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Tuco

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Everything posted by Tuco

  1. It would be nice if some put up a similar map that indicate incoming/outgoing federal funds.
  2. The people who are all on board with this bullshit are the same people who gleefully argue for liability protections for corporations injurying them, because they are really concerned with frivolous lawsuits.
  3. I was talking to my 22 year old daughter a couple of weeks ago She did not know what the Oklahoma City bombing was. Smart girl, straight A student. She said they had covered 911 in history class, but had no recollection of this. That's a problem. You're probably right. The funny thing about laws is that they are designed to deal with the predictable. Trump/2020 isn't covered.
  4. Would he run as a D or an I? I lived in Minnesota in 2000 when Jesse Ventura was governor. I thought he was a pretty decent governor, partly he didn't really get caught up in a lot of the R v D posturing. There is an advantage of a candidate coming in with a clean slate, and looking to walk away after.
  5. In one way, he already did. The number of people who voted for Republicans was considerably higher than the number of people who voted for Trump. So I would say the anti-Trump Republicans have already broken off from the Trump-Republican coalition. The best way to push the pro-Trump supporters who are only iffy on the Republicans would be to highlight the above. We keep talking about how the GOP is now the party of Trump. Well, that's actually holding the coalition together, because it hasn't driven off the anti-Trumpers from the GOP, but is likely keeping the pro-Trumpers there. To me the biggest failure in Democratic messaging is that it has not done enough to drive that wedge. Make GOP congressmen either agree or disagree with the President. Right now, I would like to see a House bill introduced that requires the administration start the transition period to Biden. Who cares if the Senate ignores it. Make the House Republicans vote. Make them vote on concurring with the "stop the steal" bullshit, or make them break against Trump. Trumpsters would not forgive the latter. That's how you break them off.
  6. Why? If I am recalling correctly, there were 38 "red to blue" Congressional candidates. One of them won by the Friday after election day, two others were too close to call. Some of them were progressive. Some of them were moderate. Some for M4A, some were closer to Biden. They mostly got wiped the fuck out. If you want to claim some sort of pattern here, I'll let you run the numbers. It was not a good election for Dems and it had practically nothing to do with their individual policy positions on health care. If you have a theory it did, feel free to present the evidence.
  7. Are you seriously suggesting that Biden and Trump are equal on the environment. Go fuck yourself.
  8. Kara Eastman, NE-2 Edit: more shit in that election than M4A, but the issue was central to her campaign.
  9. These motherfuckers don't know what doxing is. They hold public positions. They are doing public acts. They are accountable to the public. There is no fucking doxing here.
  10. This is why I hate and love parliamentary procedures. There are some fuckers out there that know Roberts Rules like the back of their hands and can run roughshod over the rest of us fuckers who merely speak English. Fortunately, they generally tend to be on my side, so....
  11. I'm not going to worry about splitting hairs on this. Obviously the UN and US are not analogous in their structure or purpose, so why bother on defining precisely why. I was just circling back on this thread because I actually enjoyed this discussion. Sure, I may have been a bit of any asshole here and there, but in my defense, you are wrong and I am right. It took a bit to figure out why I was enjoying the discussion; I think I figured it out. It's because it doesn't really matter. So many of the discussions over the last four years have centered around cruelty to immigrants, or the age of misinformation, or Trump's treating the US government as his personal property to further his power, etc. So many of the discussions over the last 8 months have centered around assholes ignoring science and medicine, in the face of a global pandemic, which is likely to kill a half a million Americans. It just feels really nice to focus on a discussion that just doesn't matter, and doesn't really have any major ethical or moral implications for the people arguing it. I don't think you're morally deficient for believing the current system make sense. I just think you're wrong. 'cuz you are.
  12. I wonder how many will be augmented with sharpie drawings. This first question for this press conference should be "Will you post all of this information on line so the public can have the opportunity to examine it?" Should make for hours of entertainment, if nothing else.
  13. Selecting the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus is a no brainer. For fucks sake, earlier today BT was complaining that Biden had destabilized black support to court white people. There are no cabinet picks that aren’t going to piss someone off.
  14. I said the US is a democracy. That is true. I did not say it was a pure democracy. I did not say the President was elected by a direct election of the public. You took issue with me calling the US a democracy. Which it is. There are many deviations that from being a pure democracy that the US has adapted, either for practical or stability reasons. But, in the end, we believe in the people elect the government, rather than the government being decided by birth right, or religious fiat, or despotic control. This seems like a minor point, but it's actually one that conservatives have been trying to whittle away at. The US is a democracy. That's an important statement. The UN, doesn't make any such claim.
  15. So, the progressive course of action would be to shut out the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus? (Cedric Richmond) And to clarify, he is going to lead the White House Office of Public Engagement. It's not specific "serving as a liaison between the business community and climate activists."
  16. You're the one who thought the UN Security Council was relevant. We can circle back to you denying that the United States is a democracy later. I want to hear more about how Andorra has equal representation in the UN. Please, continue.
  17. Apparently you want to continue with this analogy. A few points: 1. The UN SC is not the democratically elected government of a country. The US government is. 2. Any permanent member of the UN SC can veto any substantial resolution in front of the Security Council. It doesn't really matter how many votes China has. 3. The permanent members of the UN SC were selected because they were considered the most powerful countries at the time. Nobody thought it was a good idea to give Liechtenstein equal representation on the Security Council. Because it would have been fucking stupid. Should we continue with this analogy?
  18. Yes, they do have more representation per capita. That's not political philosophy, that's math. You can keep talking about how the states are represented in the Senate, but the reality is the states are proxies for the population. It is, or at least should be, the people who are being represented by the Senators. The Senate votes on the same shit the House does. The states - the number of them and how they are split - does not conform to any moral, ethical, or political ideology. When you are basing a system on how the states are split, you are creating a system that lacks any moral, ethical, or political ideology on how representation is established. You think the current system just magically evolved in to how you would have done it? Ok. I have a hard time believing that. No more states. No fewer states. West Virginia should be separate than Virginia. Rhode Island should have equal representation to Texas, despite the vast differences in land area and population. Etc. This is how you would have devised it? Ok. No, I don't think China should have 4 UN SC votes. I also don't think the UN is analogous to the US. Is there any confusion on that? Do we really need to dive into the differences?
  19. So, your belief is that rural states should have more representation per capita at the federal level? Are you cool with Delaware, or would you roll that into Pennsylvania? Why not break Wyoming up into two states, that way "minority" protection is even greater? It worked for the Dakotas. I really don't understand your rationalization of "...especially in a vast land area where essential goods and services will necessarily be provided by local jurisdictions that are less populated than others." Sure, rural states have their own challenges. So do states with large cities. So do states with bad winters, or bad hurricanes, or historic poverty issues. I'm not sure why you think that rural states would require any additional (per capita) representation than other state. To me, it just seems like a rationalization. Arguing for democracy is a lot easier.
  20. 1. Was President Obama able to do this under the old system? 2. Would President Biden be able to do this under your proposed system? 3. Is that a) expanding, b) reducing, or c) not changing the power of the President? You can argue it is in line with the intent of the Constitution, and you'd get no disagreement from me, but it would obviously increase the power of the President from where it is today.
  21. No, I asked would you intentionally create a system where 800k people in the middle of the country would have the same representation as 39M people on the coast. I didn't say we needed to start with the existing states. To create this system from scratch would obviously be undemocratic and arbitrary. The fact that it evolved this way makes it less arbitrary, but still undemocratic.
  22. That's not really responding to the question. You are just focusing on what you think the positive is without acknowledging the negative. It would undoubtedly expand the power of the President.
  23. But counties should?
  24. So, if you were creating a system from scratch, you'd draw a square in the middle of the country with 800k people and say, yep, they deserve as much say in the Senate as 39M people on the coast? Because the small state advantage has some inherently beneficial value to our system?
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