to the current session and to nullify any legislation that had already been passed at the session by shouting, Sisto activitatem! (Latin: "I stop the activity!") or Nie pozwalam! (Polish: "I do not allow!"). The rule was in place from the mid-17th century to the late 18th century in the Sejm's parliamentary deliberations. It was based on the premise that since all Polish noblemen were equal, every measure that came before the Sejm had to be passed unanimously. The liberum veto was a key part of the political system of the Commonwealth, strengthening democratic elements and checking royal power and went against the European-wide trend of having a strong executive (absolute monarchy).

Many historians hold that the liberum veto was a major cause of the deterioration of the Commonwealth political system, particularly in the 18th century, when foreign powers bribed Sejm members to paralyze its proceedings, and the Commonwealth's eventual destruction in the partitions of Poland and foreign occupation, dominance and manipulation of Poland for the next 200 years or so. Piotr Stefan Wandycz wrote that the "liberum veto had become the sinister symbol of old Polish anarchy". In the period of 1573–1763, about 150 sejms were held, about a third failing to pass any legislation, mostly because of the liberum veto. The expression Polish parliament in many European languages originated from the apparent paralysis."

 

Ironically, the situation got so bad that the last King of Poland whose election was secured by Russian money ran on a platform of getting rid of the liberum veto. But then Russia changed its mind and got rid of Poland, instead.

 

Good times. 

[Lord Liaden]

On 11/4/2019 at 5:25 PM, megaplayboy said:

I think Congress has been effectively paralyzed from accomplishing major change, since about 1994.  It feels like there was a sea change in the attitude of the parties, Republicans in particular, regarding the principle of "bipartisan cooperation and compromise".  Specifically, Republicans decided that, when they were in the majority, it was politically expedient for them to just stonewall all Democratic legislative proposals (typically by abusing the filibuster) rather than try to seek consensus and compromise to solve societal problems.  They could then campaign both on the Democrats "scary" proposals and also on their inability to get things done.  It's a supremely amoral, cynical strategy, but it has definitely been effective for them, at least in 2010 and 2014.  The only possible counters to this would either be to decisively defeat them at the polls in spite of this strategy, or alternatively to abolish the filibuster and just pass whatever it's possible to pass.  The latter strategy seems more viable, imo.  

 

Most historians credit the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, with making this a deliberate Republican strategy; along with publicly demonizing the Democrats as a propaganda tactic. As a path to gaining power, it proved remarkably effective. As a model for governance... well, 'nuff said.

[BNakagawa]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/05/us/elections/results-kentucky-governor-general-election.html

 

wow, that was close.

 

Kentucky, a state that DT won by 30 percent, just elected a democrat Governor days after Trump stumped for the republican incumbent.

 

[Lord Liaden]

The description of how the incumbent, Matt Bevin, handled his state's teacher walkout, sounds like he lifted from Donald Trump's playbook -- demonizing the protestors and making sh!t up about them.

[Hermit]

Gave the bird, lost her job, got elected.

 

I am the amused.

[Lord Liaden]

President or no, I don't think Trump can expect to be shown respect until he starts showing some to other people.