The Political Thread - Burlamaqui edition

[smjjames]

 

 

this guy is the president

 

lmao

Seems like Trump's got something on his mind.

 

 

That's not a fence, it's a row of crude metal spears (though I think spears that length are called polearms). Any closer together and if they were made of wood, it'd be a palisade. Whatever happened to the fancy ones that were being tested out earlier this year?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

 

The Spice must flow!

 

 

On a separate not it occurs to me Donald Trump might be doing us all a real favor. He may well kill off the notion of the "celebrity President" for good and all. The US has been flirting with it for decades and finally pushed the button in '16. Don't think we'll be doing that again.

 

They elected a dementia addled cowboy actor almost 4 decades ago so I wouldn't count on that. If anything President Tekashi 6ix9ine is more likely to happen now.

Not the same thing. Reagan had been out of show business and in politics for 24 years when we was elected.

He still came from celebrity and that was part of what allowed his entry into politics. Aside from being more brazen Trump isn't putting on acts anymore than politicians in general.

[HoonDing]

Putin's bitch, Xi Jinping's bitch, Kim Jong-un's bitch, Muhammad bin Salmon's bitch, Erdogan's bitch.

[ktchong]

Everyone here knows I do NOT like Donald Trump, but his decision to pull out of Syria is one that I support.   We really have no business or reason to interfere in - and prolong - the Syrian Civil War.

Edited December 27, 2018 by ktchong

[Malcador]

Putin's bitch, Xi Jinping's bitch, Kim Jong-un's bitch, Muhammad bin Salmon's bitch, Erdogan's bitch.

 

He just wants to be loved.

[Raithe]

[Raithe]

[Raithe]

[ktchong]

[smjjames]

nvm

Edited January 3, 2019 by smjjames

[smjjames]

Normally I'd just re-edit the aborted post, but since this forum doesn't show post updates when that post is the most recent one...

 

Found this idea about fixing the Senate so that it's apportioned by population. Keep one senator in to 'preserve federalism' (IMO, it should stick with two per state as the base) and then apportion it by population. In the example given using 1/100 of population (I call it an example because it doesn't neccesarily have to be 1/100, could be 1/200 or whatever), the four big states get 12 (California), 9 (Texas), and 6 (NY and Florida). The one thing that the article doesn't address though is, how do you deal with voting for the larger numbers of Senators and keeping it free from gerrymandering. I guess California (with it's big OP chunk of 12 (and that's a Californian saying that, lol)) can do it in blocks of four if we were to keep the three 'classes' (blocks of Senators who have their election in the same year). It's just an idea though, I know a bunch of people here are super conservative and would rather dunk it in holy fire, but the article isn't citing it as giving the Democrats a massive advantage. Yes they'd get a bit of a leg up, but the Republicans are going to have to adapt.

[injurai]

Everything about the US's representational organization is severely misaligned with the underlying structure of the people from which the representatives of democracy derive their legitimacy. Sadly I see very little progress being made because powers that be don't want a neutral systematization that the have to work to influence, they want the system itself to have a feedback loop that they have a firm grip on.

[Gromnir]

Everything about the US's representational organization is severely misaligned with the underlying structure of the people from which the representatives of democracy derive their legitimacy. Sadly I see very little progress being made because powers that be don't want a neutral systematization that the have to work to influence, they want the system itself to have a feedback loop that they have a firm grip on.

US system is not s'posed to be genuine representational.  in point o' fact, the federal system were specific designed to avoid the previous fail o' representative models.  federalist papers is a good starting point and still a prerequisite today for anybody curious 'bout the US Constitution. sure, conclusions from the federalists is one-sided, but the papers also layout fundamentals o' the proposed new government.   such a read is helpful as it reminds the new generation what were foremost on minds of founders-- checks and balances 'tween the three branches is actual secondary to the checks meant to be imposed on the potential for tyranny o' the majority.  the manifest inadequacy and potential evils o' democracy is precise why a Constitution were authored and ratified.

 

regardless, you don't get changes to senate w/o approval o' every state affected.  is hardcoded, so to speak, and ordinary amendment process or constitutional convention will not suffice.  change the senate is thus a fun thought experiment, but is otherwise wholly impractical.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps where the founder's intent is thorough undermined by passage o' time, alterations in society and incremental changes to Constitution is the executive branch, which would be complete unrecognizable to the folks who were part o' the original constitutional convention o' 1787.

[Hurlshort]

His soul for the whole world? That is a great deal.  

[injurai]

Define genuine representation. It's hard. There is more to representation than proportionality. You have jurisdictions to consider, imbalance in degree of power for sub-populations, populations with extreme autonomy in police making, populations divided and thus stagnated in their ability to self-determine. Whatever would be considered truly genuine by metric, and whatever sort of representation derivation needed to generate a representational government off of that would have to be some sort of fluctuating mathematical model more aking to a legislative economy. Hopefully it would tend towards some sort of steady state for periods of time long enough so people could rely on constants. Conceiving such a thing is just unrealistic. Some sort of more granular approach is more reasonable but has been crowded out by the assumption of the local governments being the proper abstraction of granular government. The true problems occur when trying to tie arbitrary geological jurisdictions to the distribution of political influence. Populations aren't distributed as such.

 

I think the amount of low-hanging fruit to move in the right direction is immense though, even short of some sort of absolute model. Just it will never happen because that sort of fair structural thinking is not exactly trusted. People would rather be ****ed over by a simple model, and the ****er-overers would rather ****-over with a simple model.

[Gromnir]

Define genuine representation. 

 

don't have to define it.  our point is the founders were actual afeared o' it.  by implementing a federal system, they were attempting to put limits 'pon representation.  judiciary is appointed by a president who is himself not popular elected, but rather is chosen by a collective o' wise persons whose only purpose is to choose a chief executive.  those appointments by the chief executive must be approved o' by the senate, which has been noted already, is the portion o' the legislature more insulated from the fickle whims o' the people.  etc.  

 

the US system may be fundamental wrong (depending on point o' view,) but is not busted as it works as intended... at least insofar as article 1 is concerned.  wanna argue how much representation is good?  wanna play with defining representation? have at it.  

 

moot in any event as senate cannot be altered save by unanimous state consensus.  maybe a couple o' law professors and constitutional law experts imagine whether this particular cat is dead before it is observed, but doesn't change fact the poor cat ends up in same state regardless o' the imagination, genius and subtlety o' the big brains contemplating the question- cat dies.  senate is 2 per state.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Guard Dog]

 

Gromnir said: ps where the founder's intent is thorough undermined by passage o' time, alterations in society and incremental changes to Constitution is the executive branch, which would be complete unrecognizable to the folks who were part o' the original constitutional convention o' 1787.

Heck the modern presidency would be unrecognizable to the people of 1887 let alone 1787. It started going wrong with Woodrow Wilson and while not every subsequent president left the office more distorted (and more powerful) than he found it the trend has been going in the wrong direction ever since. The real blame is Congress IMO. They have sat mute while one executive after another has run roughshod over their enumerated powers. This whole tariff business is a great example. The power to levy tax belongs to the Congress. They allowed Wilson to use executive authority to levy tariffs to convince neutral nations to help in WWI. Or discourage them from dealing with the central powers. Congress can (and God knows should) take that back at any time. But they won't. 

[smjjames]

I’d say that the point where it starts to really pull away from the 19th century model of the Presidency starts somewhat further back with Teddy Roosevelt. It may actually start with Lincolin, but as you said, the changes were gradual, so, it probably did start resembling the modern presidency at about the turn of the 20th century.

[Guard Dog]

The US political system is the worst one in the world.... except for all the others.  In truth it isn't perfect and cannot BE perfected but it is pretty good in that is it reasonably protects the rights of the individual and checks (for the most part) the excesses of the state. I would prefer the trend reversed towards decentralization but if you look over the last 150 years it does ebb and flow one way or the other. All in all it's messy, noisy, sometimes chaotic, but it an't bad.

[injurai]

Gromnir, I know the history of my country. I know what the founders wished as balance.

 

What we have now is a degree of representation that is bad in a manner that the founders would too fear. The legislative branch is very powerful, and the levers it's structure offers to the political parties allows for planning in relation to how representation is currently derived.

 

Seeing as the state is the primary political unit of the federal government (even federal circuits are derived off of this underlying structure) it is no wonder that small easy to placate homogeneous states which provides 2 senators, and densely populated high electoral college with lots of house seats hold all the value, but differ in how the people are able to participate in their government. You can tell this is true by the manner a free state and a slave state were always admitted to the country in pair, up to a point.

 

Checks on representation can still be instituted after first resolving a fairer more genuine means deriving representation itself. It would also allow of us to put more emphasis on making the checks too robust against prying power brokerages. Since this is all broken the current structure is used in the same self-interested manner that the founders feared. The founders prescience for the existence of a certain type of problem does not mean that formulated a means to mitigate it, instead we have a facade that puts on the face of working as it was intended.

[Guard Dog]

Gromnir, I know the history of my country. I know what the founders wished as balance.

 

What we have now is a degree of representation that is bad in a manner that the founders would too fear. The legislative branch is very powerful, and the levers it's structure offers to the political parties allows for planning in relation to how representation is currently derived.

 

Seeing as the state is the primary political unit of the federal government (even federal circuits are derived off of this underlying structure) it is no wonder that small easy to placate homogeneous states which provides 2 senators, and densely populated high electoral college with lots of house seats hold all the value, but differ in how the people are able to participate in their government. You can tell this is true by the manner a free state and a slave state were always admitted to the country in pair, up to a point.

 

Checks on representation can still be instituted after first resolving a fairer more genuine means deriving representation itself. It would also allow of us to put more emphasis on making the checks too robust against prying power brokerages. Since this is all broken the current structure is used in the same self-interested manner that the founders feared. The founders prescience for the existence of a certain type of problem does not mean that formulated a means to mitigate it, instead we have a facade that puts on the face of working as it was intended.

I can fix your problem right now: repeal the 17th Amendment. Make the Senate the representative of the states governments and the .House the representatives of the people of the states. The way it was supposed to be anyway. The shenanigans that led to the 17th Amendment would be much harder to get away with today.

[Gromnir]

 

 

What we have now is a degree of representation that is bad in a manner that the founders would too fear. .

 

 

but they would have fears largely opposite o' yours. regardless o' what most americans know, reality is governing in the US tends to happen at local and state level... as were original intended.  am suspecting the founders, while lacking any sorta unified vision or voice, would breathe a sigh o' relief.  however, the fed is far more representative than anything the founders expected.  the fed is far more political than were ever intended.  sure, some folks such as patrick henry insisted to bitter end that a fed weren't necessary, but the current federal government would be unrecognizable not only 'cause o' its sheer size, but also 'cause o' how representative it is. state and local were s'posed to be representative.  fed were intended as not only limited in scope, but a limit on the seeming inevitable tyranny o' the masses.  

 

'course the founders were ignorant o' history yet to come, and so they didn't realize how ineffectual their fed, as imagined, would handle actual problems  o' the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.  the amendment process, coupled with a practical deference to necessity (and arguable a wee bit o' corruption,) has led to a national government much different than intended, but one capable o' building interstate highways, maintaining large standing military bodies, and sending men to the moon.  sadly, while every american school kid is taught how wonderful is democracy, few actual learn from the warnings o' the founders and as such is predictable we end up with an unpopular populist president shutting down government 'cause of negative feedback from a small number o' radio talk show hosts and a Congress driven by an interminable reelection cycle which exposes 'em to less than altruistic motives o' pacs and superpacs. 

 

as to gd question o' when the executive slide became inevitable, am gonna suggest it were doomed from the start.  president were intended as a largely apolitical office. as long as you had a guy like washington in the office, a guy with universal approval and lacking overt political motives, the chief executive worked as intended.  am personal not a fan o' the washington presidency, but the people were able to accept, as a matter o' faith, that when first president put down the whiskey rebellion, he were doing so for what he believed to be the good o' the nation and not insular party or personal reasons. but how many such guys could possible exist?  all you needed were one thomas jefferson to blow away the veneer o' civility and impartiality and the people would begin to demand a greater say in the appointment o' such a political office. 

 

btw, the seeming inevitable injection o' representative influence into the apolitical executive is why we fear for the Court.  scalia, for example, were approved unanimous by the senate on the basis o' his qualifications.  is no way a scalia gets unanimous senate approval in 2019.  the Court has become more activist in recent decades, and the people, through their representatives, have thus demanded greater say in what has become viewed as an increasing political office.  

 

more representation, while resonating with elementary school notions o' democracy, is not necessarily a good thing for the fed, and were clear a fear o' the founders.  unlike injurai, we do not claim to know the history o' the US.  history is an art and after reading the conflicting and often nonsensical first-hand accounts o' seeming well-known events, is difficult for us to claim true knowledge o' much o' US history.  thankful, history were not our guide in the present context.  what actual occurred in 1787 and beyond is immaterial to question o' what the founders believed in 1787. sure, the authors o' the federalist papers mighta been pranking everybody, but seems unlikely.  read what founders wrote is a bad way to claim knowledge o' history, but is a good way to gauge what were their beliefs at the time. 

 

but again, 'cause the most important point appears to be getting lost, the issue is moot.  simple amendment process won't work for changing senate, and there has never been anything simple about amendment process.  need unanimous state approval, so issue is doa. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[SonicMage117]

Our boy Starlord is getting some more hate these days, must be doing something right!

 

Now now, I know that being vegan is a pretty popular movement aming the sjw and liberal ambassadors but I agree with the leftists and rightist at CNN and Fox that this goes beyond Cris saying "I raise my own cattle just to eat them and don't give af"...

 

No, they're right, ya know, it goes back to Starlord appearing at Disneyworld with the gaurdians to read out the Bible and mention God.

 

 

 

Luckily, there will always be people in the world who stand up for what they believe in instead of going with the flow and compromising their values/conscience. Kudos to him for doing what he wanted and tuning out the legal warnings in the earpiece lol

[ktchong]

[SonicMage117]

Well, what do you expect? People are so afraid of the cross as a symbol, yet they're okay with kids wear pentagrams and swatstikas. People ao easily confuse themselves, forgetting that freedom of religion exists and freedom of expression is not freedom of religion.