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Tuco

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Everything posted by Tuco

  1. 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.
  2. Are you seriously suggesting that Biden and Trump are equal on the environment. Go fuck yourself.
  3. Kara Eastman, NE-2 Edit: more shit in that election than M4A, but the issue was central to her campaign.
  4. 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.
  5. 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....
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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."
  11. 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.
  12. 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?
  13. 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?
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. But counties should?
  19. 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?
  20. The Epoch Times is frequently used as a conservative source. They were pushing that BLM is communists, likely because they wanted to make sure "communists" continue to be the boogey man.
  21. I accidentally posted prior to finishing this post: 1. Is the current system fair/just/logical/good/etc.? Is there anyone here that would choose the current system if they were drawing it from scratch? Would you create one house of Congress with that is equally represented by 39M people on the coast and 800k people in a square in the middle of the country? Would you set up a system where the majority of the Supreme Court Justices have been selected by the party who has only won the plurality of votes in one Presidential election in the last 30 years? Devoid of any history, background, obstacles to change, etc., is this the system you would choose? Because, to me, it is objectively stupid. And it's an important question that should not be overlooked. Does this system work as intended? We can't fix something if we don't recognize the problem. And if you think it's a good system, there is no impetus to reduce the small state advantage by expanding the House. 2. Should we change it? 2a, This is where practicalities are important. There are barriers of change which are very high to changing any of this. The practical costs of making a change may be worse than continuing the system. I have acknowledged this several times. I am not saying that changing the Constitution is high on priority list right now. But that doesn't really affect my answer on point #1. 2b, But, one of the things that drives me nuts is this sense of deference we give to the old way because it is old. It is entirely unAmerican. We hold more reverence for the founding fathers than they held for each other. Pretty much the only mindset they had in common was a willingness to change something that no longer worked for them. Being a British colony wasn't working for them, so they changed it. Just about every argument that has been made against me on this thread, could easily be made against American independence. What, violating contracts? Yeah, we did that. Being willing to dissolve a country? Yep. Now, it took a Revolutionary War and the risk of being tried for treason, so there were certainly practical obstacles to change that were considered. It wasn't easy, and I'm not looking for a Revolutionary War 2.0, but let's stop pretending that a reverence for tradition is a goal. And after the founding fathers won, they formed a nation under The Articles of Confederation. That shit didn't work, so they scrapped it. They then formed a more perfect union (not a "perfect union", a "more perfect union) under the Constitution. If I recall Jefferson thought it would be eventually scrapped, and that we would go through constitutions every generation or so. They included the Second Amendment with the idea that people should overthrow the government under this Constitution if need be. They put in an amendment process so it could be changed in a less violent manner. At no time did they say "this was handed down from the heavens to be followed forever." They were just making shit up, failed the first time, and then created a pretty fucking awesome document their second time...for its time. A failure to reevaluate the structure will ensure that we continue to become less democratic as time goes on. "Drive your plow over the bones of the dead." - William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell "...leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held. There's your law of precedents; there's your utility of traditions; there's the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air! There's orthodoxy!" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick
  22. There are two basic questions here: 1. Is the current system fair/just/logical/good/etc.? 2. Should we change it?
  23. Break out the popcorn. This dark comedy is just starting.
  24. The counterpoint is that lowering the barriers to entry, by making the races smaller, will encourage greater participation and draw more people. More people means better choices.
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