Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? Bernie Sanders wants to know who owns America?
#20441
Posted 2022-September-16, 11:47
Ideally, forum software would support delegating mod authority to thread starters. A reasonable alternative would be to ban posters who don't respect requests from thread starters to please stop sh*t posting.
#20442
Posted 2022-September-16, 16:10
#20443
Posted 2022-September-16, 18:20
The 2nd pinned post made in the water cooler by Rain March 4 2006.
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1) No personal attacks. Insults are a No-No. You can have issues with someone else's opinion and attack that (in a civilised manner hopefully), but don't go after anyone personally.
2) No advertising, no spam.
3) No obscenities.
Posters who engage in hateful, vulgar, threatening, knowingly illegal and inaccurate posts may be suspended not just from forums, but also our related websites.
In general, please follow this rule of thumb (which is a good rule I've picked up from another forum): If you aren't comfortable emailing a post to your grandmother/mother/colleague, then it probably shouldn't be posted here.
By posting in this forum, you have also agreed to the terms stated here.
Ok?
Whew!
Lets keep the posts flowing. On Behalf of BBO and BBF, Thanks!
#20444
Posted 2022-September-16, 18:56
hrothgar, on 2022-September-16, 04:19, said:
Can't even remember what he writes from day to day
Well, you're in your 80s
Alzheimers is probably setting in
Quick reminder
You started out by claiming that I am a legend in my own mind
I responded by pointing out that my claims are actually well in accord with the opinions of folks on forums
MULTIPLE people label you as a racist
Saying that you stand alone doesn't refute my basic claim
Indeed, you're conceding the point
As Mr. Shakespeare said, "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
#20445
Posted 2022-September-16, 19:40
pilowsky, on 2022-September-16, 18:20, said:
The 2nd pinned post made in the water cooler by Rain March 4 2006.
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The grandmother rule is reasonable, at least metaphorically. I couldn't stand my maternal grandmother and the other one was dead long before I was born. So if we go by what I would write to my grandmother I will never post again.
We post opinions. Of course we do. I loved high school geometry where every assertion came with a proof but that's not real life. So we post opinions.
As to obscenities, I favor reasonable tolerance. I watch modern movies and find far more casual obscenity in them than I use in my own speech. When I was a high school Sophomore I went on a binge of obscenities, double negatives etc. "I ain't got no effin interest in poetry". I grew out of it. But occasionally a mild obscenity seems to fit. I think we can all survive it.
"Do no evil" is reasonable except that we do not all agree on what constitutes evil. The Dems spent a lot of money helping Trumpees to win in the recent Republican primaries. That was both evil and stupid in my opinion. Not everyone agrees.
I try to be as honest as possible and as clear as possible about my thoughts. That's the best I can do.
#20446
Posted 2022-September-17, 09:52
#20447
Posted 2022-September-17, 10:38
Gilithin, on 2022-September-17, 09:52, said:
Yes, it is frustrating that a federal judge has in essence installed herself as Trump’s defense counsel but all the networks want to do is frame it as a both sides dispute and allow GOP to spread their lies unchallenged.
#20448
Posted 2022-September-17, 19:25
Matt Yglesias (Sept 17, 2022) said:
But freedom to boot people on occasion is critical to making it functional and appealing.
It's not just the water cooler apparently.
#20449
Posted 2022-September-18, 08:21
Gilithin, on 2022-September-14, 20:28, said:
The article illustrates a problem. It is written by Film Crit Hulk. At least I am kenberg although since I have, afaik, never met any of my fellow posters f2f this doesn't matter much. When I was young calling someone an obscenity-laced name was apt to lead to a fistfight, so you learned not to do that. At least in St. Paul, if someone called you an MF SOB they could not have you arrested if you punched them in the nose. You couldn't shoot them. At any rate, there was some deterrence for the language used.
I don't regard myself as a Rightie, but not as a Leftie either. In WaPo I read George Will and I read E. J. Dionne. Neither of them is a troll, neither of them is a god. They are both intelligent and interesting.
As to problems with BBF, I regard the lack of diversity, or the lack of surprise, as the biggest problem. In the last five years have I said anything that surprised anyone? Has Winston? We all know each other's views. It's true that I avoid lunch with Trumpees or with those who think vaccines make you radioactive, but I like chatting with those whose views are more conservative than mine.
#20450
Posted 2022-September-18, 10:34
kenberg, on 2022-September-18, 08:21, said:
I don't regard myself as a Rightie, but not as a Leftie either. In WaPo I read George Will and I read E. J. Dionne. Neither of them is a troll, neither of them is a god. They are both intelligent and interesting.
As to problems with BBF, I regard the lack of diversity, or the lack of surprise, as the biggest problem. In the last five years have I said anything that surprised anyone? Has Winston? We all know each other's views. It's true that I avoid lunch with Trumpees or with those who think vaccines make you radioactive, but I like chatting with those whose views are more conservative than mine.
I like to think of myself as convincible. This is not the same as gullible. Neither is it the same as unbendable. I like to keep in mind and be a proponent of the words attributed to John Maynard Keynes: When the facts change, I change my mind; what do you do, sir?
That idea should have neither a liberal nor a conservative bias. That it does is the problem.
#20451
Posted 2022-September-19, 17:11
Blake Houndshell at NYT said:
In a sharply written open letter to Congress published on Monday and shared in advance with The New York Times, the scholars tell lawmakers, “It is clear that our winner-take-all system — where each U.S. House district is represented by a single person — is fundamentally broken.” They call on Congress to “adopt inclusive, multimember districts with competitive and responsive proportional representation.”
The list of signatories includes nine of the 18 living U.S.-based winners of the Johan Skytte Prize, a prestigious Swedish award that has become a kind of unofficial Nobel for political science: Robert Axelrod, Francis Fukuyama, Peter J. Katzenstein, Robert Keohane, David D. Laitin, Margaret Levi, Arend Lijphart, Philippe C. Schmitter and Rein Taagepera.
“Our arcane, single-member districting process divides, polarizes and isolates us from each other,” the professors write. “It has effectively extinguished competitive elections for most Americans, and produced a deeply divided political system that is incapable of responding to changing demands and emerging challenges with necessary legitimacy.”
In simple terms, what these professors are proposing is a shift from …
Districts where voters in each of the two major parties first choose their representatives through partisan primaries, then select a single winner during the general election
… to:
A system in which voters choose multiple members to represent the same area, with votes allocated proportionally to the population.
Quote
It would be politically tricky to pull off, to put it mildly. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution grants states the authority to set “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives.” But it also gives Congress the power to “at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.”
That ambiguity means there’s ample room for dispute about whether Congress or the states are the appropriate decision maker.
#20452
Posted 2022-September-19, 18:45
Quote
Maybe just a technicality, but I vote for a person, not a party. Ok, that person belongs to a party. Well, sometimes. People do run as independents. If we have a conservative independent running and a liberal independent running and, taken together, they get a good number of votes do we then somehow say that "independents" got enough votes so one or the other of these very opposing guys gets a seat based on the combined vote total for independents? Or maybe a Democratic Socialist gets a lot of votes from Democrats and a Democrat gets a lot of votes from Democrats. Maybe this all works out, maybe not? Also, the Constitution, afaik, doesn't envision people voting for parties.
I'm thinking that this plan might need a little more work. I'm not dismissing it, but I am having trouble seeing just how it would work.
#20453
Posted 2022-September-19, 19:05
The 'multi-member system' is a recipe for a lawyers picnic where everyone gets a sandwich with nothing in it.
#20454
Posted 2022-September-19, 20:21
The US is not so very different in 2022 as it was in 1922 or 1862.
#20455
Posted 2022-September-20, 08:40
kenberg, on 2022-September-19, 18:45, said:
Consider the German system then, where you have a certain number of Representatives based around physical areas/seats and a top up pool that can be fine-tuned to make sure that each party winning at least 5% of the vote ends up with a number of seats proportional to their vote share. The result is more or less the best of both FPTP and PR systems in one tidy package. Probably the best nation-building the US has ever implemented in its entire history.
#20456
Posted 2022-September-20, 16:51
kenberg, on 2022-September-18, 08:21, said:
That would really add to the discussion, but many of the conservatives on here turned out rather implicitly or explicitly r*ist.
And I think that's really the issue. So much of the conservative movement has turned into either pure identity politics ("Look how much I deplore Nancy Pelosi!! Do I need to say anything else?") or "own the libs"-for-its-own-sake politics that it takes someone genuinely independent to advocate a conservative vision with dignity, judgement and intellectual coherence. And Ben Shapiro-style shallow talking points to win you a timed debate won't fly in here when people have time to draft a response or cite, uhm, facts.
I follow a bit of politicsy accounts on twitter. In the US, I'd find it difficult to follow conservative accounts. In the UK, there are quite a few that I do follow. Sometimes they irk me, sometimes I think they are wrong, sometimes I think they are right. Much more interesting following them then someone whose opinions I can predict, or that I automatically discount.
#20457
Posted 2022-September-21, 00:55
#20459
Posted 2022-September-21, 10:04
NY attorney general Letitia James said:
https://www.nytimes....awsuit-ny-james
#20460
Posted 2022-September-22, 06:13
Does that mean they get a Secret Service detail in the cells with them?
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