All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[numberthirty]

And no one is talking about the Senate trial of Donald Trump?

What the plan is for after that goes the way that it obviously will?

Now, that would be worth talking about.

[Tendrin]

This thread is one big 'yikes' today.

[Tazirai]

They can and have passed bills that Mitch, who you aren't concerned about, will not allow votes on.

I also agree we give far too much money to the military. This is especially apparent when trump is finding it just fine to STEAL that allocated money for the useless wall he couldn't get funding for. Tens of billions taken from military for that means they had too much money anyway. Now we also have a Space Force who is going to want more money.

But, who is about to get elected and say I'm slashing the military budgets in half?

I am paying student loans too I think they should get wiped out also. But, no GOP candidate is going to do that or anything like it.

The logic that any Democrat is a problem but Mitch isn't is just mind boggling

Never said Mitch wasn't the problem, so nothing to boggle.
I said I'm less concerned, because I know where Mitch stands, I even stated they will fight me. So nothing to boggle.

[Tazirai]

From your second link


And why shouldn't the DNC undermine Bernie? He's not a democrat.

Should the not a Democrat vote with the GOP? That would make Centrists happy yeah?
Maybe Bernie should ask his voters to not support the Nominee, oh wait, he won't because he's not an *******.
Joe Manchin is a Democrat, since we're doing tribalism, and look how he votes vs mr. NOT a Democrat.
Look at Donelly, mr. Democrat votes and talks like a GOP member and not a Democrat, but sure let's slam Bernie for talking like a Democrat, and voting like a Democrat and working in the two party system we have.

But sure He's not a Democrat, let's keep saying that.

Why do Democrats like the Label more than the people? Is being a Democrat more important, than voting like one?

[ed2962]

For the most obvious reasons possible.

Certain democrats would rather lose with Biden(or whoever), than win with Sanders. And this is why we'll get four more years of Trump.

[Tazirai]

How are democrats to blame for the current income inequality? In all your scenarios you are blaming the democrats...and not the republicans and nearly half the country that vote for them no matter what.

Paris accords were not "moving the country right". GOP at large doesnt believe in science or at least wont admit climate change is real.
Expanding Medicaid and Medicare are not "moving the country right". And since we gave the gop so many state governments they could choose not to expand and cost their own people. But its Democrats fault somehow.

All these environmental regulations trump rolls back everyday for corporations to be able to pollute more, and get away with it Obama did that. That's not moving the country right. Trying to protect Dreamers who contribute to our economy and pay taxes and want to work and be apart of our armed forces and protect us is moving the country right?

Clinton balanced the budget. Then we let the GOP in and started the current endless wars.

But, now we are arguing its the Democrats moving us right? Non nonsensical.

Trump has continued Obama's economic numbers and not crashed it all yet while claiming he did it.

You let GOP in they will tear it all down. They have been trying for decades to get Roe v Wade overturned. They will do the same for Obamacare, Medicare for all, the pipe dream of repealing the second amendment, gay marriage. Those people dont just vanish the only way to beat them is not let them get power in the first place. And move the country forward despite them

Name something Democrats haven't turned Right Wing on?

Balanced budgets in this country have nothing to do with Job creation, it's a media talking point.
Job creation means nothing if the workers wages stagnate.

2000 Wages were 7.25, in 2020 wages are still 7.25
But damn if Obama didn't make the Bush Tax cuts permanent.

What have Democrats done outside of Passing a Republican Healthcare plan that even Republicans fought, what have they done for us lately?
The torture center in Cuba is still open.
Kids are still in cages.
Dreamers are having nightmares.
FLint Michigan, Philly, and other urban areas have poisoned water.
Standing Rock is lost.
Nature areas at the border will have a stupid wall.
Wages still low.
Climate crisis not averted.
Nestle still holding water hostage in Cali.
We just gave Trump more money for war.
Black Lives Still don't matter.
Native American Poverty is through the roof.
Puerto Rico can't catch a break.
Etc. Etc.

Democrats have a hand in all of that. They either aid and abet or ignore and hope it goes away.
In Congress they can bring a **** ton of Gun resolutions to the floor and show solidarity with the American people, but that NRA money is nice.
Instead of negotiating all drugs, they compromised to 25 drugs, because that drug money is nice.

So tell me, what haven't the democratic party turned right on?

[Mister Mets]

From your second link


And why shouldn't the DNC undermine Bernie? He's not a democrat.

It's a fair question, but then why should anyone who likes Bernie vote for the party that undermined their guy?

Many. The 2nd Ammendment being a big one. It doesn't work anymore. The actual divisions of power need to be reorganized. The Executive shouldn't be nominating supreme court picks if you are going to function under a two party system. An impeachment process shouldn't be a political process anymore, it makes it too rigged. It should be an actual trial. Things like that. It's far too archaic to function. You can blame judicial interpretations of that, but the reality is the most strict originalist view is often the most problematic and everything else is trying to stretch a framework to be modern.

The 2nd amendment won't really affect the outcome of the impeachment in the context of a discussion on that, although I get the argument that access to guns is harmful in myriad ways.

How should Supreme Court justices be selected?

To what extent should laws take into account the two party system? There's always the potential of laws meant to alleviate a problem cementing a problem and making it harder to get rid of (granted, we've had a two party system for a very long time; on the other hand, it has become radically different with party primaries giving voters unprecedented control for good and bad.) There is also the potential that a solution to today's problems won't take into account the situation in a few generations, to say nothing for the potential for intelligent parliamentarians to find loopholes to push their agenda through with any new regulations.

How would we make an impeachment process into an actual trial? And should we really worry that much about something that's happened to four Presidents and 16 other individuals in the nation's history (the flipside is that we've seen impeachment of Presidents become a once in a generation thing.) There's definitely an argument for making it easier to have trials of politicians and federal judges, but this would definitely have the potential to be abused, without clear standards.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I would like demonstrable facts and evidence to back up this claim of what the Democrats did. Not your perceptions. People having a bad taste is not evidence. (Never Trumpers exist after all, not to mention that isn't a fact. That's a feeling)

How did the DNC not "let the process play out"? Specifically, how did any actions they took (like Clinton's campaign agreements with DNC funds) alter the outcome of the race? Careful, I'm not one of your fellow worshippers. Non-facts will be called for their bullshit.

1. They had a period of time where they shut Bernie out of the voter data.

2. Donna Brazille leaking town hall questions to Clinton

3. The debates being scheduled in historically weak timeslots for television viewership (often on weekends). Later on evidence from the email leak showing that they altered debate times because Hillary was losing ground to Bernie and wanted to help get her exposure.

4. The whole joint campaign issue which the head chair of the DNC at the time outright confirmed.

The fact that you knew none of these is telling. Honestly it's just hard to take you seriously here. Also you are showing severe intellectial malpractice thinking that something can be slanted and still not alter the outcome. If I give you steroids and tell you the pitch that's coming, you still aren't hitting off an ace MLB pitcher. That doesn't mean you didn't have an unfair advantage and that people would be wrong to feel that you were cheating and have bad feelings about it. The fact that this is the second time I had to explain that to you shows that you are deliberately trying to misframe what slanting the primary actually is to make it easier for yourself. So do you either not understand it or are you trying to mislead people for your own benefit? I'm going to call that bullshit.

I'm also going to call your silly name calling bullshit as well.

Name calling and being intentionally dishonest. Seems like you have no interest in having a real conversation. Why is that?

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

And no one is talking about the Senate trial of Donald Trump?

Because it's uninteresting and what is happening today is something that everyone with a pulse said would happen the minute the House Democrats decided to open impeachment investigations, and honestly it's something that everyone said would happen about a year before that. Nobody cares because we knew what was coming, today is just watching it play out. It's up to the Democrats to win the battle of public perception now and make a compelling argument to sway people for the next election

[The Overlord]

It's a fair question, but then why should anyone who likes Bernie vote for the party that undermined their guy?

The 2nd amendment won't really affect the outcome of the impeachment in the context of a discussion on that, although I get the argument that access to guns is harmful in myriad ways.

How should Supreme Court justices be selected?

To what extent should laws take into account the two party system? There's always the potential of laws meant to alleviate a problem cementing a problem and making it harder to get rid of (granted, we've had a two party system for a very long time; on the other hand, it has become radically different with party primaries giving voters unprecedented control for good and bad.) There is also the potential that a solution to today's problems won't take into account the situation in a few generations, to say nothing for the potential for intelligent parliamentarians to find loopholes to push their agenda through with any new regulations.

How would we make an impeachment process into an actual trial? And should we really worry that much about something that's happened to four Presidents and 16 other individuals in the nation's history (the flipside is that we've seen impeachment of Presidents become a once in a generation thing.) There's definitely an argument for making it easier to have trials of politicians and federal judges, but this would definitely have the potential to be abused.

I think perhaps Supreme Court Justices should serve 10-year terms, rather than be appointed for life.

I live in Canada and our election process is not perfect by any means, but it is far less of a mess than the one in the US: most gerrymandering was done away with in the 1960s (though the Tories try to bring it back sometimes), there is no Electoral College, there is far less dark money involved, our campaign season is about 6 to 8 weeks, not 2 years, the provinces do not go out their way to make voting harder than it has to be for certain groups, etc. Nominating someone to the Canadian Supreme Court never turned into the Gong show the last US Supreme Court appointment was.

Besides the Electoral College, you would not need to change the constitution to fix these problems, but the GOP doesn't want to address these problems, because these problems are not problems for them, they are ways to maitain power.

[Mister Mets]

I think perhaps Supreme Court Justices should serve 10-year terms, rather than be appointed for life.

I live in Canada and our election process is not perfect by any means, but it is far less of a mess than the one in the US: most gerrymandering was done away with in the 1960s (though the Tories try to bring it back sometimes), there is no Electoral College, there is far less dark money involved, our campaign season is about 6 to 8 weeks, not 2 years, the provinces do not go out their way to make voting harder than it has to be for certain groups, etc. Nominating someone to the Canadian Supreme Court never turned into the Gong show the last US Supreme Court appointment was.

Besides the Electoral College, you would not need to change the constitution to fix these problems, but the GOP doesn't want to address these problems, because these problems are not problems for them, they are ways to maitain power.

Canada has faster elections, but from my understanding, the voters have less say since the parties choose the candidates for office, and there isn't really an opportunity to vote for the head of state (the vote is for a party's candidate for parliament who later votes to select the prime minister, usually the current leader of the party.)

https://www.vox.com/2016/10/27/13425...s-last-so-long

So there are major tradeoffs.

I can see the argument that voting for parties and not candidates eliminates the bullshit, and that parties have incentives to nominate people who have chances of winning elections, which may incentivize them to moderate (this didn't exactly help Labour in Britain; is it true that Rob Ford's brother has a non-trivial chance of being the next Prime Minister?)

[Tendrin]

1. They had a period of time where they shut Bernie out of the voter data.

Don't argue this without saying /why/ he was shut out.

2. Donna Brazille leaking town hall questions to Clinton

This was bad, certainly.

3. The debates being scheduled in historically weak timeslots for television viewership (often on weekends). Later on evidence from the email leak showing that they altered debate times because Hillary was losing ground to Bernie and wanted to help get her exposure.

The schedule was made LONG before either Hillary or Bernie announced.

4. The whole joint campaign issue which the head chair of the DNC at the time outright confirmed.

This is more complicated than you're alluding to.

[Theleviathan]

1. They had a period of time where they shut Bernie out of the voter data.

2. Donna Brazille leaking town hall questions to Clinton

3. The debates being scheduled in historically weak timeslots for television viewership (often on weekends). Later on evidence from the email leak showing that they altered debate times because Hillary was losing ground to Bernie and wanted to help get her exposure.

4. The whole joint campaign issue which the head chair of the DNC at the time outright confirmed.

The fact that you knew none of these is telling. Honestly it's just hard to take you seriously here. Also you are showing severe intellectial malpractice thinking that something can be slanted and still not alter the outcome. If I give you steroids and tell you the pitch that's coming, you still aren't hitting off an ace MLB pitcher. That doesn't mean you didn't have an unfair advantage and that people would be wrong to feel that you were cheating and have bad feelings about it. The fact that this is the second time I had to explain that to you shows that you are deliberately trying to misframe what slanting the primary actually is to make it easier for yourself. So do you either not understand it or are you trying to mislead people for your own benefit? I'm going to call that bullshit.

I'm also going to call your silly name calling bullshit as well.

Name calling and being intentionally dishonest. Seems like you have no interest in having a real conversation. Why is that?

I have minimal interest in a conversation with you about Bernie because you have repeatedly demonstrated an inability to have that conversation. And I'm not alone on that, it's pretty much a consensus here. Perhaps you should look at the common denominator?

I never said I didn't know these things, they're just weak. You invoke them as if you have silver bullets when what you have is closer to pellets. I'll save the dagger for last:

1. Why was it again they shut the campaign out? (I know the answer. Odd you left that fact out of your complaint. Or *cough* totally on purpose because you don't want that conversation *cough*) At worst, by the Sanders' campaign own admission, the effect was some cash. Not votes. This is not a slant...this was a reaction to an incident with ties to the Sanders campaign. It doesn't meet your terminology, nor is it at all meaningful given the duration it lasted.

2. Yup, one person. Not the DNC. Shouldn't have happened, but not what you described. Didn't have any meaningful impact. I hope they get better than the first two!

3. Meh. Probably a slant, I'd grant that. Meaningful? Debatable at best. It's the closest thing you've come to a meaningful point on the matter, but not terribly convincing. Certainly didn't change the outcome.

4. Yup, didn't have any impact on voting.

But hey.....at least you didn't mention superdelegates? That would've been embarrassing. As I said, these aren't silver bullets. They don't explain away over 3M votes. So when you openly (and frequently) complain about 2016 you should have more than this. Every independent investigation, including Brazille and many reporters, have found no meaningful action by the DNC that changed the outcome. And if the outcome wasn't going to change? You're screaming at the wind. It becomes pouty. Worst of all? It's so flimsy, why shouldn't we expect the same thing if he loses again?

So let's get this in black and white right now....is anything currently happening that you will later complain about if Sanders loses? Of course, if some currently unknown thing comes to light, that's different, but as of now...anything that is ruining his chance other than his campaign?

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I have minimal interest in a conversation with you about Bernie because you have repeatedly demonstrated an inability to have that conversation. And I'm not alone on that, it's pretty much a consensus here. Perhaps you should look at the common denominator?

I never said I didn't know these things, they're just weak. You invoke them as if you have silver bullets when what you have is closer to pellets. I'll save the dagger for last:

1. Why was it again they shut the campaign out? (I know the answer. Odd you left that fact out of your complaint. Or *cough* totally on purpose because you don't want that conversation) At worst, by the Sanders' campaign own admission, the effective was some cash. Not votes. This is not a slant...this was a reaction to an incident with ties to the Sanders campaign. It doesn't meet your terminology, nor is it at all meaningful given the duration it lasted.

2. Yup, one person. Not the DNC. Shouldn't have happened, but not what you described. Didn't have any meaningful impact. I hope they get better than the first two!

3. Meh. Probably a slant, I'd grant that. Meaningful? Debatable at best. It's the closest thing you've come to a meaningful point on the matter, but not terribly convincing. Certainly didn't change the outcome.

4. Yup, didn't have any impact on voting.

But hey.....at least you didn't mention superdelegates? That would've been embarrassing. As I said, these aren't silver bullets. They don't explain away over 3M votes. So when you openly (and frequently) complain about 2016 you should have more than this. Every independent investigation, including Brazille and many reporters, have found no meaningful action by the DNC that changed the outcome. And if the outcome wasn't going to change? You're screaming at the wind. It becomes pouty. Worst of all?

So let's get this in black and white right now....is anything currently happening that you will later complain about if Sanders loses? Of course, if some currently unknown thing comes to light, that's different, but as of now...anything that is ruining his chance other than his campaign?

"Not your perceptions"

...proceeds to use own opinion on how impactful they are.

Yup no credibility with me anymore.

Also btw anybody who's ever studied election or politics on any level would cringe at your reasoning. Just so you know, in case you ever try to pull this with more people who actually worked on or covered elections.

[Theleviathan]

"Not your perceptions"

...proceeds to use own opinion on how impactful they are.

Yup no credibility with me anymore.

Also btw anybody who's ever studied election or politics on any level would cringe at your reasoning. Just so you know, in case you ever try to pull this with more people who actually worked on or covered elections.

I'm sorry, where was your evidence that these had an impact? You made claims about things that happened, with no compelling documentation of their impact or importance. Even assuming these are all egregious and wrong, does not make them meaningful.

It's your assertion to prove, not mine to debunk. So prove the impact it had.