2020 Political Chatter

[guido]

Countdown Clock

71 days and counting (not including days spent in counting mail-in ballets, recountings and challenges etc.)

Keep it clean, non-personal and friendly...

[Too Tall]

Voter suppression. Why are we only today doing anything about it? Past actions amount to practically nothing. If this is part and parcel of the system we've elected, what's the fuss?

Not to diminish the electoral college "issue" but man this is no longer a fair process to evenly represent states with fewer votes...among other factors.

[guido]

Getting the voting rights act through congress and implemented took years even in the good old days of relatively less partisan acrimony. But the current conservative supreme court has been unwinding it and as the orders for review of all voting regs have been removed, certain states have wasted little time to slam on new discriminatory practices. An increasingly unrepresentative minority has digging in hard to retain power as demographics change...

[zachateseverything]

I had the realization sometime during Joe Biden's DNC speech that this election is shaping up to be Dusty Rhodes (all american hero/son of a plumber) vs Rick Flair (rich jerk).

[htwoopup]

Voter suppression. Why are we only today doing anything about it? Past actions amount to practically nothing. If this is part and parcel of the system we've elected, what's the fuss?

Not to diminish the electoral college "issue" but man this is no longer a fair process to evenly represent states with fewer votes...among other factors.

Ummm, this is pretty distressing....not doing something about it but making it worse.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...f7_story.html?

[monadnocky]

"Welfare recipients are people who don't work, don't pay taxes, and don't support themselves. Of course there are exceptions, but as a group -- let's face it -- they are among the least educated, least productive, least responsible adults in America. They're also among the least likely to be interested in elections or to follow public debates. If in addition they don't bother to vote, we ought to be grateful....

...Why would anyone want to coax them into registering? No one is disenfranchised in this country. Unlike days of old, there are no poll taxes, literary tests, gender barriers, or property requirements to come between any citizen and the voting booth. If US elections are marked by chronically low turnout, it is not because voters are kept away. It is because they stay away. Some are apathetic, some are ignorant, some are simply self-centered. Why badger such people to register? What would they bring to an election?"

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/7817/makin...o-easy-to-vote

Emphasis mine.

This was written by run-of-the mill, solidly centrist Republican editorialist to the Boston Globe in 1996. 1996! As if voting can be "too easy!" The notion of discouraging large swaths of the US electorate from voting is not new. It's been stock-and-trade policy of the Republican party for decades, since at least the Southern Strategy.

It's not confined to the right wing. It's mainstream thinking of an entire political party, even the center Right. And yet we stand slack-jawed at the apparent novelty of it.

[vertical_doug]

This goes back to the last census in 2010. 2020 stakes are higher which explains why Trump is so trying to scuttle this.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2...ode-845-redmap

It ties into Gerrymandering and everything else. Worth a 21 minute listen.

[cash]

The mainstreaming of the right wing fringe, ignore at our peril:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...UisLZ7KSu3B6B0

And, given President Trump's authoritarian tendencies and apparent adulation of V. Putin, how long til this is a tactic in the playbook:

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/90438...cted-poisoning

[guido]

The Economic Recovery That Isn’t | New York Times

"As Republicans take the virtual stage for their convention this week, expect to hear much chest pounding about how great the economy has been under Donald Trump’s leadership and how fast it is coming back from the virus-induced shutdown.

Alas, both assertions are untrue.

Yes, the economy did grow and produce jobs during Mr. Trump’s first three years in office. But its performance under Mr. Trump during that period was weaker than during the last three years of Barack Obama’s presidency. Almost exactly 1.5 million fewer jobs were created on Mr. Trump’s watch than during Mr. Obama’s final three years.

Without facts, Mr. Trump resorts to lies. He has claimed more than 360 times that the economy on his watch was the “strongest ever.” Not even close. Annualized growth under Mr. Trump ranked seventh among his 11 predecessors. And growth actually slowed during each of Mr. Trump’s three years.

To accomplish only that much, Mr. Trump needed one of the largest tax cuts in history, a cut that grossly favored business and wealthy Americans while exploding our deficit. Almost 85 percent of the benefits of the bill went to businesses and to those with incomes above $75,000.

Americans in the top 20 percent of incomes received a 2.9 percent increase in their after-tax incomes while middle-class Americans got just a 1.6 percent increase. Businesses responded to the cuts by raising dividends and share buybacks to record highs while an initial increase in capital investment quickly faded.

The Trump administration claimed that the legislation would pay for itself through increased economic activity. That, not surprisingly, turned out to be another lie. The deficit jumped to more than $1 trillion last year from $681 billion in 2017, the calendar year before the tax cut.

Then came the virus."

[Colinmclelland]

So in Australia we've got two key parties. The meanspirited and ineffectual ones and the genuinely ineffective ones.


I've seen a few snippets of the GOP "convention" thingy. Why is it that in the US there is "us" and "them" and the "them" will bring down hellfire and damnation. I don't really get it. I don't think either of our two main political parties could organize armageddon. And I don't think the public would believe you if they said they would.

Ooh, and guns. We were thinking about having a rational discussion with a possum. Looked into air rifles. For which I would have to get a gun license in Australia. WTAF is going on with that pink shirted barefoot dude with the assault rifle and his wife with a pistol. Even ignoring the bairfooted pink shirted thing, it's just weird.

[Mark Kelly]

We were thinking about having a rational discussion with a possum. Looked into air rifles.

Just so you know, even if you did obtain the air rifle and the licence, you still wouldn't be able to shoot the possum. All native marsupials are protected species, you have to have a special permit to shoot them and there's no way you would be given that permit in surburban Sydney. Yes I know it seems odd that possums are protected here when there are bloody millions of them but maybe that's because they are protected.

[ides1056]

On my ride yesterday I came across an official sign, given the production values, that read: Biden touches children. I took a photo. Way out in the woods on a gravel road. I thought better of removing it.

If anyone wants to watch the Trump show, I suggest Stephen Colbert's nightly synopsis. My gag reflex won't permit seeing it firsthand, but leavened by comedy I can tolerate the dissonance.

[Too Tall]

The United States is about to relearn what the Founders designed.

[monadnocky]

The United States is about to relearn what the Founders designed.

As well as what they inadvertently overlooked and (most) could not reasonably foresee: The dominance and subsequent moral bankruptcy of the two-party system.

[Scott G.]

As well as what they inadvertently overlooked and (most) could not reasonably foresee: The dominance and subsequent moral bankruptcy of the two-party system.

Pages 56-57 of the American Talmud, on faction.

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole,
who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest,
adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:..._1863.djvu/200

[Too Tall]

Now we are talking the same language.

Our founders never created guardrails for what is happening. Fundamentally the present administration is begging for a revolution.

[guido]

Now we are talking the same language.

Our founders never created guardrails for what is happening. Fundamentally the present administration is begging for a revolution.

Welcome to antifa comrade!

[Sbti]

After the latest police lynching attempt in Kenosha, the Milwaukee Bucks are boycotting game 5. Other strong statements from those in the NBA. If Pence isn't watching Mother with the pool boy, he is supposed to talk tonight about culture and that it is bad to kneel during the national anthem. Maybe someone will give him some advice that that might not be the greatest idea but I doubt it.
Remember kneeling bad, confederate loser/traitor flag good and is freedom of speech.

[Colinmclelland]

Just so you know, even if you did obtain the air rifle and the licence, you still wouldn't be able to shoot the possum. All native marsupials are protected species, you have to have a special permit to shoot them and there's no way you would be given that permit in surburban Sydney. Yes I know it seems odd that possums are protected here when there are bloody millions of them but maybe that's because they are protected.

We’d never shoot at one! We were just going to chat. Even more absurd, if you trap a possum you have to release it within such a small distance it kind of defeats the point of trapping it in the first place. I always used to wonder why NZ made such a fuss about them as pests. But OMG, they must eat their bodyweight in new growth everyday. They are such destructive critters if you are actually trying to grow something. We we just going to discuss that. That was all.

[72gmc]

Fundamentally the present administration is begging for a revolution.

Keep changing it until you find something you're qualified to administer ...