Political Discussion In The 20s

Topic

Let’s reboot this thing. Have at thee.

Replies

JRCarter wrote:

OK, fuck the GOP.

I don’t want to repeat myself too much… but this is a really dark time for American Democracy. I mean, Trump’s lawyer has just argued with a straight face that nothing Trump does to get re-elected can ever be impeachable, because in Trump’s own view he is doing it in the public interest (because him staying President is, to him, in the public interest).

There is an American lawyer representing a sitting president who is literally justifying any and all illegal action and corruption as long as you’re doing it to stay in power, like any banana republic dictator would do.

And this President is going to be exonerated. And he will use the attempt to impeach him to get re-elected, proudly declaring his innocence and denouncing the Deep State. And the GOP senators are letting him do it because they are afraid of this devil machine they have created.

At this point, it is hard to see how the US will ever recover from this. Well, outside of actually electing Bernie Sanders. That’d be like a vomit-purging binge to get rid of all that Trump, and probably the only hope for the liberal-leaning majority of the fucking country to ever feel clean again. Anything else, at this point, will just be a descent into cynicism, nihilism and chaos.

Yeah, I am not feeling very hopeful about the US these days.

So if I’m understanding it right, the US government has just ruled that you can hold a trial without allowing the prosecution to bring any witnesses to the stand?

Defense attorney’s across the country must be on their knees giving thanks to God today.

Christian wrote:

What must be really fucking terrifying if you’re in the UK is that Brexit has brought about a situation in which the Tories have an absolute majority and, with EU legislation being erased, have the opportunity to shape the legal framework of the UK in all kinds of ways when it comes e.g. to labour and consumer protection regulations – meaning they will do their absolute best to dismantle all public structures and feed their populace to the vulture capitalism they love so much.

This is the really concerning part, and it’s not being talked about enough.

DavidM wrote:

So if I’m understanding it right, the US government has just ruled that you can hold a trial without allowing the prosecution to bring any witnesses to the stand?

Defense attorney’s across the country must be on their knees giving thanks to God today.

Yeah, you’re understanding it exactly right.

DavidM wrote:

Defense attorney’s across the country must be on their knees giving thanks to God today.

Nah, ’cause it’s a special Donnie-only ruling.

Someone Just Edited The Senate’s Wikipedia Page In The Most Savage Way

It’s been changed back, but here’s what the prankster wrote:

The United States Senate was formerly the upper chamber of the United States Congress, which, along with the United States House of Representatives ― the lower chamber ― comprised the legislature of the United States. It died on January 31, 2020, when senators from the Republican Party refused to stand up to a corrupt autocrat calling himself the president of the United States, refusing to hear testimony that said individual blackmailed Ukraine in order to cheat in the 2020 presidential election.

Ben wrote:

DavidM wrote:

Defense attorney’s across the country must be on their knees giving thanks to God today.

Nah, ’cause it’s a special Donnie-only ruling.

But isn’t American law all about setting precedent which you can then invoke in the next trial? At least, that’s what I’ve learned from watching Law & Order.

These are the kinds of arseholes that Brexit is emboldening.

Police called in after poster tells residents of flats to speak English

But I was assured people weren’t voting for Brexit because they were racists?

You don’t have to be racist to vote Brexit, but it helps. 

So, I took a look at The Telegraph, as my barometer of the other end of the political spectrum. the stories getting a push on their website today;

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/01/boris-johnson-infuriated-eu-reneges-free-trade-deal/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2020/02/01/prince-andrew-accuses-us-prosecutors-failing-play-straight-bat/

And a little bit of criticism;

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/02/hs2-governments-first-major-mistake/

HS2 is a high speed rail project to the North of England and it’s a money pit. Theres a lot of pressure to cancel it, but that wouldn’t go down well with people in the North and they just gave Johnson a majority. What’s a politician to do?

Some bloke called Arthur Dent just offered me a towel…

…It’s all about the kindness of strangers.

I mean nothing strange to see here. Move along.

Did he also say something about taking a trip right now due to some bypass?

Dave wrote:

These are the kinds of arseholes that Brexit is emboldening.

Police called in after poster tells residents of flats to speak English

Given all the errors, and the fact that someone concerned about “the Queen’s English” would be concerned about that, maybe it’s an accidental example of Poe’s Law

 

I think it’s just an asshole.

Sorry. Arsehole.

SteveUK wrote:

Theres a lot of pressure to cancel it, but that wouldn’t go down well with people in the North and they just gave Johnson a majority. What’s a politician to do?

I was reading a story delving into it the other day and when they surveyed people in the North they overwhelmingly said they’d prefer improved transport links between the towns and cities there than to Birmingham/London. So that’s a get-out for Johnson available, cancel it and spend on much cheaper options like putting on more trains between Sheffield and Leeds or Manchester and Liverpool.

 

 

lorcan_nagle wrote:

But I was assured people weren’t voting for Brexit because they were racists?

The racist claim is honestly not a helpful argument.

Let me pose this question by way of illustration: is everybody who voted to leave the Union in the Scottish independence referendum, and everybody now calling for a second referendum, a racist?

 

SteveUK wrote:

Theres a lot of pressure to cancel it, but that wouldn’t go down well with people in the North

Er, yes it would, we don’t want it. It’s not going to benefit me or anybody I know, but spreading around some of that hundred billion could.

Edit: yes, what Gar said

 

The only ray of light here is the journalists sticking up for each other …

Journalists separated by a rug in the foyer of No. 10 with some refused a briefing… just wait until the police show up and raid your offices a la Morrison Government in Australia (https://t.co/qQMXrJIpbx)

What is happening to #pressfreedom pic.twitter.com/i8P9IjqhJE

— Emily Woods (@EmilyHWoods) February 3, 2020

 

 

DavidM wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

But I was assured people weren’t voting for Brexit because they were racists?

The racist claim is honestly not a helpful argument.

Let me pose this question by way of illustration: is everybody who voted to leave the Union in the Scottish independence referendum, and everybody now calling for a second referendum, a racist?

 

That’s a pointless comparison.  There were no accusations of racism levelled at the pro-independence campaigners, there was no racist rhetoric used in their campaign, and no racist violence linked to their cause.

But all these things happened with Brexit.  I’m not saying that all Brexit voters are racists, but I’d be shocked if any racists didn’t vote for Brexit.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

I’d be shocked if any racists didn’t vote for Brexit.

Really? I wouldn’t be shocked at all if quite a few didn’t. I can easily imagine a racist too lazy to get out of his chair to vote at all, prefering to save his energy for shouting at a brown person on the bus. More than that, I can easily imagine a racist who votes to stay in union with other white people rather than do all these global deals with African people that Johnson keeps talking about.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

But all these things happened with Brexit.  I’m not saying that all Brexit voters are racists, but I’d be shocked if any racists didn’t vote for Brexit.

And given the narrow margin of victory, it’s not a stretch to say that those votes may well have clinched it.

DavidM wrote:

Er, yes it would, we don’t want it. It’s not going to benefit me or anybody I know, but spreading around some of that hundred billion could.

A lot is just common sense, it’s an enormous amount of money. It is projected most of the financial benefit will actually hit London again. It’ll make no difference at all to the south west and south Wales, north east, Scotland, yet they are forking out for it in huge numbers.

I’m a supporter of rail and high speed rail but HS2 is a fucking disaster of a project. A huge proportion of that escalating bill is buying or bypassing land via tunnels in the leafy rich areas of the south east. They already get massive transport subsidy per head.

 

Anonymous wrote:

Dave wrote:

These are the kinds of arseholes that Brexit is emboldening.

Police called in after poster tells residents of flats to speak English

Given all the errors, and the fact that someone concerned about “the Queen’s English” would be concerned about that, maybe it’s an accidental example of Poe’s Law

 

It could be real, it could be bullshit. Regardless it’s wrong to assume this attitude is representative for everybody that voted Brexit.

The Washington Post reports that voter turnout in the Iowa caucus was low. Which is worrying and indicative of the apathy which I think week a through America right now.

If you live in a blue state and think your vote does not matter, or even if you don’t, you should be going to votesaveamerica.com to see what you can do and get a good idea of what you can do to affect change in key battlegrounds like wisconsin

Given Mr Master’s source, fake news- they want to “show” that Americans are”done with democracy”- they want a fascist caliphate.

Iowa.

One.

Two.

Thr … aw, dammit!

One …

 

Tulsi will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Anonymous wrote:

Given Mr Master’s source, fake news- they want to “show” that Americans are”done with democracy”- they want a fascist caliphate.

You seem to be confused about what fake news is.

Anonymous wrote:

Given Mr Master’s source, fake news- they want to “show” that Americans are”done with democracy”- they want a fascist caliphate.

As always, you are vehemently correct Kalman. And, of course, precisely what the masthead “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is set to announce!

But the fault is mine, for my error in using the word “report” instead of “opine” to preface my thesis on general voter malaise.

The fault, perhaps, may also be yours for not investigating further the sources I referenced, in which to better position yourself to respond in a contrarian fashion.  Here is the culprit source, for your leisure https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/04/most-important-iowa-result-is-democrats-should-worry/

My point is that after last year’s events, I think the Onion is a more trustworthy source than WaPo

You are wrong.

Anonymous wrote:

My point is that after last year’s events, I think the Onion is a more trustworthy source than WaPo

Can you elaborate why you think so?

Anonymous wrote:

My point is that after last year’s events, I think the Onion is a more trustworthy source than WaPo

How convenient for you

Sen. Romney breaks with GOP, will vote to convict Trump

Not that it’ll make a difference or anything…

Holy shit, the Iowa stuff is really bad for the dems.

Anonymous wrote:

Holy shit, the Iowa stuff is really bad for the dems.

There is no obstacle too low for that party to trip over.

Fuck each and every Senator that voted Not Guilty. Fuck their mamas. Fuck their daddies. Fuck their grandmas. Fuck their grandpas.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Holy shit, the Iowa stuff is really bad for the dems.

There is no obstacle too low for that party to trip over.

Thinking about it, it must be a hell of a job to organize an election. Maybe it’s a miracle that it works sometimes.

Not really, it generally works well in most other advanced nations. Keep it simple; forget apps and computers – paper, pencil, scrutineers – done.

Yeah, the Iowa thing is just plain embarrassing and there’s no real excuse for it. The Dems just remain inept at just about everything they do. Somehow they learned nothing after the disaster that was 2016 and now we all will likely have to suffer through another 4 years of Trump. I guess that’s what we, as a country, deserve at this point.

JRCarter wrote:

Fuck each and every Senator that voted Not Guilty. Fuck their mamas. Fuck their daddies. Fuck their grandmas. Fuck their grandpas.

I consider those Republicans who voted for acquittal to be traitors.

I’m actually glad that they didn’t vote to censure him. It would have been portrayed as an admission that impeachment was excessive and this was enough. At least this way he’s denied a bipartisan acquittal and got a bipartisan vote against acquittal. The history books will remember that.

Well, all shit breaks loose. We have seen the Senate do their kabuki, although we might have preferred seppuku. Which would be appropriate for some 53 of them. This is delusion and cult politics at the direst level. Now the citizens will have to act, and that never turns out well.  Then there was the Lies of the Union Address, a demonic playbook if I ever heard one. Yeah, 10 million “lifted from welfare” – just as one is lifted onto the gallows pole. Those numbers came from refusal of service. And just to cap off this happy day in politics:
https://sputniknews.com/science/202002051078234099-astronaut-parmitano-hands-over-iss-command-to-roscosmos-oleg-skripochka—video/

 

Andrew wrote:

Not really, it generally works well in most other advanced nations. Keep it simple; forget apps and computers – paper, pencil, scrutineers – done.

Remember, Iowa uses a caucas. I’ve never understood how they’ve done it on a practical level in modern times. The logistics must be a nightmare, anyway.

They still did it with paper and pencil, it was just the backup for the app.

Caucuses are undemcratic garbage but tallying the votes are not hard.

There is some irony in democrats having placed their hopes on John Bolton of all people. Was Darth Sidious unavailable?

Anonymous wrote:

There is some irony in democrats having placed their hopes on John Bolton of all people. Was Darth Sidious unavailable?

On the other side, the right wingers have gotten whiplash turning on him.

We’re seeing pretty basic transposing errors in spreadsheets (?); it’s a debacle.

And for such a small (relatively) group of people. The caucus process is interesting; looks kinda fun to take part in.

I’ll mention again the fervent “Bernie or Bust” movement – it’s easy to dismiss podcasts and online personalities but the Chapo crew and their followers have a fair bit of influence – they are vowing to stay home if Bernie’s not the nominee and encouraging others to do the same. If it’s not a bluff, it’s worrying.

JRCarter wrote:

Fuck each and every Senator that voted Not Guilty. Fuck their mamas. Fuck their daddies. Fuck their grandmas. Fuck their grandpas.

No, fuck every american’t politician and federal employee. Fuck republicants and demorats both. Fuck amerika. Evil country.

No, America is pretty good. Pretttyy, pretttttyyyyy, pretty good.

 

9/11 was an inside job….

No it wasn’t.  Venal men took advantage of a national tragedy for personal gain, as they always do.

It was planned from Clinton’s presidency. Parties don’t matter. Trump and Pelosi are good friends, it’s just a game to make amerika look like a democracy. It’s all planned

Yes. Obviously. All the material facts and evidence says so.

Also, Spacey was framed by lizardpeople

And HW planned the ’93 bombings, but it failed, so Clinton came up with 9/11

Lizard people are products of the minds of people who know the truth, once they  are given drugs by the CIA

Well I kinda doubt it but I don’t know. Just try to chill out.

 

Humanity has some good and some evil. That is reflected in all countries. The US is great in some ways but it does some things that aren’t so great as well. That is just how things are, how they always were and how they will be as long as there is life. There are always people like that, all you can do is try to live your life as best as you can.

Alex Jones is sane, but when he realized the truth, the CIA secretly started giving him  cocktail of barely effective doses of meth, cocaine, psilocybin, mescaline and THC.

I think derailing this thread when we are discussing pertinent political topics speaks of an unwillingness to grapple with those topics.

Yeah, get back to the lizard people already.

Martin is a lizard person!

Anonymous wrote:

And HW planned the ’93 bombings, but it failed, so Clinton came up with 9/11

A good example for the ‘government is inefficient’ people. 8 years to come up with a second plan.

Anonymous wrote:

Martin is a lizard person!

We prefer the term “people of scales”, thank you very much.

garjones wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

And HW planned the ’93 bombings, but it failed, so Clinton came up with 9/11

A good example for the ‘government is inefficient’ people. 8 years to come up with a second plan.

Clearly Monica was sent to distract him by the anti-conspiracy conspiracy.

I don’t believe any of that; I was sleep-deprived and thought posting that would be a good joke

mmmmmmm

lorcan_nagle wrote:

mmmmmmm

Todd, I believe the correct term is “Hurrrmmmm”

njerry wrote:

Todd, I believe the correct term is “Hurrrmmmm”

Ronch ronch ronch

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Ronch ronch ronch

Mitt Romney just showed Trump how a president should act

Maybe a Romney Presidency wouldn’t have been so bad, after all.

I know everyone is saying this right now, and obviously he’s far more capable then Trump or Pence, but he is still pretty religious and Romney and McConnell as a team would be just as problematic in the Senate.

With that said I do respect him, and what he said, which is more than I have ever thought about the current officeholders.

Yeah, a Romney presidency would likely be less worse than a Trump one, but it still would have sucked for a lot of the people that the Republicans are deliberately making life suck for right now.

So, Tim, you’re saying that religious people should not hold public office? Or do you only object if their beliefs impact their politics- it is possible to be religious and keep it out of politics.

It is an interesting question and I can see how you would construe it that way but that is not what I am saying.

Every President of the united states is ‘religious’.  They make an oath under god and the conventional wisdom suggests that, due to the christian majority, if a President say, came out as aetheist or buddhist they probably would not be elected for a second term (or at all). “One Nation Under God” is a telling statement.  There is an argument to be made about how Trump is clearly not religious but presents himself as so because it appeals to his base, but I’ll leave that to one side.

What I’m saying is that devoutly religious politicians on the right, as a generalisation, tend to want to govern based principally on their interpretation of the Bible’s laws first, and then the constitution second.  This is a separate argument again, as the constitution does technically allow for this kind of hierachical thinking, but in general I don’t agree with this as a true separation of church and state, which I believe to be important.  This, historically, is less evident of the religious politicians on the left.

The other aspect to take into account, for me,  which is informed by the above paragraph, is that the policy decisions of devoutly religious right politicians tends to swing towards anti-abortion, ‘religious freedoms’ which express themselves as freedom to denigrate other religions, and other policies which i believe interfere with basic personal and often human rights.   The good republican politicians, like Romney, tend to display equanimity when approaching these topics but his justification for impeachment “he takes an oath under god” leads me to believe he would fight tooth and nail to have his religious views made policy, and particularly with McConnel as Senate leader, many of them may have happened.   So many states have banned abortion recently, which i strongly disagree with, and I wonder what the map would look like under Romney.  I feel like there could be serious success rolling back, for example, Roe V Wade.  And on that point, I think he would want to stack a supreme court, not necessarily with Kavaunaughs, but certainly with people like Gorsuch.

So what it comes down to is no, I do not believe that religious people should not be officeholders.  I think religious people should separate their duties to the office with their duties to (their) god(s), but let their duties to god at the least inform the morals they exercise when they exercise their duties to the office.  I think Romney would be better at doing this than most but I still believe there would be examples where he would employ a discretion in policy making informed by his religious affectation and justify it by believing he was doing it under a duty to god.  I think that is not the right approach for an office holder.

It’s called ‘wearing two hats’ in the Law and, as in effect you have noted, it’s not that complicated a concept.  You wear one hat, you do one thing, when you put the other hat on you’re no longer doing the thing you were doing when you were wearing the first hat, and if they conflict, you have to do what you’re meant to do when wearing that particular hat.  It’s a pity then that many right wing politicians are not very good at doing this.

But, Romney would be better than Pence. Obviously.

Anonymous wrote:

So, Tim, you’re saying that religious people should not hold public office? Or do you only object if their beliefs impact their politics- it is possible to be religious and keep it out of politics.

For me, I think it’d be better for leaders to not be religious. As it stands I have a hard time accepting that, for example, Obama was a believer (I think he pretends as a means of appealing to a required segment of the populace).

I think in the US especially it’s a massive challenge to gain traction as a politician without an expressed religion and a spouse.

A problem that can arise with religion is we are meant to be accepting and tolerant (that’s a left wing thing), so when for example the Australian Prime Minister says that he’s praying for the bushfires to die down, there’s not a massive media or public pile-on at the lack of real, meaningful action. It lends itself to an unchallengable cop-out – “Why did you make this decision?” “Because of my faith – no more questions” – when further scrutiny may be warranted.

Yes, Andrew is precisely right and that is an excellent example.

Our current Prime Minister is certainly one of the more devout we’ve ever had and he talks far more about praying for solutions and inferring divine intervention then is fitting for a governing role.

Thoughts and prayers.

rory wrote:

Thoughts and prayers.

#blessed

Most all of you know my thoughts, and I’m thinking about praying to Shiva.

 

We have one political party here that usually gets about 2 % in the elections that supports a strictly Calvinist, orthodox Christian theocracy. They’re a wild bunch. There are two other Christian political parties which are quite alright, moderate and centrist.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Political_Party

 

 

We have proper religious parties too – the Christian Democrats are the most prominent, and they usually have one or two senators in State parliament.

They’re probably most famous for organising a coordinated prayer-in for rain on Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras night.

Our 2010-13 Labor PM was an out atheist, and unmarried.

The US must be the only country that has these awful long “election seasons”. This shit will go on from now til November. Over here it’s like 3 days.

3 days is too short for me – elections are to me what the Olympics or the World Cup is to sports fans, but even they would agree that a 2 year Olympics would be tiring.

Here federally it’s at the PM’s discretion, but they usually run for 3 to 5 weeks.

Anonymous wrote:

The US must be the only country that has these awful long “election seasons”. This shit will go on from now til November. Over here it’s like 3 days.

It’s actually much, much longer. A large chunk of 2019 was candidates announcing their intention to run and starting their fundraising.

Anonymous wrote:

Alex Jones is sane, but when he realized the truth, the CIA secretly started giving him  cocktail of barely effective doses of meth, cocaine, psilocybin, mescaline and THC.

Aw Kalman, you so just gave me an excuse:

In the UK we have an official state religion that our head of state is also the head of. Being a high official in that religion automatically grants you a seat in Parliament. Every day’s business in Parliament starts with prayers.

And still I feel that we do separation of church and state better than the United States appears to

Todd wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The US must be the only country that has these awful long “election seasons”. This shit will go on from now til November. Over here it’s like 3 days.

It’s actually much, much longer. A large chunk of 2019 was candidates announcing their intention to run and starting their fundraising.

Hell, all of Trump’s post-2016 rallies have been fundraisers for his 2020 campaign.  On paper at least, it’s all just a dodge for him to pocket cash that he doesn’t need to account for.

Andrew wrote:

Here federally it’s at the PM’s discretion, but they usually run for 3 to 5 weeks.

That seems to generally be the norm in parliamentary systems. However maybe I have bias in seeing those, like in Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, that borrowed a lot from the UK models when they became independent.

The US though is almost in a continual election cycle with mid-terms as well as the almost 2 year run up to presidential elections. To be fair the UK is trying to catch up by calling an election every year if possible.

DavidM wrote:

In the UK we have an official state religion that our head of state is also the head of. Being a high official in that religion automatically grants you a seat in Parliament. Every day’s business in Parliament starts with prayers.

And still I feel that we do separation of church and state better than the United States appears to

Yeah, it is an odd contradiction. Like, lots of Americans are vehemently against prayer in schools and I totally get that, they don’t want their kids indoctrinated. Yet I went through the British state school system where, in primary school at least, every morning assembly had a prayer and a hymn (at most of the schools anyway) and a local vicar in every Friday (at the last one I went to at least) and I still came out of it an atheist. I don’t think I ever really felt any pressure to be particularly religious. Even at 7 or so, when if you asked me I probably would have said I believed in god, when everyone was asked to bow their heads and pray, I was quite content to just sit there for a few minutes and let my mind wander rather than feel pressured to actually focus on some religious thing.

It’s not indoctrination, it’s discrimination. You may have turned out an atheist but what about all the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist children that were forced to say christian prayers each morning?

rory wrote:

It’s not indoctrination, it’s discrimination. You may have turned out an atheist but what about all the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist children that were forced to say christian prayers each morning?

I went to a Catholic school, and there were a couple of Muslim kids during my time there.  We did mass on a Friday in Primary school, and they were just expected to sit there and keep quiet.  I mean, we all were, but we were expected to get something out of it too?

I was in the cub scouts and was the only Jew in my troop. When we went to mass it was pretty demoralizing to the only kid left on the pew when everyone else went up to receive communion.

rory wrote:

It’s not indoctrination, it’s discrimination. You may have turned out an atheist but what about all the Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist children that were forced to say christian prayers each morning?

I didn’t grow up in particularly diverse areas but the few schools I went to that had Muslim students provided alternatives to the standard assemblies for them with local religious leaders.

In my school, none of the children from non-Christian religions were in the hall when we did morning prayers and hymns. They came in later to hear the school announcements and such.

Incidentally, nominally Christian atheists were expected to sing the hymns and say the prayers

 

Yeah they aren’t forced. I had two Jehova’s Witnesses in my class and when assembly was on they sat in the library reading.

I have no idea how actually religious they are nowadays, I suppose it depends on the institution but I left school 30 years ago and it was vaguely moral stories and a hymn perhaps I think. Definitely no vicars and I’m honestly struggling to recall anything more than that other than we did a Robin Hood play once.