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Eric Cantonese posted:We probably should, but it will be depressing. The average person needs to understand that overturning Roe with Dobbs was not the end goal. They have a lot more changes to make to turn this into a Christofascist country.
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Jan 18, 2024 21:25
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Yeah it's going to be a terrible year. I need to stop reading the news.
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Jan 18, 2024 22:21
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Jaxyon posted:USCE 2024: Somehow, an even worse food derail than usual USCE 2024: Food derail: still better than morality of voting chat
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Jan 19, 2024 04:31
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haveblue posted:Speaking of Federalist Society priorities, should we talk about how judging from this morning's arguments the court is probably definitely going to overturn Chevron deference and throw the administrative state into chaos? how do I leave the lovely Deus Ex future?
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Jan 19, 2024 15:21
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Tatsuta Age posted:I think the judges and everyone else know the Democrats are too chickenshit to actually use that kind of power though? This. If tomorrow the risen soul of Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ, Mohammed and Ghandi all popped up and gave the Dems both the ability and the moral dispensation to just erase Trump and the Maga GOP, Pelosi would go "But we NEED a strong Republican Party", Joe would remember what fun times he had with segregationists in the 1960s, some failson consultant would throw out a paper saying that having Trump and the zealots around is actually -good- for that year's intended results.... ...and within two months every university campus would be Whites-only and liberals would be in camps, blaming it all on Rashida Tlaib. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jan 19, 2024 15:42
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That sure is a fun alternate reality you've made up and gotten mad about. Got anything that actually happened?
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Jan 19, 2024 17:54
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PharmerBoy posted:That sure is a fun alternate reality you've made up and gotten mad about. Got anything that actually happened? Does the failure to expel any of the House Representatives associated with Jan6 count?
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Jan 19, 2024 17:57
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Sephyr posted:This. This is wild. First Pelosi's comments were taken out of context, erasing trump and the maga gop is actually more inline with what Pelosi was urging, for the GOP to stop being held captive to its extremists so work can be done again. I'm not sure Ghandi would agree with you either, it seems weird to bring up Jesus as well, I don't think they're very relevant to the US political situation. Lincoln is closer but actually if you look at it historically I think Lincoln and Biden are kinda similar, Lincoln didn't want to have to fight the confederacy, his main priority was keeping the union together and almost certain was probably still friends with some confederates as well regardless of the war. It is true and unfortunate that there's a will with the Dems to do good things and take risks, but it is the case that in many cases there are in fact risks and not entirely unreasonable that there's heel dragging. DC & PR statehood should've been rammed through, but Simena and Manchin were likewise never going to let themselves be completely sidestepped and made political irrelevant like that. Like its a good thing the US is a democracy and not a dictatorship that can just arrest people, which is what you're suggesting dems do?
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Jan 19, 2024 17:57
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Gripweed posted:Does the failure to expel any of the House Representatives associated with Jan6 count? The dems don't and did not have the power to do that
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Jan 19, 2024 18:09
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Fart Amplifier posted:The dems don't and did not have the power to do that You need a 2/3's majority yeah and the GOP was not going to do that; and I'm not sure if there's enough evidence to use the 14th on like two House Reps.
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Jan 19, 2024 18:15
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Inglonias posted:how do I leave the lovely Deus Ex future?
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Jan 19, 2024 18:22
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Raenir Salazar posted:
So, this is just flat out not true. The US "just arrests" people all the time, though. For extremely petty crimes like shoplifting or selling loose cigarettes or using a fake check. It often kills them in the process. And if they're not killed, they get thrown in jail while they await a trial for months or years, and then get forced into a bullshit plea deal because the entire system is stacked against them. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's evidence that the state absolutely can arrest anyone that it wants to. It's just that who it wants to arrest is almost always poor black and brown people. The US would at least be consistent in its application of the law if Donald Trump had been in a jail cell on January 21st. But instead, we get swift and brutal retribution for the lower class, and endless deference for the upper class even as they seek to overthrow the state itself. What else can you call that but a dictatorship of the white bourgeoisie? Not to mention our actions on the international stage, which has been to foment right-wing coups to overthrow their democratically elected leaders. The US is totally cool with making other countries dictatorships. Let's look at the case of Jeanine Anez, former president of Bolivia. She came to power in an illegal coup, and oversaw multiple massacres of protestors against her. Three months after she was voted out of office, she was arrested and charged with conspiracy, sedition, and terrorism. She was detained for 15 months awaiting her trial, and is now serving a 10 year sentence. Should Bolivia have done this? Or would it have been more "democratic" to let her go free to organize another coup? Is this the act of a dictatorship, or the act of a democracy that recognizes that in order to protect democracy, you have to bring swift justice to those who subvert democracy?
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Jan 19, 2024 19:01
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Fister Roboto posted:So, this is just flat out not true. The US "just arrests" people all the time, though. For extremely petty crimes like shoplifting or selling loose cigarettes or using a fake check. It often kills them in the process. And if they're not killed, they get thrown in jail while they await a trial for months or years, and then get forced into a bullshit plea deal because the entire system is stacked against them. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's evidence that the state absolutely can arrest anyone that it wants to. It's just that who it wants to arrest is almost always poor black and brown people. The US would at least be consistent in its application of the law if Donald Trump had been in a jail cell on January 21st. But instead, we get swift and brutal retribution for the lower class, and endless deference for the upper class even as they seek to overthrow the state itself. What else can you call that but a dictatorship of the white bourgeoisie? I’ve BEEN saying this! Deference to rich criminals up to and inclusive of sedition is just American tradition. It would be out of character for us as a nation for Trump and his allies to be meaningfully punished. -We let southern oligarchs just run rampant in the antebellum and after all the appeasement and then the deaths and destruction required to put down the insurrection we lost the Reconstruction because there was no will to punish the class of people who foisted the whole catastrophe on the nation. If you don’t hang the white leaders of the rebellion, what do you get instead? A hundred plus years of lynching black people. -Nobody was punished for the Business Plot, and to say it was meaningfully investigated is a stretch. So what happens? Well, a descendant of one of the oligarchs who wanted to overthrow FDR goes on to work for the CIA overthrowing democracies, then becomes president, and his son goes on to be president too. A whole oligarchical traitor dynasty. We are a nation who respects and shows enormous deference to our oligarchs. They get away with this poo poo because they have to be allowed to, if they weren’t the system wouldn’t work as intended.
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Jan 19, 2024 19:11
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Raenir Salazar posted:It is true and unfortunate that there's a will with the Dems to do good things and take risks, but it is the case that in many cases there are in fact risks and not entirely unreasonable that there's heel dragging. DC & PR statehood should've been rammed through, but Simena and Manchin were likewise never going to let themselves be completely sidestepped and made political irrelevant like that. I'm 100% positive there are pressure points that could have been used to get Manchin and Sinema to vote for PR and DC statehood, but people get upset seeing the sausage get made. The problem is that of the actions that could be taken to force those two to vote for that (or to get ANY result out of politicians), none would pass the standard Democrat's decorum poisoned mind. Thus we get the poo poo government we have, as opposed to doing some 'unpleasant' things to get a better loving world. Meanwhile those against us have no such qualms about doing the dirty tricks of politics. Its infuriating.
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Jan 19, 2024 19:12
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Dull Fork posted:I'm 100% positive there are pressure points that could have been used to get Manchin and Sinema to vote for PR and DC statehood, but people get upset seeing the sausage get made. The problem is that of the actions that could be taken to force those two to vote for that (or to get ANY result out of politicians), none would pass the standard Democrat's decorum poisoned mind. Thus we get the poo poo government we have, as opposed to doing some 'unpleasant' things to get a better loving world. Meanwhile those against us have no such qualms about doing the dirty tricks of politics. Its infuriating. What are those pressure points?
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Jan 19, 2024 19:18
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socialsecurity posted:What are those pressure points? You do them like Madison Cawthorn. If you have members of your caucus who gently caress up the party agenda, and you don’t have the ability or the will to do them like Madison Cawthorn, you are definitionally unfit for the job, or lying about them loving up the party agenda. If you can’t get rid of or control a problem when that’s part of your job in party leadership then we need better leadership. I think there are plenty of historical examples of how problematic people have been dealt with in the past in DC, let’s look to those successful examples.
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Jan 19, 2024 19:23
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Fister Roboto posted:So, this is just flat out not true. The US "just arrests" people all the time, though. For extremely petty crimes like shoplifting or selling loose cigarettes or using a fake check. It often kills them in the process. And if they're not killed, they get thrown in jail while they await a trial for months or years, and then get forced into a bullshit plea deal because the entire system is stacked against them. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's evidence that the state absolutely can arrest anyone that it wants to. It's just that who it wants to arrest is almost always poor black and brown people. The US would at least be consistent in its application of the law if Donald Trump had been in a jail cell on January 21st. But instead, we get swift and brutal retribution for the lower class, and endless deference for the upper class even as they seek to overthrow the state itself. What else can you call that but a dictatorship of the white bourgeoisie? The "swift" and "brutal" retribution to the poor lower class fasitis is taking over two year even thoug it's much, much easier to prove the alleged crimes than a massive conspiracy. socialsecurity posted:What are those pressure points?
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Jan 19, 2024 19:26
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Dull Fork posted:I'm 100% positive there are pressure points that could have been used to get Manchin and Sinema to vote for PR and DC statehood, but people get upset seeing the sausage get made. The problem is that of the actions that could be taken to force those two to vote for that (or to get ANY result out of politicians), none would pass the standard Democrat's decorum poisoned mind. Thus we get the poo poo government we have, as opposed to doing some 'unpleasant' things to get a better loving world. Meanwhile those against us have no such qualms about doing the dirty tricks of politics. Its infuriating. What pressure points do you have in mind, besides the usual one that always gets brought up in these conversations? It's generally not easy to force a senator to vote against their will. Usually when this topic comes up, the suggestion I see is having the president order sham investigations and fishing expeditions against Manchin's daughter in hopes that maybe they'll find some crimes they can threaten to prosecute if Manchin doesn't vote the way they want. I hope that's not what you're thinking of, because summarizing the objections to that as "decorum poisoning" is just plain dismissive.
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Jan 19, 2024 19:29
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This kind of conversation always requires a magical unspecified blackmail because the goal of it is to point out the ineptitude of Democrats. But what if there isn't a blackmail? Or a pressure point?
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Jan 19, 2024 19:35
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Main Paineframe posted:What pressure points do you have in mind, besides the usual one that always gets brought up in these conversations? It's generally not easy to force a senator to vote against their will. You don’t have the president order it, that’s silly. You have an in-person conversation with a loaded, motivated donor, you have no paper trail, and that donor hires a firm packed with ex-Mossad blackmailers or similarly situated goons. The loaded donor doesn’t do it themselves, they typically have a seasoned fixer like Davis Boies, who knows how to get away with poo poo like this, and then he’ll go and hire your dirt diggers and life-fucker-uppers at a firm like Black Cube. With the really big firms the answer to “how much can you dig up?” is a question of “how much are you willing to spend?”. They’ll get into your phones, they’ll be in your email if you can afford that level of service. You don’t have the president order it though, they have learned SOME things since Watergate. You need layers of plausible deniability.
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Jan 19, 2024 19:37
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Plus then you just end up in a situation where congresspeople are allowed to commit crimes so long as they ally with the president, which is... not an improvement on today
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Jan 19, 2024 19:37
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Raenir Salazar posted:
I'm not suggesting the dems do anything, as I consider them both incapable and unwilling to effect any degree political change. The Parlamentarian would be sad and we can't have that. As for just prosecuting and arresting people, we know that's for dangerous cases like this terrorist: https://www.jsonline.com/story/opin...ll/72236928007/ "Chris Avell, pastor of Dad's Place in Bryan, Ohio, was arraigned in court last Thursday because he kept his church open 24/7 to provide warmth to the unhoused. Ohio law prohibits residential use in first-floor buildings in a business district. Since the church is zoned as a Central Business, the building is restricted from allowing people to eat or sleep on the property. “This is how I worship my God, and I just want to be able to worship my God,” Avell said."
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Jan 19, 2024 19:38
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haveblue posted:Plus then you just end up in a situation where congresspeople are allowed to commit crimes so long as they ally with the president, which is... not an improvement on today I dunno I’d personally rather live in a state headed by career criminals all blackmailing eachother that followed all the policies of the Democratic Party platform compared to one led by perfectly upright citizens that followed all the Republican platform policies.
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Jan 19, 2024 19:48
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celadon posted:I dunno I’d personally rather live in a state headed by career criminals all blackmailing eachother that followed all the policies of the Democratic Party platform compared to one led by perfectly upright citizens that followed all the Republican platform policies. Historically "what if we had a bunch of criminals running the government for the good of the common man" has a worse track record than "what if we had a good king instead of a democracy?"
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Jan 19, 2024 19:51
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Killer robot posted:Historically "what if we had a bunch of criminals running the government for the good of the common man" has a worse track record than "what if we had a good king instead of a democracy?" If you narrowly define crimes so that blatant insider trading and bribery are no longer crimes then I guess we don’t have to deal with the “what if we had a bunch of criminals running the government for the good of the ruling class” problem, so that’s good that we definitely don’t have that problem because we decided those things aren’t crimes.
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Jan 19, 2024 19:53
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celadon posted:I dunno I’d personally rather live in a state headed by career criminals all blackmailing eachother that followed all the policies of the Democratic Party platform compared to one led by perfectly upright citizens that followed all the Republican platform policies. Looking at the ridiculous corruption in politics in cities like NYC and Chicago, I would strongly disagree with this statement. I can’t imagine how corrupt politicians does not inevitably end up as being self-serving
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Jan 19, 2024 19:53
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Kalit posted:Looking at the ridiculous corruption in politics in cities like NYC and Chicago, I would strongly disagree with this statement. I can’t imagine how corrupt politicians does not inevitably end up as being self-serving They don’t meet the criteria because they aren’t serving the party goals, they are serving land developers.
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Jan 19, 2024 19:54
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Main Paineframe posted:What pressure points do you have in mind, besides the usual one that always gets brought up in these conversations? It's generally not easy to force a senator to vote against their will. I’m sure our elected officials could think of some kind of pressure to be applied, the specifics don’t really matter. For some recent examples, see former Rep Cawthorn and whatever Pelosi told AOC to bring her to tears and to change her vote on Iron Dome funding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8_00JqPlOQ
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Jan 19, 2024 19:57
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mobby_6kl posted:From previous simular discussions, probably blackmail Seems you are correct, kinda sad everything this gets brought up people act like it's some secret strategy to winning and those stupid Dems just aren't smart enough to blackmail their party members into voting how they want like this is a foolproof plan.
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Jan 19, 2024 19:57
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^^^Democrats are absolutely smart enough to use “leverage” to get the votes they want, see AOC and her Iron Dome vote. When they don’t use this leverage, it’s because they aren’t interested in obtaining that particular outcome  Kalit posted:Looking at the ridiculous corruption in politics in cities like NYC and Chicago, I would strongly disagree with this statement. I can’t imagine how corrupt politicians does not inevitably end up as being self-serving  what’s unique about the corruption in these two cities? Which American cities are not corrupt?
The Top G fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 19:58
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Killer robot posted:Historically "what if we had a bunch of criminals running the government for the good of the common man" has a worse track record than "what if we had a good king instead of a democracy?" Didnt the elimination of earmarks drastically reduce the ability of the government to function as it became much harder to put pressure on recalcitrant politicians? Did lowering the number of opportunities for graft make things better or worse, overall? Like a single government shutdown that could have been avoided by leaning on someone’s dam building project probably does more economic damage than years of graft would.
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Jan 19, 2024 19:58
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selec posted:They don’t meet the criteria because they aren’t serving the party goals, they are serving land developers. I’m definitely not even going to agree with your claim. But AFAIK, organizations like Tammany Hall started off by primarily serving party goals/social activists/etc over land developers Kalit fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 19:59
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Earmarks aren't corruption.
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Jan 19, 2024 20:01
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Fister Roboto posted:So, this is just flat out not true. The US "just arrests" people all the time, though. For extremely petty crimes like shoplifting or selling loose cigarettes or using a fake check. It often kills them in the process. And if they're not killed, they get thrown in jail while they await a trial for months or years, and then get forced into a bullshit plea deal because the entire system is stacked against them. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's evidence that the state absolutely can arrest anyone that it wants to. It's just that who it wants to arrest is almost always poor black and brown people. The US would at least be consistent in its application of the law if Donald Trump had been in a jail cell on January 21st. But instead, we get swift and brutal retribution for the lower class, and endless deference for the upper class even as they seek to overthrow the state itself. What else can you call that but a dictatorship of the white bourgeoisie? I feel obligated to point out the distinction between federal and local governments here - the "just arrest for petty crimes" tendency is not really something the federal government does to anywhere near the same extent as localities can. Considering this is in the context of "just arrest the members of Congress you don't like," that's an important distinction.
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Jan 19, 2024 20:03
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celadon posted:Didnt the elimination of earmarks drastically reduce the ability of the government to function as it became much harder to put pressure on recalcitrant politicians? Did lowering the number of opportunities for graft make things better or worse, overall? Like a single government shutdown that could have been avoided by leaning on someone’s dam building project probably does more economic damage than years of graft would. In some ways, yes. But its also the case that federal politics isn't nearly as local or retail as it used to be. A population making their decisions by listening to national talk radio or reading twitter or w/e is generally not one that is paying attention to whether or not a dam got funded.
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Jan 19, 2024 20:04
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socialsecurity posted:Seems you are correct, kinda sad everything this gets brought up people act like it's some secret strategy to winning and those stupid Dems just aren't smart enough to blackmail their party members into voting how they want like this is a foolproof plan. It’s done in secret, but it’s not a secret that politicians will and have historically done really greasy poo poo to get things done. So if we’re seeing these people who ostensibly stand in the way of getting things the party ostensibly wants to do, there seem to be a few obvious possibilities, and “party leadership is inept” and “party leadership doesn’t actually much care for those issues” are both reasonable conclusions to reach. I can’t claim to know what they have or haven’t tried, and honestly it’s not my job to know, in the most competently executed scenarios nobody would know what got the outcome we wanted because nobody would’ve known this person was even opposed to the policy in the first place. Then you go to less and less slick but still successful possible outcomes, and then near the bottom of the list when you’re into unsuccessful outcomes territory you’ll find us, with the leadership we have today. If they can’t get it done one way or the other, they’re just not up to the task of leading. It doesn’t do a great job of distinguishing them from the GOP in a purely organizational competence and coherence sense—they can’t get their poo poo together either. Maybe there are larger forces at work that have decoupled what the party leadership wants from the base, maybe it’s just incompetence, it’s probably a mix of those and other things too. But you can’t discount incompetence when you have things a huge chunk of the base want to see fixed and we keep returning to That Darn Joe Manchin. Sounds like you got a major issue you’re not addressing if it comes up like this on such big issues, assuming they really are big issues to the average Dem voter and the party leadership and whoever it is you think party leadership takes their cues from.
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Jan 19, 2024 20:07
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James Garfield posted:Earmarks aren't corruption. They’re certainly a vector for corruption and the popular conception of earmarks and pork barrel spending is heavily linked to politicians creating unnecessary spending in their own districts for personal gain.
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Jan 19, 2024 20:11
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The Top G posted:
I feel like they’re on a whole different level of corruption. That’s not meaning that other cities don’t have any corruption, of course
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Jan 19, 2024 20:12
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:In some ways, yes. But its also the case that federal politics isn't nearly as local or retail as it used to be. A population making their decisions by listening to national talk radio or reading twitter or w/e is generally not one that is paying attention to whether or not a dam got funded. There's a good argument that a major reason for this is BECAUSE earmark graft got killed. Of course federal politics isn't nearly as local after decades of no longer having the major way federal politics were localized around.
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Jan 19, 2024 20:20
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There is some potentially good news on the vibecession front: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/19/economy-sentiment-biden-inflation/ Washington Post posted:Economic vibes are finally improving, consumer sentiment surges
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Jan 19, 2024 20:33
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