lowenz on 29/1/2020 at 12:10
Quote Posted by Nicker
It is important for the testimony of witnesses to be read into the Senate records, especially if the GOP vote to exonerate Trump.
On a side note, who would you rather have for president?
Vlad?
Vlad is not "bad", is simply very badly ruthless :p (and a proxy soldier for Gazprom).
Of course if I have to choose between two "evils" (sigh) I choose Vlad all the way down.
Vlad is a competent president, not simply the classic politician mouthpiece (Trump is a competent specimen for narcisistic personalities studies).
Of course hoping Mother Nature will take him before he can create a too much solid power complex/nexus.
Power is bad for every living being.
Starker on 29/1/2020 at 18:48
Quote Posted by demagogue
I think one has to recognize that the party system doesn't really work very well when the persons running under it are hostile to the party itself. It's remade the Republican Party from a traditional political party, where a leadership comes up with a policy agenda and then a long-term plan to win elections and pass legislation, into something more like a personality cult, where the dear leader basically comes up with policy like he comes up with gastrointestinal movements, tomorrow's agenda easily contradicting yesterday's agenda. It reminds me of the common trope about clinical narcissists that they can't get any perspective more than 3 inches above the ground. Trump's agenda is hour by hour, for the most part pure hourly survival instinct. So it doesn't lend itself to the kind of decades-long legislative and electoral planning the Reps were cooking up under Gingrich, ironically so amazingly successful at dominating at the state level, the groundwork for electoral success, to allow someone like Trump to sweep in and completely set fire to the whole apparatus.
As for the democrat side... Hillary was of course the establishment's establishment in 2016, and the Sanders insurgency I think is still bitter for feeling pushed out, and I don't know for sure, but I suspect they may have some motivation to purge the Democratic Party establishment if Sanders wins. But even if Sanders isn't what you'd call establishment, he's still a long-term senator and still thinks in terms of a long-term agenda. It's not like he has a literal personality disorder and attention deficit issues that make coherent policy thinking literally beyond his cognitive capacity like Trump.
But anyway, let's see who we're dealing with first. Biden and Sanders seem to be alternating as the clear frontrunners.
Yeah, that's one of the downsides of weak parties that you can get populists and ideologues, making it nearly impossible to build consensus. Though I'm not sure centralised parties with strong discipline are necessarily the solution either when there's so much polarisation and disillusionment with the process and so many narrow interests dictating policy.
Renzatic on 29/1/2020 at 19:57
I don't think there is a single perfect system that can protect a republic from the dangers of populist cult of personality movements. One party governments eventually become defined by it, we're currently living proof that two party systems are susceptible to it under the right circumstances, and multi-party parliamentary systems are about as vulnerable for many of the same reasons.
All anyone can realistically do is recognize when it's happening, and do everything in their power to weather the storm.
jkcerda on 29/1/2020 at 20:14
LMMFAO, this is Murika.
[video=youtube;chFaesfO7fQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chFaesfO7fQ[/video]
Starker on 30/1/2020 at 00:14
Oh, is that the same spiritual adviser who prayed for miscarriages of satanic pregnancies? The best people indeed.
Renzatic on 30/1/2020 at 00:32
Yeah, it is, and I actually listened to that speech. To her credit, she's speaking figuratively when she's speaking of aborting satanic pregnancies.
...though it's still absolutely flat out 100% Grade-A balls to the wall insane.
[video=youtube_share;oCUyNXTPe4E]https://youtu.be/oCUyNXTPe4E[/video]
Nicker on 30/1/2020 at 06:05
Richard Nixon: "If the president does it, it isn't illegal."
Alan Dershowitz: (
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/29/politics/dershowitz-quid-pro-quo/index.html) If someone who really wants to be president, does it to become president, it's isn't illegal, whatever it is.
Quote:
"A complex middle case is 'I want to be elected. I think I'm a great president. I think I'm the greatest president there ever was and if I'm not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly.' That cannot be an impeachable offense," Dershowitz concluded.
A professor of law, spoke those words, in the Senate of the United States and was not taken out with the trash.
Renzatic on 30/1/2020 at 06:43
The laws we've abided by for 250 odd years are just suggestions, you know? If your heart's in the right place, if you truly believe in yourself, think you can make the world a better place, you can break them without consequence.
So here's what I'm gonna do: I'm gonna rob a bank. When I'm caught, and brought before a judge, I'll declare myself Not Guilty. See, I robbed that bank to fund my campaign for the presidency. One day, I will be a great man, and I will change this country for the better. I didn't do it for me! I DID IT FOR ALL OF AMERICA!
LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE!
demagogue on 30/1/2020 at 08:40
That line comes from the generation of postwar European expats coming into the US, especially the Univ of Chicago, Morgenthau and Strauss, and they got it basically from Carl Schmitt ("Hitler's Lawyer"), the sovereign is he who decides on the exception (to what is legal). Because in exceptional circumstances where the survival of the state is at stake, the executive has to be able to do whatever must be done to protect us from them, so the argument goes. The original generation, the NY School, were Trotskyites, and then horrified by Stalin they gradually migrated to the right until they were getting Christmas cards from Reagan in the '80s. Nixon was right on the cusp of their ascendancy in the mid-'70s, rebranded as the Neo-Cons.
It somehow seems really dated now, a tired slogan from a bygone age. Does anyone really credibly think cretins living in caves crafting improvised explosives out of '90s Nokia phones and bat shit or imaginary caravans of El Salvadorian tattooed gang rapists supposedly pouring across our borders whose kryptonite is the merciless detention of their children in cages without hope of soap, blankets, towels, anti-lice medication, and hugs are a credible existential threat to the US? I think not, sir, not one bit.