All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Forecast: 300,000 U.S. COVID-19 Deaths By December 1

Health experts at the University of Washington said 70,000 lives could be saved if people were scrupulous about wearing masks.

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Fox Host Puts Kellyanne Conway In The Hot Seat Over Trump’s COVID-19 Mistruths

Children are not “nearly immune” to the coronavirus, Sandra Smith told her guest. Whoa! Trump won't like that!

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Los Angeles Will Shut Off Water, Power To Those Caught Violating COVID-19 Orders

Mayor Eric Garcetti said the measure, aimed at curbing a recent coronavirus spike, will focus on residents known to have “repeatedly engaged in such behavior.” That should happen from coast to coast.

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In non-coronavirus news:

Trump Claims Biden Opposes God

Trump’s remarks signaled how contentious the campaign may get over the coming months. This bullshit, coming from Trump who's singlehandedly broken most of the Ten Commandments is patently laughable.

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GOP Plan To Beat Biden By Pushing Kanye West Could Backfire On Trump

Political experts warn that African Americans don’t vote for candidates just because they are Black. Well, no one said Republicans were smart.

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Mike Pence: Supreme Court Chief John Roberts Is A ‘Disappointment To Conservatives’

The vice president didn’t mince words on the chief justice, who cast deciding votes in White House defeats on immigration, LGBTQ rights and abortion. Disappointing? Because Roberts give Trump what he wanted? PLEASE!

[Gray Lensman]

To say nothing of the brain drain that it creates in congress. We already have a problem with lobbyist backed education of incoming congresspeople. You apply term limits to everyone and all you do is strengthen the unelected class of operators we can't get rid of.

Term limits are an actual *terrible* resolution to our problem.

Expanding terms limits to include the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader might be a good idea. Those with the most power are the ones who should hold it for the least amount of time. Although I don't think McConnell had been in that position for 10 years yet, so even under ideal circumstances that might not have the effect desired.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Say hello to Impotus Americanus:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1289274776310210561

[Tendrin]

Expanding terms limits to include the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader might be a good idea. Those with the most power are the ones who should hold it for the least amount of time. Although I don't think McConnell had been in that position for 10 years yet, so even under ideal circumstances that might not have the effect desired.

This seems more likely to create long periods of ineffectiveness which is already a big problem.

I don't really see the benefit of term limits. Draining congress of institutional expertise and experience seems unlikely to do what we want it to do. Moreover, we need to stop trying to try to find a way around the problem of people electing politicians we don't like for long periods of time, which is pretty much what term limits are designed to do. A career as a public servant ought to be a thing people can do.

[PwrdOn]

Expanding terms limits to include the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader might be a good idea. Those with the most power are the ones who should hold it for the least amount of time. Although I don't think McConnell had been in that position for 10 years yet, so even under ideal circumstances that might not have the effect desired.

Unless I'm mistaken, the party leadership positions are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution and all of their power derives from internal party rules and adherence to convention rather than any explicit legal mandate. Trying to impose term limits on these positions will only reduce them to figurehead roles while the actual leaders take up newly created positions, just like what happened when the leadership in the Senate passed from the VP and president pro tempore to the majority leader. Power and influence can't just be legislated away so easily, trying to write laws to strip the opposing party leaders of their titles is in fact probably the strongest possible endorsement of their effectiveness as political operators and just reeks of sour grapes.

The real problem here is that because our society universally loathes politicians, very few people of any real merit are attracted to careers in government, with the result that the people who do end up in the halls of power overwhelmingly tend to be unprincipled partisan hacks rather than responsible public servants. Trying to strip elected officials of all of their power and force them out of office early is just going to make the prospect of enacting any real change that much more difficult, and drive many prospective future leaders into the private sector instead. Meanwhile these types of restrictions have virtually no effect on corrupt swamp creatures, because it just pushes more important decisions into these informal back room settings where their experience in political wheeling and dealing gives them a lot more influence than they would have if everything were above board.

[Gray Lensman]

This seems more likely to create long periods of ineffectiveness which is already a big problem.

I don't really see the benefit of term limits. Draining congress of institutional expertise and experience seems unlikely to do what we want it to do. Moreover, we need to stop trying to try to find a way around the problem of people electing politicians we don't like for long periods of time, which is pretty much what term limits are designed to do. A career as a public servant ought to be a thing people can do.

I understand what you are saying, but telling the head of a chamber they have to go back to being an ordinary congressperson after a period of time doesn't do what you are describing.

[Tendrin]

I understand what you are saying, but telling the head of a chamber they have to go back to being an ordinary congressperson after a period of time doesn't do what you are describing.

I was speaking towards term limits generally in the second sentence, but I do believe you'd wind up with more ineffective leadership as a result. I get it, though: McConnel is dangerous because he's good at what he does, but I don't think forcing him to be demoted by a term limit is really a great solution, either. Our growing gerontocracy is a big problem but that's a matter of an electorate that's clinging to a fading boomer-driven ideology.

[Mister Mets]

No need for insults.

Those are the base arguments, are they not?

I'd much rather see the EC get abolished, Puerto Rico becoming a state, national redistricting of congressional zones based on geography, redoing the House, and making the VP elected separately again than those those 4 arguments.

I agree with your House plan because it was something I wrote about a lot in college and in the first newspaper gig I had.

What do you mean by national redistricting based on geography?

I suspect elected Vice Presidents would be a bad idea.

It creates more incentives for impeachment, if it's recognized as a method for a party to get the White House back without an election. It also limits the Vice Presidency to people who are notable enough to win a national primary and willing to run for national office for more than a year, but who make the choice not to run for President. If officials from the same party win both offices, you could have people from different sides, without much effort at unity.

It also makes it harder for a ticket to respond to new developments. Imagine if Amy Klobuchar won a Vice Presidential nomination before there were national race protests precipitated by the actions of a police officer she had declined to prosecute as County Attorney of Hennepin County.

Expanding terms limits to include the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader might be a good idea. Those with the most power are the ones who should hold it for the least amount of time. Although I don't think McConnell had been in that position for 10 years yet, so even under ideal circumstances that might not have the effect desired.

This wouldn't change anything at the moment.

Nancy Pelosi has made it clear that she won't seek more than a total of four terms as Speaker, if Democrats maintain their house majority in 2020. Of the four Republican Speakers in the modern era, no one has held the post for more than six years.

Mitch McConnell is in his sixth year as Senate Majority Leader. That was preceded by eight years of Harry Reid, which was preceded by four years of Bill Frist. which was preceded by two years of Tom Daschle, which was preceded by 5 1/2 years of Trent Lott, which was preceded by 1 1/2 years of Bob Dole (who had served two years previously.)

This seems more likely to create long periods of ineffectiveness which is already a big problem.

I don't really see the benefit of term limits. Draining congress of institutional expertise and experience seems unlikely to do what we want it to do. Moreover, we need to stop trying to try to find a way around the problem of people electing politicians we don't like for long periods of time, which is pretty much what term limits are designed to do. A career as a public servant ought to be a thing people can do.

If there are term limits on leadership posts, any politician who wants to keep power would be able to do so. A term-limited speaker could become Chair of the Appropriations Committee, and be recognized as the real leader in the House.

An infamous international example was Putin was term-limited as President of Russia, and spent four years as Prime Minister of Russia.

[InformationGeek]

DeSantis continues trying to get people killed.

As Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed this summer for schools to reopen, state leaders told school boards they would need Health Department approval if they wanted to keep classrooms closed.

Then they instructed health directors not to give it.

Following a directive from DeSantis’ administration, county health directors across Florida refused to give school boards advice about one of the most wrenching public health decisions in modern history: whether to reopen schools in a worsening pandemic, a Gannett USA TODAY NETWORK review found.

In county after county the health directors’ refrain to school leaders was the same: Their role was to provide information, not recommendations.

They could not tell school boards whether they believed the risks of opening campuses were too great, they said. They could only provide suggestions on how to reopen safely.

For frustrated school board members, it was a puzzling turnabout. Florida’s public schools have long depended on local health directors for recommendations on everything from reducing encephalitis risks at football games to how to test students during tuberculosis outbreaks.

But the directors’ new reticence aligned perfectly with DeSantis’ stated goal of pressuring Florida public schools to offer in-person classes.

[Kirby101]

DeSantis continues trying to get people killed.

As I have said before, stolen elections have consequences. That there isn't a recall for DeSantis yet points more to the corruption of Florida than his fitness to continue to serve.

[worstblogever]

Imagine if just wearing f***ing masks wasn't politicized by Trump and Republicans. Rather than +1000 deaths a day, we'd be down under a hundred right now, and could be contact tracing and in the final moments of this crisis.

Instead, we're two weeks away from new jaw-dropping numbers when school kids start getting sick, and by the end of the month, the family members those infected kids come in contact with will be getting sick as well.

All of it could have been avoided. All of it.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Imagine if just wearing f***ing masks wasn't politicized by Trump and Republicans. Rather than +1000 deaths a day, we'd be down under a hundred right now, and could be contact tracing and in the final moments of this crisis.

Instead, we're two weeks away from new jaw-dropping numbers when school kids start getting sick, and by the end of the month, the family members those infected kids come in contact with will be getting sick as well.

All of it could have been avoided. All of it.

Or if they tried to stop it in New York, targeted lockdowns, actually using war powers...

[Joker]

Imagine if just wearing f***ing masks wasn't politicized by Trump and Republicans.

Imagine if the US had a pandemic response team like it always had in the past.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Imagine if just wearing f***ing masks wasn't politicized by Trump and Republicans. Rather than +1000 deaths a day, we'd be down under a hundred right now, and could be contact tracing and in the final moments of this crisis.

Instead, we're two weeks away from new jaw-dropping numbers when school kids start getting sick, and by the end of the month, the family members those infected kids come in contact with will be getting sick as well.

All of it could have been avoided. All of it.

If Trump had taken COVID seriously and brought all the government's resources to bear to fight the virus from day one, he'd be a hero today and on better footing to be reelected. The kicker here is that Trump will NEVER admit he fucked everything up, in his mind, he did nothing wrong and that the real villains who brought him down were Democrats and the Chinese. It's beyond pathetic.

[The Cool Thatguy]

If Trump had taken COVID seriously and brought all the government's resources to bear to fight the virus from day one, he'd be a hero today and on better footing to be reelected. The kicker here is that Trump will NEVER admit he fucked everything up, in his mind, he did nothing wrong and that the real villains who brought him down were Democrats and the Chinese. It's beyond pathetic.

Yeah, God, we'd have terror one way or the other, wouldn't we?