In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
On August 15 2017 03:03 Wulfey_LA wrote: "But there aren't many KKK/Nazis/out and out racist marchers" is not a defense here. The objects of all these rallies and debates and violence are Confederate monuments across the country. The questions about the legacy of the Civil War in this country affect everyone, even if only a relatively small population is being racist and violent about it. The Civil War cost ~500,000 American lives and brought about a complete rewriting of our Constitution (yes, those new amendments changed the whole thing). Should we have statues dedicated to treasonous slavers and white supremacists on government property? This is a universally important question. No complaining about scale gets you out of that question.
What amendments and why was it a "complete rewriting of our constitution?" One of the more absurd assertions from you (yes yes it's true) that should rank with a Trump supporter's "he's delivered on all his campaign promises up to today."
It may be an overstatement to say it was a complete rewrite, but I think it is generally understood to be more or less true. The 14th amendment changed a lot.
The civil war changed society while the constitution hummed along, by and large.
Right. The United States would not be a modern state without the 14th amendment. But I don't know, maybe it was just some words.
I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
On August 15 2017 03:03 Wulfey_LA wrote: "But there aren't many KKK/Nazis/out and out racist marchers" is not a defense here. The objects of all these rallies and debates and violence are Confederate monuments across the country. The questions about the legacy of the Civil War in this country affect everyone, even if only a relatively small population is being racist and violent about it. The Civil War cost ~500,000 American lives and brought about a complete rewriting of our Constitution (yes, those new amendments changed the whole thing). Should we have statues dedicated to treasonous slavers and white supremacists on government property? This is a universally important question. No complaining about scale gets you out of that question.
What amendments and why was it a "complete rewriting of our constitution?" One of the more absurd assertions from you (yes yes it's true) that should rank with a Trump supporter's "he's delivered on all his campaign promises up to today."
It may be an overstatement to say it was a complete rewrite, but I think it is generally understood to be more or less true. The 14th amendment changed a lot.
The civil war changed society while the constitution hummed along, by and large.
Right. The United States would not be a modern state without the 14th amendment. But I don't know, maybe it was just some words.
I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
I envision a Congress which consists only of people who I deem worthy to make decisions, who have opinions that fall well in line with the kinds of ideas that I think are worthy of the post.
On August 15 2017 03:03 Wulfey_LA wrote: "But there aren't many KKK/Nazis/out and out racist marchers" is not a defense here. The objects of all these rallies and debates and violence are Confederate monuments across the country. The questions about the legacy of the Civil War in this country affect everyone, even if only a relatively small population is being racist and violent about it. The Civil War cost ~500,000 American lives and brought about a complete rewriting of our Constitution (yes, those new amendments changed the whole thing). Should we have statues dedicated to treasonous slavers and white supremacists on government property? This is a universally important question. No complaining about scale gets you out of that question.
What amendments and why was it a "complete rewriting of our constitution?" One of the more absurd assertions from you (yes yes it's true) that should rank with a Trump supporter's "he's delivered on all his campaign promises up to today."
It may be an overstatement to say it was a complete rewrite, but I think it is generally understood to be more or less true. The 14th amendment changed a lot.
The civil war changed society while the constitution hummed along, by and large.
Right. The United States would not be a modern state without the 14th amendment. But I don't know, maybe it was just some words.
I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
Election reform, from voter suppression to how we pay for them. That would go a long way.
On August 15 2017 03:03 Wulfey_LA wrote: "But there aren't many KKK/Nazis/out and out racist marchers" is not a defense here. The objects of all these rallies and debates and violence are Confederate monuments across the country. The questions about the legacy of the Civil War in this country affect everyone, even if only a relatively small population is being racist and violent about it. The Civil War cost ~500,000 American lives and brought about a complete rewriting of our Constitution (yes, those new amendments changed the whole thing). Should we have statues dedicated to treasonous slavers and white supremacists on government property? This is a universally important question. No complaining about scale gets you out of that question.
What amendments and why was it a "complete rewriting of our constitution?" One of the more absurd assertions from you (yes yes it's true) that should rank with a Trump supporter's "he's delivered on all his campaign promises up to today."
It may be an overstatement to say it was a complete rewrite, but I think it is generally understood to be more or less true. The 14th amendment changed a lot.
The civil war changed society while the constitution hummed along, by and large.
Right. The United States would not be a modern state without the 14th amendment. But I don't know, maybe it was just some words.
I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
I'm not entirely sure; which is a lot different from saying it's categorically impossible to fix. surely there must be ways to get somewhat less terrible people in. so we should figure out what those are and implement them.
On August 15 2017 03:09 Danglars wrote: [quote] What amendments and why was it a "complete rewriting of our constitution?" One of the more absurd assertions from you (yes yes it's true) that should rank with a Trump supporter's "he's delivered on all his campaign promises up to today."
It may be an overstatement to say it was a complete rewrite, but I think it is generally understood to be more or less true. The 14th amendment changed a lot.
The civil war changed society while the constitution hummed along, by and large.
Right. The United States would not be a modern state without the 14th amendment. But I don't know, maybe it was just some words.
I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
I envision a Congress which consists only of people who I deem worthy to make decisions, who have opinions that fall well in line with the kinds of ideas that I think are worthy of the post.
I too envision a congress which consists only of people who I deem worthy to make decisions, who have opinions that fall well in line with the kinds of ideas that I think are worthy of the post.
On August 15 2017 03:09 Danglars wrote: [quote] What amendments and why was it a "complete rewriting of our constitution?" One of the more absurd assertions from you (yes yes it's true) that should rank with a Trump supporter's "he's delivered on all his campaign promises up to today."
It may be an overstatement to say it was a complete rewrite, but I think it is generally understood to be more or less true. The 14th amendment changed a lot.
The civil war changed society while the constitution hummed along, by and large.
Right. The United States would not be a modern state without the 14th amendment. But I don't know, maybe it was just some words.
I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
Election reform, from voter suppression to how we pay for them. That would go a long way.
So publicly funded campaigns a short cycle of campaigning and voter ID laws on par with Canada or Europe. I don't see how this changes the quality of people elected just the motivations behind what a lot of them do.
On August 15 2017 03:14 frazzle wrote: [quote] It may be an overstatement to say it was a complete rewrite, but I think it is generally understood to be more or less true. The 14th amendment changed a lot.
The civil war changed society while the constitution hummed along, by and large.
Right. The United States would not be a modern state without the 14th amendment. But I don't know, maybe it was just some words.
I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
Election reform, from voter suppression to how we pay for them. That would go a long way.
So publicly funded campaigns a short cycle of campaigning and voter ID laws on par with Canada or Europe. I don't see how this changes the quality of people elected just the motivations behind what a lot of them do.
Rich conservatives being unable to bankroll candidates to do literally nothing while in congress will go a long way. Regulating Super PACs to not make elections miserable. Democrats not running weak ass garbage to fight pandering garbage would also help a lot.
But the reality is I know you are right. This won’t happen. States imploding due to failed budgets and another recession is the solution. We election shitty people and then our country goes to shit. 2007 was not enough, we need a second helping of economic suffering.
On August 15 2017 03:31 Danglars wrote: [quote] The civil war changed society while the constitution hummed along, by and large.
Right. The United States would not be a modern state without the 14th amendment. But I don't know, maybe it was just some words.
I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
Yeah, but we haven’t really had a protracted 16+ year discussion about white terrorist like we have about Islamic terrorism. Maybe we need to wait until after a massive attack succeeds and then we can get serious.
I think America's more serious about opposing your "white terrorist" angle than Islamic terrorism just in general. The media's in an uproar and there's significant pressure on Trump to more harshly condemn this attacks. If a radical Islamic terrorist did it, you would be talking about how the deaths fit in to overall deaths from drowning in your own bathtub.
It isn’t my “white terrorism”. I didn’t decide that we were going to start dividing up terrorist into categories to be sorted by religion and skin color. That narrative belongs solely to the people who demanded we use Islamic Terrorism, because simple terrorism wasn’t good enough. But now I have to do it, so I’m doing it.
And the difference here is that I am white. I get to talk as much yang about my own race as I want. I gain nothing by attacking my own race or religion. You know how conservatives are always asking “where are the Muslims condemning these acts and being critical about their culture.” I’m getting ahead of the criticism us all. Making sure its clear we white people know our culture is some hot garbage right now.
If this isn't tongue in cheek then this is utter bullshit. Its not my culture that is hot garbage, and it isn't yours. Culture isn't determined by skin colour alone, we don't fit into neat colour based categories like that.
You clearly don’t know me very well. US whites have about as unified a culture as Muslims.
Don't worry, Lorde has that covered also
Ok, that was kind of shitpost level status so I'm going to include some less laughable material :
Jake Tapper poses the question at the heart of the matter :
Mccain wants the alt-right attacks on McMaster to stop :
I have had the pleasure of knowing General H.R. McMaster for many years, and greatly respect and admire his outstanding service to the nation. The recent attacks upon him from the so-called ‘alt-right’ are disgraceful. Since this fringe movement cannot attract the support of decent Americans, it resorts to impugning the character of a good man and outstanding soldier who has served honorably in uniform and sacrificed more for our country than any of his detractors ever have. Such smear tactics should not be tolerated and deserve an emphatic response. I hope the President will once again stand up for his national security adviser and denounce these repugnant attacks, which arise from the same purveyors of hatred and ignorance who precipitated the recent violence in Charlottesville.
None of these are really huge worthwhile things by themselves, so I'm combining them to avoid cluttering the thread. (Good/bad idea y/n?)
I'd like to also see an independent nonpartisan board established for redistricting, perhaps as part of the function of the Census Bureau. That might not stop shitty people from taking office, but at least it will help stop the issues that come with gerrymandered elections. It will also stem the rise of extremists within safe regions by making less of those.
On August 15 2017 03:31 Danglars wrote: [quote] The civil war changed society while the constitution hummed along, by and large.
Right. The United States would not be a modern state without the 14th amendment. But I don't know, maybe it was just some words.
I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
Election reform, from voter suppression to how we pay for them. That would go a long way.
So publicly funded campaigns a short cycle of campaigning and voter ID laws on par with Canada or Europe. I don't see how this changes the quality of people elected just the motivations behind what a lot of them do.
Rich conservatives being unable to bankroll candidates to do literally nothing while in congress will go a long way. Regulating Super PACs to not make elections miserable. Democrats not running weak ass garbage to fight pandering garbage would also help a lot.
But the reality is I know you are right. This won’t happen. States imploding due to failed budgets and another recession is the solution. We election shitty people and then our country goes to shit. 2007 was not enough, we need a second helping of economic suffering.
2007 wasn't even a really large economic hit. sure it stunted the economy but no one with any brains really saw the end of the world coming. Any other country in the world and their economy collapses as their currency becomes cheap building material. But the super power of the world controls global stability so everyone supported the dollar the best they could. The great depression saw real government change beyond Europe and a possible loss of Midwest farmlands (outside of the great lakes wonderland zone). 2007 saw Iceland peacefully change their government and was surprisingly kept afloat by a game company popular in many foreign nations. Greece was held onto by Germany flexing its economic might and no one else saw much more then low level civil unrest.
The 2007 recession is perhaps less significant for how it affected us all in pure economic damage as for how much it helped to usher in a much-changed economy. As Obama liked to put it, "a lot of those jobs aren't coming back" and that's the real lesson of it all. Everything is simply done with far fewer employees these days than in the pre-2007 era. Hence it wasn't so much that the economy went down the hole as it is that the "recovery" was very lopsided and had winners and losers that persist to this day. Those of us with highly valuable educations or lots of previous assets recovered and then some, those without that had a bad time of it all.
On August 15 2017 03:38 frazzle wrote: [quote] Right. The United States would not be a modern state without the 14th amendment. But I don't know, maybe it was just some words.
I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
Election reform, from voter suppression to how we pay for them. That would go a long way.
So publicly funded campaigns a short cycle of campaigning and voter ID laws on par with Canada or Europe. I don't see how this changes the quality of people elected just the motivations behind what a lot of them do.
Rich conservatives being unable to bankroll candidates to do literally nothing while in congress will go a long way. Regulating Super PACs to not make elections miserable. Democrats not running weak ass garbage to fight pandering garbage would also help a lot.
But the reality is I know you are right. This won’t happen. States imploding due to failed budgets and another recession is the solution. We election shitty people and then our country goes to shit. 2007 was not enough, we need a second helping of economic suffering.
2007 wasn't even a really large economic hit. sure it stunted the economy but no one with any brains really saw the end of the world coming. Any other country in the world and their economy collapses as their currency becomes cheap building material. But the super power of the world controls global stability so everyone supported the dollar the best they could. The great depression saw real government change beyond Europe and a possible loss of Midwest farmlands (outside of the great lakes wonderland zone). 2007 saw Iceland peacefully change their government and was surprisingly kept afloat by a game company popular in many foreign nations. Greece was held onto by Germany flexing its economic might and no one else saw much more then low level civil unrest.
A lot of people with a lot of brains saw the end of the world economy coming and they did an awful lot of work preventing that outcome so that people like you could say that there was never really any danger. Pretty much every business kept their day to day liquidity accounts in money market funds which are not FDIC insured, which led to the start of a run on the banks that would have had every single financial institution, most likely in the world, unable to stay liquid. Paychecks would have bounced, ATMs would have dried up, bank accounts would have been wiped out. In the week of September 15 2008 over $300b was cashed out of commercial paper accounts with money market funds starting to drop below $1 per $1 which should be unthinkable. The treasury stepped in with a $3,500,000,000,000 guarantee to keep the commercial paper market liquid and the run on the banks stopped. But it was a close run thing.
On August 15 2017 03:38 frazzle wrote: [quote] Right. The United States would not be a modern state without the 14th amendment. But I don't know, maybe it was just some words.
I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
Election reform, from voter suppression to how we pay for them. That would go a long way.
So publicly funded campaigns a short cycle of campaigning and voter ID laws on par with Canada or Europe. I don't see how this changes the quality of people elected just the motivations behind what a lot of them do.
Rich conservatives being unable to bankroll candidates to do literally nothing while in congress will go a long way. Regulating Super PACs to not make elections miserable. Democrats not running weak ass garbage to fight pandering garbage would also help a lot.
But the reality is I know you are right. This won’t happen. States imploding due to failed budgets and another recession is the solution. We election shitty people and then our country goes to shit. 2007 was not enough, we need a second helping of economic suffering.
2007 wasn't even a really large economic hit. sure it stunted the economy but no one with any brains really saw the end of the world coming. Any other country in the world and their economy collapses as their currency becomes cheap building material. But the super power of the world controls global stability so everyone supported the dollar the best they could. The great depression saw real government change beyond Europe and a possible loss of Midwest farmlands (outside of the great lakes wonderland zone). 2007 saw Iceland peacefully change their government and was surprisingly kept afloat by a game company popular in many foreign nations. Greece was held onto by Germany flexing its economic might and no one else saw much more then low level civil unrest.
The problem I have with 2007-2008:
It didn’t result in any massive changes to prevent it from happening again(banks are just as stupid) No one was held accountable. And finally: the Republicans used the bail out and TARP as an attack on democrats. This massive mishandling of financial regulation by congress was turned into a political football and used against the party who acted like congress should. And I am still pissed about that.
And now people are talking about repealing Dodd Frank, which makes me think we deserve a much larger crash.
Edit: As Kwark said, we were close to the brink. The goverment saved us from disaster, but then everyone just moved on and didn't try to fix the foundation problem, lack of oversight over wall street. And now we are at a point where people see the crash of 2007 as no big thing, which is mostly a failing of congress for acting like it wasn't a huge deal.
On August 14 2017 23:04 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On August 14 2017 22:28 Danglars wrote:
On August 14 2017 22:18 Nevuk wrote:
Less than 24 hours after Charlotte trump released this ad that contains a list of people he identifies as the enemy.
Woah there no need to go full Nixon. He's trying to change the narrative and identify people obstructing his agenda (which is massive massive bigly success already apparently). List of people he identifies as enemies my ass, Nevuk.
Out of curiosity, and since all you Trumpers suddenly disappeared fron that debate, what's your take on Charlotte's events and the aftermath?
Debate? You must mean echo chamber. You'll have to drill down to some concrete questions that I didn't already post on, and the search function is open to you for the ones on the historical statue issue, political tweets from senators/NYT, left wing and right wing violence, etc.
Oh, and if you have curiosity, I'm not a Trumper. He was bottom of the barrel of acceptable candidates for the primary, and it was only the dawning reality of a Clinton presidency that got my to the polling station. Unless you're the kind of tribal member that wants to be called a Hillary shill. I'm a conservative Republican.
My respect and consideration for you will get such a boost the day you will be able to, you know, openly condemn a terrorist attack commited by the right wing, openly admit that Trump is a disaster and that maybe you made a mistake voting for such a clown and such a horrifying person, or openly admit that there is something deeply disturbing happening that got revealed in Charlottesville.
But you won't. Us getting horrified at nazis marching with swastikas and performing isis style terror attack is "echo chamber".
You simply can't get past your partisan hackery. And that's this mindless partisanship that is slowly killing your country.
When a Bernie supporter tried to kill a republican congressman, we were all horrified and tried to understand how that could happen. Sanders reacted immediatemy, denouncing that horrible act, instead of, like your guy, being a fucking jerk and putting victims and terrorists in the same bag. I haven't read a line of you, xDaunt, biology major or any of you hardcore conservatives expressing the slightest concern at nazis marching with torch Nurenberg style or going full Al Qaeda. It's shameful.
On August 15 2017 05:18 Danglars wrote: [quote] I'm just trying to counter this extreme notion that the document got a substantial rewrite from the war. It survived, we still elect presidents the same way, the first amendment didn't get a second-round edit, the means of passing amendments remains unchanged. Don't jettison everything we know about the constitution and substantial debatable areas because someone just claims 13-15 "changed the whole thing."
Also, it's the separation of powers and a state agreement of how to get along federally and with other countries from the 1780s, not the underlying society. I think that's an important distinction, even if you want to convolute the discussion with some notion of the "modern state."
We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
Election reform, from voter suppression to how we pay for them. That would go a long way.
So publicly funded campaigns a short cycle of campaigning and voter ID laws on par with Canada or Europe. I don't see how this changes the quality of people elected just the motivations behind what a lot of them do.
Rich conservatives being unable to bankroll candidates to do literally nothing while in congress will go a long way. Regulating Super PACs to not make elections miserable. Democrats not running weak ass garbage to fight pandering garbage would also help a lot.
But the reality is I know you are right. This won’t happen. States imploding due to failed budgets and another recession is the solution. We election shitty people and then our country goes to shit. 2007 was not enough, we need a second helping of economic suffering.
2007 wasn't even a really large economic hit. sure it stunted the economy but no one with any brains really saw the end of the world coming. Any other country in the world and their economy collapses as their currency becomes cheap building material. But the super power of the world controls global stability so everyone supported the dollar the best they could. The great depression saw real government change beyond Europe and a possible loss of Midwest farmlands (outside of the great lakes wonderland zone). 2007 saw Iceland peacefully change their government and was surprisingly kept afloat by a game company popular in many foreign nations. Greece was held onto by Germany flexing its economic might and no one else saw much more then low level civil unrest.
A lot of people with a lot of brains saw the end of the world economy coming and they did an awful lot of work preventing that outcome so that people like you could say that there was never really any danger. Pretty much every business kept their day to day liquidity accounts in money market funds which are not FDIC insured, which led to the start of a run on the banks that would have had every single financial institution, most likely in the world, unable to stay liquid. Paychecks would have bounced, ATMs would have dried up, bank accounts would have been wiped out. In the week of September 15 2008 over $300b was cashed out of commercial paper accounts with money market funds starting to drop below $1 per $1 which should be unthinkable. The treasury stepped in with a $3,500,000,000,000 guarantee to keep the commercial paper market liquid and the run on the banks stopped. But it was a close run thing.
Yes but there was never a threat on the currency itself not being worth anything. sure banks and the global trade was at risk but it was only ever at risk as long as there was a currency to make the whole thing flow. If people ever lost faith in the dollar for a moment it wouldn't matter what anyone did it would have just spiraled the situation out of control like you said. That guarantee is unthinkable in scale and impossible by even the United states standard of economic strength. But the world could see instantly what was at risk and no one lost faith in what was going to be done. It was the Cuban missile crisis of the global financial system but the solution was never in doubt of what could be done to solve it. Once it became "clear" it wasn't an issue to anyone as they just assumed they could do the same thing next time as they could and no one really wanted to not do it.
On August 15 2017 05:28 Plansix wrote: [quote] We should just do package deals. The 14th and 2nd amendments can be changed, but only together. Then we can relearn the concept of compromise.
The amendment process is a high hurdle particularly because it should be an enormously popular and supported thing. I think compromise should start with smaller funding bills to bring Congressional oversight to government bureaucracy. All or nothing government shutdown shit hurts compromise, it's just brinkmanship. The funding of the defense department should be well-debated just like the rest.
On your edit: And neither are white people. Which was part of his point.
congress already has plent yof oversight authority over the bureaucracy. they simply chose not to use it and/or exercise it in a poor fashion. it's also sadly the case that congress is in general worse than the bureaucracy; so their oversight isn't that helpful, and is often more harmful. having terrible people oversee half-bad people just doesn't help much. oversight works far better when it's decent people doing the oversight. what we need is to fix congress itself.
How are you possibly going to fix congress by sending not terrible people there? Any representative republic is going to be filled with terrible people during the normal of times.
Election reform, from voter suppression to how we pay for them. That would go a long way.
So publicly funded campaigns a short cycle of campaigning and voter ID laws on par with Canada or Europe. I don't see how this changes the quality of people elected just the motivations behind what a lot of them do.
Rich conservatives being unable to bankroll candidates to do literally nothing while in congress will go a long way. Regulating Super PACs to not make elections miserable. Democrats not running weak ass garbage to fight pandering garbage would also help a lot.
But the reality is I know you are right. This won’t happen. States imploding due to failed budgets and another recession is the solution. We election shitty people and then our country goes to shit. 2007 was not enough, we need a second helping of economic suffering.
2007 wasn't even a really large economic hit. sure it stunted the economy but no one with any brains really saw the end of the world coming. Any other country in the world and their economy collapses as their currency becomes cheap building material. But the super power of the world controls global stability so everyone supported the dollar the best they could. The great depression saw real government change beyond Europe and a possible loss of Midwest farmlands (outside of the great lakes wonderland zone). 2007 saw Iceland peacefully change their government and was surprisingly kept afloat by a game company popular in many foreign nations. Greece was held onto by Germany flexing its economic might and no one else saw much more then low level civil unrest.
A lot of people with a lot of brains saw the end of the world economy coming and they did an awful lot of work preventing that outcome so that people like you could say that there was never really any danger. Pretty much every business kept their day to day liquidity accounts in money market funds which are not FDIC insured, which led to the start of a run on the banks that would have had every single financial institution, most likely in the world, unable to stay liquid. Paychecks would have bounced, ATMs would have dried up, bank accounts would have been wiped out. In the week of September 15 2008 over $300b was cashed out of commercial paper accounts with money market funds starting to drop below $1 per $1 which should be unthinkable. The treasury stepped in with a $3,500,000,000,000 guarantee to keep the commercial paper market liquid and the run on the banks stopped. But it was a close run thing.
Yes but there was never a threat on the currency itself not being worth anything. sure banks and the global trade was at risk but it was only ever at risk as long as there was a currency to make the whole thing flow. If people ever lost faith in the dollar for a moment it wouldn't matter what anyone did it would have just spiraled the situation out of control like you said. That guarantee is unthinkable in scale and impossible by even the United states standard of economic strength. But the world could see instantly what was at risk and no one lost faith in what was going to be done. It was the Cuban missile crisis of the global financial system but the solution was never in doubt of what could be done to solve it. Once it became "clear" it wasn't an issue to anyone as they just assumed they could do the same thing next time as they could and no one really wanted to not do it.
You're missing the point. Commerce doesn't run on dollars, it runs on dollar denominated commercial paper which is trusted to be worth dollars. A subtle difference but a meaningful one because it creates the potential for a run on the bank. They pay each other in commercial paper and they accept commercial paper from each other in payment because everyone knows that commercial paper can be readily liquidated back into dollars because everyone accepts commercial paper, there is never any difficulty in finding someone who will take $1 of commercial paper off your hands for $1.
The problem was that in September 2008 people started to feel much more comfortable with actual dollars that with dollar denominated commercial paper. Which means that they wanted to sell their $1 of commercial paper for $1 of dollars. But the problem was that nobody wanted to trade their dollars for the paper, and suddenly it starts to drop below $1 per $1 as people discount it to offload it. At which point the system built entirely on faith starts to collapse and nobody wants to take it because the assumption that it would always hold par value against the dollar has just been shattered. And in a single week $350b of the stuff is liquidated. But the problem is that there is $3.5t of it, and it's used for absolutely everything. When Walmart pays their employees they do so out of their commercial paper account which is accepted at par value by the bank which then direct deposits into employees' accounts etc. A three and a half trillion dollar run on the bank where the actual dollars that people want just aren't there and the entire economy is built on commercial paper.
Whether or not faith in the dollar was lost wasn't important because the economy wasn't running on dollars, it was running on dollar denominated commercial paper. And faith on that was being lost (in favour of actual dollars). Only when the treasury stepped in and offered to buy all 3.5 trillion dollars of commercial paper on demand for $1 per $1 did people resume accepting it at par value.
Despite his marginalization, Mr. Bannon consulted the president repeatedly over the weekend as Mr. Trump struggled to respond to the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va. In general, Mr. Bannon has cautioned the president not to criticize far-right activists too severely for fear of antagonizing a small but energetic part of his base.
At a recent dinner at the White House with Mr. Kushner and Mr. Kelly, before Mr. Trump decamped for a working vacation at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., the president listened while one of the guests, Mr. Murdoch, a founder of Fox News, said Mr. Bannon had to go.
Mr. Trump offered little pushback, according to a person familiar with the conversation, and vented his frustrations about Mr. Bannon. Mr. Murdoch is close to Mr. Kushner, who has been in open warfare with Mr. Bannon since the spring.
EPT
