Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 254: Pete's Whine Cave

(+) Yeah! (+)

LordoftheMorons posted...

With apologies to Reg

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1208093283777298433?s=21

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78255846/931673282 pls and thank you

(For clarity, not saying the linked post applied to that specific tweet, but it does apply to a large number of the ones you post. Also pls favor posting actual articles over tweets if relevant)

DoomTheGyarados posted...

Red Sox is literally parodying the Republican party and I don't know how anyone could have missed this fact for years. He is the Stephen Colbert of our time.

The Republican Party needs no parody at this point, honestly. And it's impossible to have an actual, honest discussion with red sox because of the gimmick.

Reg posted...

And it's impossible to have an actual, honest discussion with red sox because of the gimmick.

Think of him as like a Turing Test for politics
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Jakyl25 posted...

We dont need the Senate

Do you mean in the sense that the Senate should be reformed in some way or even abolished (correct, but that's basically impossible), or in the sense that Democrats don't need to control the Senate to make meaningful progress (just wrong)?
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Jakyl25 posted...

Yeah and all that is silly

We dont need the Senate

Ok Palpatine calm down there for a second.

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The reason I usually link to tweets rather than the articles directly are
a) soft paywalls for nyt/wapo/etc (and some sites, particularly wapo, often have over 80 character links)
b) the tweet often pulls particularly relevant quotes

And I know Im not batting 100 with the links here, but I think most of them are relevant!

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Xeybozn posted...

Do you mean in the sense that the Senate should be reformed in some way or even abolished (correct, but that's basically impossible), or in the sense that Democrats don't need to control the Senate to make meaningful progress (just wrong)?

Oh god I see how you might have read that the second way. No no no, definitely the first way.

I will never refer to the Dems in the first person plural
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Suprak the Stud posted...

Ok Palpatine calm down there for a second.

palpatine didn't abolish the senate! on the contrary he is the senate

But I'm always here for "Abolish the Senate" even though we'll never accomplish it. What a disastrously undemocratic institution. 70% of the population represented by 30% of the seats and it is getting worse.

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Suprak the Stud posted...

Ok Palpatine calm down there for a second.

Why did it take Palpatine all the way from Episode 3 to Episode 4 to finish abolishing it anyway

If it took THE MOST POWERFUL EVIL BEING IN THE GALAXY decades to dismantle it, what hope do we have
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Tweets are totally fine and if a couple of tweets derail a conversation it wasnt a conversation everyone was invested in having anyway.

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The tweets are fine. I think some are more important than others but I generally find them covering notable things, and sometimes even beating me to the punch on something I think merits posting.

Heck, when I opt to use them it's usually because I think they're decent summaries and they include a link to the actual articles themselves usually. Also even though I don't enable auto-embedding here I know twitter is supposed to auto-embed so I'm just working with what the man gives us. (also wapo needs to get their links under control.) Though 99% of the time I look to provide a summary/add my personal editorializing to the tweet with it for the benefit of the lazy people like myself who don't have that embedding and are too lazy to open links.

there are dozens of us

dozens

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On one hand the distortion to equal representation in the Senate is definitely fucked up

On the other hand, think about how dumb the dumbest House members are compared to the dumbest Senators...!

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I wonder how many Republican voters would support Senate reform if they were prompted with examples of small blue states and bigger red states. For example, would they say it's a good thing that Vermont has as many Senate votes as Texas even though Texas has 45 times as many people?
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Xeybozn posted...

I wonder how many Republican voters would support Senate reform if they were prompted with examples of small blue states and bigger red states. For example, would they say it's a good thing that Vermont has as many Senate votes as Texas even though Texas has 45 times as many people?

I live in Texas and diluting this state's voting power on the national stage would be great, thanks.

(Seriously though, I agree that the Senate is a fundamentally broken concept that prioritizes land over people, and that's just bad)

Jakyl25 posted...

Why did it take Palpatine all the way from Episode 3 to Episode 4 to finish abolishing it anyway

cuz they were already powerless but their continued existence provided the illusion of representation and a role in government to the people. the "replacement plan" was the death star and just openly ruling by fear.

so it just wasn't a priority

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Xeybozn posted...

I wonder how many Republican voters would support Senate reform if they were prompted with examples of small blue states and bigger red states. For example, would they say it's a good thing that Vermont has as many Senate votes as Texas even though Texas has 45 times as many people?

Vermont elected Bernie Sanders, so I say that's just fine. The people of Vermont clearly deserve every bit of the representation they've earned.

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xp1337 posted...

cuz they were already powerless but their continued existence provided the illusion of representation and a role in government to the people. the "replacement plan" was the death star and just openly ruling by fear.

so it just wasn't a priority

The Roman Empire took more than 500 years to abolish the Senate. In fact, the Roman Senate was not abolished until after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

And by the time it finally disappeared, we were so far in the Dark Ages that there is no historical record of the Roman Senate's dissolution. It just doesn't appear in the records we have anymore, and then after the recovery there was no more Senate.

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Also, the founders in their wisdom provided that the equal representation of the states in the Senate cannot be changed even by constitutional amendment. The Senate is thus the highest organ of the American state. And if we look back to the Roman Senate, upon which the founding fathers based our Senate, remember the phrase Senatus Populusque Romanus - SPQR - the Senate and People of Rome. Notice how the word order shows that the Senate is independently sovereign and in fact comes before the People.

Long live the Senate!

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So youre saying the only solution is to redraw the states.

Sorry everyone from the Rockies east to the Mississippi, youre now only one state and you get two Senators
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Jakyl25 posted...

So youre saying the only solution is to redraw the states.

Sorry everyone from the Rockies east to the Mississippi, youre now only one state and you get two Senators

From a purely political point of view, the Compromise of 1850 was a terrible idea for the South. They gave up their having an equal number of seats in the Senate to the North, and all they got in return was a federal law, the Fugitive Slave Act, that everyone galvanized opposition to them in the North. So they both angered the North and gave them the tools needed to act on that anger.

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Jakyl25 posted...

So youre saying the only solution is to redraw the states.

Or admit new states to the union, which in many cases we should absolutely be doing anyway. DC and Puerto Rico being the most obvious (and the easiest sells), but I think this extends to the other territories the US holds. Also only requires a simple majority in Congress + President so isn't an insurmountable task like abolishing the senate.

i would also note that all states would be equally represented in the senate if we abolished it. we'd simply be changing the number of senators per state from 2 to 0. i'm calling the air bud rule on this.

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xp1337 posted...

i would also note that all states would be equally represented in the senate if we abolished it. we'd simply be changing the number of senators per state from 2 to 0. i'm calling the air bud rule on this.

This would just make the Vice President dictator of the Senate...!

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Admit DC and Puerto Rico, abolish the Senate, implement the Wyoming Rule in the House, and swap to ranked choice voting for all federal elections. Huzzah, we now have a more democratic country.

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xp1337 posted...

Or admit new states to the union, which in many cases we should absolutely be doing anyway. DC and Puerto Rico being the most obvious (and the easiest sells), but I think this extends to the other territories the US holds. Also only requires a simple majority in Congress + President so isn't an insurmountable task like abolishing the senate.

i would also note that all states would be equally represented in the senate if we abolished it. we'd simply be changing the number of senators per state from 2 to 0. i'm calling the air bud rule on this.

Mathematically I agree with you but I feel like English common law places a rather unnatural distinction between existing and not existing and it is the language known to the founders and the people of the time. So having no representation at all would probably not qualify as having equal representation because while it would be equal, it would not be representation.

I think the easiest way to add states is to divide Texas into 5 gerrymandered states as decided by the Texas Legislature. Congress already gave consent for this in the original treaty annexing Texas to the US so Texas should theoretically be able to do it unilaterally with no further federal action.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

This would just make the Vice President dictator of the Senate...!

...Damn, you're right.

Okay, without checking the text I'm going to also under the air bud rule invoke that technically speaking it gives the VP power to break ties only when the Senators are equally divided. But with no one there there is no division. That implies a presence and a conflict. One that does not exist in an empty chamber!

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LordoftheMorons posted...

This would just make the Vice President dictator of the Senate...!

Good point.

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red sox 777 posted...

I think the easiest way to add states is to divide Texas into 5 gerrymandered states as decided by the Texas Legislature. Congress already gave consent for this in the original treaty annexing Texas to the US so Texas should theoretically be able to do it unilaterally with no further federal action.

Brings new meaning to Six Flags Over Texas
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LordoftheMorons posted...

With apologies to Reg

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1208093283777298433?s=21

Well if people want a substantive discussion of the anti-Trump evangelist article, the prevailing opinion I've seen from people who understand the evangelical community is that it wont make a dent in that base since Trump and prominent evangelical leaders will denounce it.

Which they did

so

"whoops"

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xp1337 posted...

...Damn, you're right.

Okay, without checking the text I'm going to also under the air bud rule invoke that technically speaking it gives the VP power to break ties only when the Senators are equally divided. But with no one there there is no division. That implies a presence and a conflict. One that does not exist in an empty chamber!

In that case the Senate would never be able to pass any bills and our laws would never be able to be changed. The President would probably end up taking on more and more powers of the King.

Also, the President could never be removed from office by impeachment without a court empowered to try him.

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You would, of course, in the process of abolishing the Senate (to do so we're already talking Constitutional Amendment) delegate all its powers to the House (or elsewhere if appropriate) to avoid that deadlock. Heck, you could handle the VP issue there too. Really the only hang-up is that literally the one and only thing the Constitution says you can't amend is equal representation in the Senate - which I've called Air Bud on.

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red sox 777 posted...

I think the easiest way to add states is to divide Texas into 5 gerrymandered states as decided by the Texas Legislature. Congress already gave consent for this in the original treaty annexing Texas to the US so Texas should theoretically be able to do it unilaterally with no further federal action.

Yeah let's do DFW, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso gerrymandered in such a way to get 5 new blue states

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I don't think the courts would agree with the "zero senators for all states is equal" argument... which is why we should amend the Constitution to keep the Senate but take away all of its meaningful power instead! Let the Senate be able vote on stuff, but takes a 2/3rds majority against to block anything the House passes. If the Senate doesn't vote on a bill within some (fairly short) time limit, it passes automatically. Same with presidential appointments and so on. We'd still have an equal Senate, it just wouldn't matter much most of the time.
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(I'm mostly done with the joke theoretical argument of abolishing the Senate. I was mostly joking with a grain of seriousness which was signaled by me invoking Air Bud in such a discussion. I do think it is the democratically/philosophically correct thing to do but I believe we all know it's impossible and simply an exercise in hypotheticals.)

Edit: The above of taking away most of the Senate's power and placing it elsewhere, like say the House of Lords/Commons situation in the UK is more feasible but also probably impossible as a practical matter but is absolutely the more serious way of confronting the issue.

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xp1337 posted...

You would, of course, in the process of abolishing the Senate (to do so we're already talking Constitutional Amendment) delegate all its powers to the House (or elsewhere if appropriate) to avoid that deadlock. Heck, you could handle the VP issue there too. Really the only hang-up is that literally the one and only thing the Constitution says you can't amend is equal representation in the Senate - which I've called Air Bud on.

I think we may be able to compromise on renaming the Senate as the House of Lords, giving the President the right to dissolve Congress at will and to call elections at will (with no obligation to call an election after a dissolution), giving lifetime tenure to the President, giving the President absolute immunity from impeachment or any other prosecution, and criminalizing imagining removing the President from his office.

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Oh and we definitely need to bring back the Court of Star Chamber. What a cool name for a court.

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The real problem is that people are uninformed. What we need is to make them informed.

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Actually I'm pretty certain the VP couldn't bring up any bills, and I don't think they could even initiate votes on stuff the House passed (if it was automatic Mitch couldn't ignore all of the stuff the Dems have passed). So I think it would just be that Congress can't do anything!

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The politics of failure have failed. We need to make them work again!
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Ashethan posted...

The real problem is that people are uninformed. What we need is to make them informed.

This is actually harder than abolishing the Senate

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https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/five-democrats-have-qualified-for-the-january-debate-who-else-might-make-it/

January debates look like they might be down to five. Bloomberg might make it as well, sadly, as the donors threshhold is easier to hit than the polling one (which he's already hit).

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Well if people want a substantive discussion of the anti-Trump evangelist article, the prevailing opinion I've seen from people who understand the evangelical community is that it wont make a dent in that base since Trump and prominent evangelical leaders will denounce it.

Which they did

so

"whoops"

Honestly the most substantive discussion we need here is that Trump literally called Mike Pence a "Radical Left Nonbeliever" in his denouncement of this article (on twitter)

Like, it's not going to move the needle on Trump's support with anybody, so the best we get is yet another "trump is a fucking moron" moment. Meh.

Suprak the Stud posted...

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/five-democrats-have-qualified-for-the-january-debate-who-else-might-make-it/

January debates look like they might be down to five. Bloomberg might make it as well, sadly, as the donors threshhold is easier to hit than the polling one (which he's already hit).

I can't imagine Bloomberg getting that many unique donors without some kind of chicanery going on

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I am seeing Bloomberg ads essentially every commercial break here. I would be shocked if he couldn't get that number of donors especially with what he's polling at nationally.

Although if you read the article you're right in the sense that he basically says he isn't seeking donations and doesn't even care to make the debates (https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/25/bloomberg-2020-debates-073640) so who knows.

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Bloomberg is a data nerd so I am assuming his team has figured out that primary debates are not worth the risk

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I don't think this came up given it broke right around the start of the debate but maybe I missed it when the topic got diverted.

https://twitter.com/MelissaSantos1/status/1207799331735998464
https://crosscut.com/2019/12/wa-rep-matt-shea-engaged-domestic-terrorism-helped-plan-malheur-standoff-investigation

A Washington State GOP Rep was found to have engaged in domestic terrorism by an independent investigation, aiding three armed conflicts against the U.S. government, including helping plan that Oregon Wildlife Refuge standoff three years back.

The GOP minority leader suspended him from the Republican caucus and says he absolutely should resign. The rep in question is resisting said calls and calling it a "sham." The State House also forwarded the report to the FBI.

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Unbelievably disgusting Stephen Miller plan

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1208168605793300486

The White House sought this month to embed immigration enforcement agents within the U.S. refugee agency that cares for unaccompanied migrant children, part of a long-standing effort to use information from their parents and relatives to target them for deportation, according to six current and former administration officials.

Though senior officials at the Department of Health and Human Services rejected the attempt, they agreed to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to collect fingerprints and other biometric information from adults seeking to claim migrant children at government shelters. If those adults are deemed ineligible to take custody of a child, ICE could then use their information to target them for arrest and deportation.

The arrangement appears to circumvent laws that restrict the use of the refu gee program for deportation enforcement; Congress has made it clear that it does not want those who come forward as potential sponsors of minors in U.S. custody to be frightened away by possible deportation. But, in the reasoning of senior Trump administration officials, adults denied custody of children lose their status as potential sponsors and are fair game for arrest.

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damn these topics move so fast

It's Trump. You have to tone down all rhetoric by 90%. So replace "declared open war" with "sent a letter threatening to sue in small claims court."

but then you're applying mental gymnastics to say that the letter is "completely reasonable." you can state that what trump is trying to say with the letter is reasonable or whatever but the letter itself is still filled with insane statements.

also, i'll never for the life of me understand that with every single insane thing trump states, you always point out "what he ACTUALLY meant." but you demand that hillary apologizes for her "deplorables" comments, even though she literally stated that she was being grossly generalistic. perhaps corrik was right about "people in this topic always taking things out of context" after all - he's just accusing the wrong people of doing this!

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https://apnews.com/af2f0ede054d8baebbe1bb6ca47b4895

Audio recording out where Trump's top re-election advisers told influential Republicans in Wisconsin that the party has "traditionally" relied on voter suppression to compete in battleground states.

Justin Clark, senior political adviser and senior counsel to Trump's re-election campaign

Traditionally it's always been Republicans suppressing votes in places. Let's start protecting our voters. We know where they are. Let's start playing offense a little bit. That's what you're going to see in 2020. It's going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program.

They also signal they're going to step-up poll watching since a judge lifted in 2018 a consent decree that had been put in place in 1982 after the RNC was alleged to have visibly armed off-duty police at polling places in urban areas with armbands reading "National Ballot Security Task Force."

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Mr Lasastryke posted...

damn these topics move so fast

but then you're applying mental gymnastics to say that the letter is "completely reasonable." you can state that what trump is trying to say with the letter is reasonable or whatever but the letter itself is still filled with insane statements.

also, i'll never for the life of me understand that with every single insane thing trump states, you always point out "what he ACTUALLY meant." but you demand that hillary apologizes for her "deplorables" comments, even though she literally stated that she was being grossly generalistic. perhaps corrik was right about "people in this topic always taking things out of context" after all - he's just accusing the wrong people of doing this!

To me it's just good reading comprehension. I think at this point, taking Trump literally is just abdicating one's ability to read and comprehend meaning. Trump has made it absolutely clear that any statement he makes cannot be relied upon for its literal truth.

Of course Hillary was being grossly generalistic. Her statement itself was generalistic (one-half of Trump supporters is a very vague and general figure) but removing the generalism doesn't change the meaning and doesn't remove the insult. Whether it was 50% or 52% or 48.796% really doesn't change the meaning. It's still insulting a very large portion of the American electorate.

Now, if Hillary had been exaggerating rather than generalizing - say, she multiplied all her statements by a factor of 10 - then the statement would need to be read as saying 5% of Trump supporters are deplorable - which sounds reasonable. But Hillary does not have a history of exaggerating, gave no sign that she was exaggerating, and didn't even say so after the fact. So I think it's fair to say that Hillary meant a number somewhere more in the ballpark of 50% than 5%.

And yeah, if DJT made the exact same statement, you can apply the 90% rule and assume he means 5%. Because if it was really 50% he would have said 100%.


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don't think it's been posted in here yet.
last H3H3 podcast of the year!

yang's internet game is way too fucking good. just hope he can translate that to votes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HXVws8ZQRc


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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/12/pete-buttigieg-wikipedia-page-editor.html

A hilariously in-depth investigation that uncovers evidence that MAYBE Mayor Pete is personally editing his own Wikipedia profile.

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