TrickstaPriest

so what are the chances of us finding out the winner of Iowa, before we get to New Hampshire.

A member of the Utah State House of Representatives has filed a resolution to censure Senator Mitt Romney after his vote to convict the President for abuse of power. The Representative in question is a Republican, of course. 
 
The GOP here in Utah suddenly has a lot of nasty stuff to say about our junior Senator. "Disloyal" is a word that has come up a lot.
 
As far as I'm concerned, if state Republicans think that loyalty to the Party is more important than loyalty to the truth, or even loyalty to the nation, then screw 'em.  Senator Romney is better off without 'em. 

They should have stuck with censure from the House...and should have known the senate would not allow witnesses and eventually acquit him.  IMO, more and more people are beginning to gain sympathy for Trump as a victim who is just getting picked on at this point.  And boy did he play the victim in his acquittal speech

IMO the Democrats had no choice -- if they didn't take action they'd be accused of standing for nothing. Trump's base isn't growing, and weren't going to leave however the trial went. We have to see how this all plays out come election day.
 
But I'm with you on Trump's braying. I can't listen to anything that comes out of that smug, smirking, orange mouth for more than a minute without wanting to throw up.

Trump's acquittal speech is on now.  It's making me physically ill...i'm not kidding.  Imagine Trump as an engine...now rev the engine a 1000% past redline.
 
Nicely done, democrats...he's stronger than ever now.

My sister would like to add her thanks for this post. When I told her about it, she said, "And here I thought I was just a Luddite."
 
Dean Shomshak

Senator Romney is going to catch seven different kinds of Hell for this, and he knows it.
 
He did it anyway.
 
That's not nothing.

Anyway, for my post last night.  I just have to rant about it now and again, somewhere.  No bad intentions.

First they fail to release the pre-voting poll, and then they fail to release the vote totals.  
 
"I believe in coincidence.  Coincidences happen every day.  But I don't trust coincidences."  
 
Garak, Star Trek Deep Space Nine

One could easily argue the Virginia Dems are fools if they don't gerrymander and otherwise try to lock in every electoral advantage they can get. Just like Republicans do with voter suppression laws and suchlike. Politics, after all, is merely an exercise in finding who has power over whom. There is no hypocrisy in politics, because there are no principles to betray. (Though the accusation of hypocrisy can be a useful ploy.) And so on.
 
Bleah. I just started reading Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars, which argues that morality applies usefully even in this brutal sphere of human activity. I hope he can persuade me, because I'm getting pretty damn disgusted with humanity.
 
Dean Shomshak

Going deeper, I also don't agree with the article's premise that democracy -- everyone's vote counting the same, in all cases -- is a desirable end in itself. The Framers took care that strict majority rule would not apply. That is, indeed, one of the reasons for having a Constitution: To prevent majorities of the moment from making self-interested or emotional choices that are damaging in the long run. (In a way, by preventing pure democracy, constitutions give the past and future a vote.) So I don't find the Senate intrinsically unfair.
 
I see democracy as a means to various ends, such as civil rights. If democracy becomes a threat to those goals, block democracy.
 
Dean Shomshak

If Dems pulled off a state-packing scheme sufficient to obtain permanent Senate control and make taking the White House difficult (if not impossible), how do Republicans react?
 
Option 1: Civil war. At this point, politics become so poisonous that it's a rational choice.
 
Option 2: Make the best of a bad situation. Use every trick of voter suppression, gerrymandering and propaganda at their disposal to try taking the House or White House as a way to block Dems. But with a permanently Democratic Supreme Court, they may find these tools being taken away too. Go back to Option 1, or settle for political control of a fraction of the states.
 
Option 3: Abandon their white supremacist and corporate feudalist dogmas to appeal to wider segments of the American public. Probably more difficult even than Option 2.
 
Dean Shomshak

But there's a deeper difficulty. Assume Dems have made the 127 micro-states, all solidly Democratic, out of Washington, DC neighborhoods. The new micro-states hold 48% of the electoral votes (or thereabouts); they have total control of the Senate; thier single representatives form 29% of the House; their legislatures are sufficient to ratify constitutional amendments with little need for cooperation from any other state. So if they act as a bloc (and why wouldn't they), why do they still need the rest of the Democratic Party?
 
It's a way to make Republicans lose, conclusively. But Dems could find it a Pyrrhic victory as pleasing this new bloc becomes the sum of all policy, and America gains a truly imperial capital.

Exactly.  Cyber is mysterious and incomprehensible to 99% of the population, making it impossible to convince them of the legitimacy of the vote once it is questioned.  It also lends itself to tampering over the internet.  I expect to see a lot of the latter once the Senate GOP gives themselves free rein tomorrow to seek "foreign assistance" in future elections.

I don't disagree, though, they seemed to have been arguing for the opposite after 2000.
 
Of course, if we do insist on tech, I think the lesson, maybe have paper copies as a backup plan.
 
I personally liked 200 and before.  Since I took my votes seriously, and double and even triple checked before punching my vote, it was nice to know I had hard data that I voted the way I wanted to.  Since, then there has always been a seed of doubt in my mind.

I confess, THIS Bernie supporter is at least feeling suspicious.
 
 
 

Fivethirtyeight sums up the Iowa caucus "results" thusly:
 

I'd like to take this moment to repeat that, in my opinion as an IT and cybersecurity professional, elections should be paper and ink only.  No hackable voting machines, no badly written caucus apps, no easily deleted centralized databases.  Ever.  The mere existence of these opaque technologies can only reduce the perceived legitimacy of any election.

SO, trying to get this, right.  No clear results, but several candidates are giving some kind victory type speech.
 
 
*smacks forehead*
 
I am not going to make it through this year, am I?
 
 

Hmmm.  Mr Johnson sought to exclude certain press outlets from a media briefing and the rest of the journalists left the room...perhaps there is hope for the British media...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2020/feb/03/brexit-news-boris--johnson-speech-barnier-cabinet-ministers-claims-uk-does-not-need-trade-deal-with-eu-ahead-of-pms-speech-live-news?CMP=share_btn_tw
 
EDIT:
Better link to the story - the one above will contain different stories as time goes on...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/03/political-journalists-boycott-no-10-briefing-after-reporter-ban

Once again, I'll recommend Arlie Hochschild's Strangers in Their Own Land, her sociological study of a Tea Party-voting, Trump-loving parish in Louisiana. She found people who love their country fiercely and fervently... as it was, or as they imagine it was. And they see that country dying around them, or already dead, replaced by a United States of America they find horribly alien.
 
Oddly, she found a strong environmental streak, or at least a strong love of the natural world. But they associate the environmental movement with an urban liberal elite that they believe treats them with contempt. Potential environmental activism also clashes with a love of industrial capitalsim, the traditional source of blue-collar jobs. (Though I would call their attitude less capitalist than industrial feudalist -- the big company that owns the factory taking the role, and receiving the deference, even reverence, of the Lord of the Manor. But that's my interpretation, not Hochschild's.)
 
There's also strong white supremacy, though Hochschild's subjects deny racism. They feel that hard-working (and white) people like them are getting left behind, while people not like them (many of them, incidentally, not white) are cheating -- given undeserved rewards by the urban coastal liberal elite as political patronage. "Cutting in line" is the metaphor Hocschild tried an her subjects, to which they agreed expressed their view.
 
Hochschild evinces considerable sympathy for her subjects, even though she shows they also believe many things that provably are not true. After three years of their hero Donald Trump, I can't quite stretch my sympathies that far. But then, I am one of the over-educated urban coastal "elites" who are destroying their America.
 
Dean Shomshak

well, since I actually do live in the south, I can say it is a mistake to say they hate the country.  just like it was a mistake during the Iraq war to say liberals hate this country.   I do know they are repulsed by the fact they see the country trending towards socialism, and are desperate to alter that trend.  In my experience, that is the key issue for a lot here, whether they outright admit it or not.  A big issue is the 2 sides see the need to take the same country into a different direction each.  And it hasn't helped that both sides hierarchy are intentionally mis-labeling the others' motives to some extent.
 
But, yeah, I can understand some of the frustration for environmentalist, since my big thing is fiscal sanity, and I see both sides racing to drive off that cliff.  I've long since resigned myself to having the front row seat to that.   I've expressed this before on the boards.  But, anyway, spending money like a drunken monkey seems to be the one of the few things both sides agree on.

“I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them.”
― Steve Martin

Anyhow, to finish what I did say, that is what makes tricky figuring out the center, since even in a perfect world we still want "our" side (not saying either of us may be right or wrong understand, just pointing the flaw in my own idea for reaching the center) to be the one consider "closer" to that center.  Just the one thing I have noted is each party currently seems to more interested in carving out the polar opposite of the other's position.