US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1670

On February 27 2015 01:31 puerk wrote:
weird how people care about "meaning" of "words", when there should be only your gut telling you those liberals are destroying the greatest nation on earth.....


and regarding true multiparty systems: you see a problem that unpure rinos are holding the awesome teaparty back, so wouldnt you agree that people should have an actual choice in the general election? if everything you believe to be true is actually true a tea party candidate would fare much better in a proportional election against his "rino" counter, and would thus have even more leverage in the government than before, and it would not be decided by interparty closed door negotiations, but by the will and vote of the people.
so why are you opposed to it?

On February 27 2015 01:42 oneofthem wrote:
hannahbelle where did you go to school

On February 27 2015 01:37 hannahbelle wrote:


Let me break this down so you can understand the argument chain here. I made a post. You say my post is making an invalid comparison because you equate the Tea Party with extremist parties in a multi-party system. I say your post is ill informed, because the Tea Party's support would put it well above the typical vote threshold of a multi-party fringe party. You then reply that you didn't use the word fringe, and I reply that fringe and extremist are equivalent in this scenario. You then make a post that first denies that you are playing semantics and then make a statement that seemingly supports my claim of you playing semantics, but try to qualify it by making denigrating remarks about a large minority of Americans.

Congrats on your public educated critical reasoning skills.

On February 27 2015 01:44 Gorsameth wrote:

In the Netherlands we have a pretty extreme party aswell, the usual stuff about throwing out all immigrants ect. They (shamefully) got 10% of the votes last election, I wouldnt call that fringe when it makes them the 3e biggest party in the country (25 and 27% for the 2 above them) and yet no party wants to work with them because they are an extremist party.

The 2 are not equivalent.

On February 27 2015 01:51 Toadesstern wrote:

and you havn't understood what he's getting at yet.
So basicly it's like this: In an actual multi-party system parties tend to converge to the middle somewhat because there's at least 3 reasonable parties and 1 weird party. None of the 3 reasonable parties want to have anything to do with the weird one because that would make it impossible for them to coalition with either of the other 2 because they'd lose voters if either of them coalitioned with a party that's hugging an extremists party when at the same time there's another one left that just doesn't. So if out of the 3 reasonable parties 1 ends up catering towards the weird one the other 2 just end up ruling.

On the other hand your 2 party system tends to polarize a lot more because there's only 2 basic standpoints to have and as we see and as you pointed out, the Tea Party does have a way bigger following than it should have because unlike multi-party systems your parties tend to want to have the extreme guys as well simply because it's apparently a lot more forgiveable to have your party try and get them instead of the bat-shit insanes from the other party (include either Dems or Rep depending on which side you take).

For a multi-party system to really be one, you need at least some leeway to get different coalitions. Even if it would be 3 party with Tea party I don't think anyone would actually call that a multi-party system.

WASHINGTON — For John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, the honeymoon is over.

The 114th Congress was supposed to be a Golden Era for the Republicans to flex their muscle in the twilight of Barack Obama's presidency with their largest congressional majority in generations.

But the relationship between the emotional and jocular House speaker and the chilly and introverted Senate majority leader is already strained less than two months into the new era of Republican control.

The two leaders met privately on Wednesday, hours after Boehner's surprising admission that they hadn't spoken in two weeks. They face their first monumental test, on how to fund the Department of Homeland Security while placating their base's fury over Obama's unilateral initiatives on immigration to shield millions of people from deportation.

"You know, our staff talk back and forth and — listen, Senator McConnell has got a big job to do. So do I," Boehner said, when asked about the lack of communication between the two.

But, a reporter protested, wasn't it important that they speak to each other about an issue as important as keeping Homeland Security running?

"Our staffs have been talking back and forth," he repeated.

McConnell teamed up with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Wednesday to advance the first stage of a plan to fund DHS without the immigration provisions. Their deal, pushed without Boehner's support, jams the Speaker between forcing a shutdown and imperiling his leadership within his conference.

"I don't know what the House will do," McConnell told reporters Tuesday after announcing the tentative agreement with Reid.

Democrats are taking some glee in the Boehner-McConnell relationship woes.

On February 27 2015 02:00 Nyxisto wrote:
We have the same amount of crazy people in our population, the difference is that we don't have black neurosurgeons who claim that Obamacare is worse than slavery. The stuff isn't institutionalized here. Sure we have climate change deniers and anti-vaccers and all kinds of stuff, but you can't actually hold these positions and seriously try to run for president. It's like all intellectuals in the US are getting shoved around by a bunch of people who have simply lost their mind.

On February 27 2015 01:46 hannahbelle wrote:


MBA from the Kelley School of Business in Indiana. Not that I am sure it is relevant to the discussion...

On February 27 2015 01:56 hannahbelle wrote:

I understand what his point is, and its a point based on an incorrect assumption. You are still trying to marginalize the Tea Party, which is a position long abandoned by American liberals. It's factually inaccurate. So given the core of his comparison and yours is factually inaccurate, there is no legitimate point to the rest of the argument.

NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND — Conservative darling Ben Carson suggested to a packed room of supporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday that Congress should punish federal judges who defy the will of the people.

"The Constitution also says that Congress has oversight of all inferior courts. That means the federal courts —only one they don't have jurisdiction over is the Supreme Court," Carson said. "So when these federal judges come in and interfere and overturn the will of the people, the people who have voted for something, Congress has a responsibility to do something about this because it says that those judges serve as long as they are doing a satisfactory job. But it's not satisfactory when they're going against the will of the people."

Carson didn't directly say gay marriage but his comments stacked on earlier ones he's made in an interview on Steve Deace's podcast in which he said Congress should remove federal judges who rule in favor of gay marriage.

Carson reiterated those comments on Thursday during his Coffee Reception with Dr. Ben Carson event.

On February 27 2015 02:10 hannahbelle wrote:


I find it odd that you equate being intellectual with not being fiscally and socially conservative.

On February 27 2015 02:17 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
It's that time of here again, that's right CPAC:



Source

Big news for anyone who’s ever had their town’s municipal broadband network blocked by state legislatures: The Federal Communications Commission has your back. The FCC on Thursday voted 3-2 in favor of a measure that would prohibit state legislatures from barring municipalities from building out their own broadband networks. Several state legislatures in recent years have adopted such policies at the behest of incumbent telecom companies that don’t want to deal with added competition from cities who want to build out their own networks.

The history of big municipal fiber projects is filled with both successes and failures. One of the most notable success stories is the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, which offers citizens 1Gbps service that easily beats anything they ever received from incumbent providers. However, after intense lobbying from incumbent ISPs, Tennessee’s state legislature slapped major restrictions on cities’ and towns’ ability to build out their own fiber networks, which means that Chattanooga would not be allowed to expand its network out to more areas as the city had previously planned.

“The bottom line of these matters is that some states have created thickets of red tape designed to limit competition,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in explaining his support for the measure. “When local leaders have their hands tied by bureaucratic state red tape, local businesses and residents are the ones who suffer the consequences.”

The FCC’s vote on Thursday was aimed at stopping state legislators from blocking such projects from going forward, although it remains to be seen how this new measure will actually be enforceable.

On February 26 2015 07:59 Nyxisto wrote:
I think you need to go a little further back than just talking about the party system. Apparently 50% of Republicans are convinced that Obama is "deep down" a Muslim.

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/25/8108005/obama-muslim-poll

So before any meaningful political change can be made, maybe all Americans need to return to the same planet again, because that kind of distortion is just ridiculous. There seems to be such a giant divide in the country about things that are simply a matter of fact, I don't know how you can even tackle this.

On February 27 2015 02:00 Nyxisto wrote:
We have the same amount of crazy people in our population, the difference is that we don't have black neurosurgeons who claim that Obamacare is worse than slavery. The stuff isn't institutionalized here. Sure we have climate change deniers and anti-vaccers and all kinds of stuff, but you can't actually hold these positions and seriously try to run for president. It's like all intellectuals in the US are getting shoved around by a bunch of people who have simply lost their mind.

On February 27 2015 02:18 Nyxisto wrote:


A lot of these positions the "conservative" people from the GOP hold are not just that, most of it is completely delusional. Like Ben Carson comparing the United States to Nazi Germany, and no one even seems to care. And when I saw the list of top 10 contenders for the Republican candidates today pretty much the only two that didn't hold outright hilarious positions were Chris Christie and Jeb Bush, which probably says enough.