Obama's biggest mistake wasn't trying to reach across the isle. It was not pulling back when his hand was slapped away.
Obama's biggest mistake wasn't trying to reach across the isle. It was not pulling back when his hand was slapped away.
It's actually the exact right approach, the problem is that the GOP responded to his victory by throwing itself 100% behind obstructionist partisan zealotry, the fallout of which continues to this day. They abdicated any pretense of engaging in the process with good faith, and now the whole system is essentially broken. It's hard to see the US party system coming back from this precipice.
You can't fix this with sticky tape and chewing gum anymore, you need major constitutional reform.
Just outlawing gerrymandering and move to public funding of elections where all donations and pacs are banned, those 2 alone would basically neuter the Republican party and platform.
Then moving to a ranked voting method and either removing the electoral college or mandating they vote proportionally based on the popular vote of the people they represent would allow for 3rd parties and we could actually get some change.
But doubt they would do the first one because it would make them less money and the second one they would rather let this nation burn then give up power allowing for 3rd and 4th parties and giving the public access to actual representation.
Since we can't call out Trolls and Bad Faith posters and the Ignore function doesn't actually ignore it. Add
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The problem with ranked voting is it drags the process out. It took over a week for Maine to count one race. Now extrapolate that to every race. Even if states opt-out it would still apply to their federal representatives. I feel all it will do is give more ammo to the "VOTER FRAUD IS TOTALLY REAL AND NOT JUST A THING WE USE TO DISENFRANCHISE BROWN PEOPLE!!!" crowd.
Also:
-Serious restrictions on the Presidential pardon so it cannot be used in cases of public corruption, ie obvious conflicts of interest.
-Complete reversal of the Citizens United decision.
-Revealing taxes now mandatory, not just good manners.
-Giving REAL teeth to FARA.
-Endow the Office of Government Ethics with so much power it's essentially a permanent Mueller investigation, but much faster. Give it impeachment power if necessary.
These should all be absolute no-brainers, it's a disgrace that the system allows manifest corruption by public officials.
I won't even get into the Supreme Court - that system has been gamed to the point nobody's even trying to pretend it isn't a partisan puppet. You should replace the entire thing - eg, they select them out of a large pool at random and only serve limited rotating terms, like say 1 year.
Ranked voting, if done right, wouldn't take that long, maybe a week to 2 weeks tops I would think.
I would just have the general election all be in roughly the same day nationally. Not like they will even need primaries anymore at that point as each person running under their tent actually increases their odds of winning so the last thing they would want would be to widdle that number down.
As for a single race taking a week, still worth it. Even doing all of them, could get the results for them all within a month if done right and that is if we didn't do electronic stuff to verify integrity. And while actually removing spoiler votes and allowing 3rd parties to be viable.
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Oh trust me, I had more, I just wanted to be basic so as to have the highest level of success while having a huge impact.
Without them in place, enough money would eventually be leverage to overturn the rest. Would also make it where after working in office, they couldn't work in the private sector again or own vested interests in any company and in return they are given pay and benefits for life. And can only work in government again from that point on to prevent them from selling out and moving to consulting jobs.
Since we can't call out Trolls and Bad Faith posters and the Ignore function doesn't actually ignore it. Add
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If you had an ounce of self-reflection in you, you'd be able to realize that most of the politics sub forum is hate speech directed at anyone disagreeing with democrats or liberals. Just look at the restaurant thread, it's mostly hate speech. This shit board is dominated by liberals and their hatred of anyone who disagrees with them. Look at the nation bashing that only gets partially moderated. Like a Danish person bad mouthing and wishing ill upon Americans and you agreeing with him. I am not shocked in the least. Thanks Joy, although since you moderate sometimes, I'll give you the Whoopi title.
It has nothing to do with disagreeing and the complete lack of looking at obvious facts while also spewing things about conspiracy theories and Killary.
Would you like to link to some of the hate speech? This may come as a surprise, but when you're a shitty person people tend not to like you.Just look at the restaurant thread, it's mostly hate speech.
No, disagree away. The issue is that Trumplestiltskins tend to break forum rules, which makes them all butt hurt and think the "system" is out to get them. Case and point here with you.This shit board is dominated by liberals and their hatred of anyone who disagrees with them.
Link to the nation bashing? You could have reported it, you know? Most people won't report something like that because they don't care, but you could have.Look at the nation bashing that only gets partially moderated. Like a Danish person bad mouthing and wishing ill upon Americans and you agreeing with him. I am not shocked in the least. Thanks Joy, although since you moderate sometimes, I'll give you the Whoopi title.
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Well, that's simply not true. You either have no clue what "hate speech" actually means, or you're being dishonest about it, because such hate speech isn't occurring.
The site rules forbid hate speech. So go ahead; report what you think it hate speech. Give it a few days, to let the mods have time to see your report. Then check if anyone got banned over what you reported. I'm willing to bet you won't see much traction, because it's not actually hate speech.
Ironic.This shit board is dominated by liberals and their hatred of anyone who disagrees with them.
The easiest way to understand the average American mindset is to compare the difference in marketing for Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares in the UK and US. The UK version is filmed like documentary and in the US it's filmed as a reality TV drama. We're not happy unless the fella we don't like is crashing and burning. We love mindless drama, it's really that simple.
- Christopher HitchensPopulists (and "national socialists") look at the supposedly secret deals that run the world "behind the scenes". Child's play. Except that childishness is sinister in adults.
That was a mistake. It was also a mistake--and probably a bigger one with more long term consequences--that he ignored his party's infrastructure at the district and state level and allowed the Republicans to take over any number of state houses. His dismissal of Howard Dean as the head of the DNC when he took over the Presidency and the scrapping of Dean's 50-State Strategy is something that Democrats are paying heavily for right now.
His other big mistake which relates to the op's premise is that Obama believed that people, especially Republicans, were better people than they actually are. He continued to believe that for too long. But the plain fact is that he had to work with Republicans as best he could after the 2010 mid-terms. There wasn't really a choice about it.
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2018-06-24 at 08:08 AM.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
(snipped the rest)
Believe me, you don't want term limits for Supreme Court Justices. Our Constitutional Court here in Hungary works that way, up to 2 5-year terms and you know what that results in? Justices who keep an eye on their reelection. Which is done by Parliament.
Trump is still campaigning about America not being great. Trump claimed that America was a killer, with his “you think we are so innocent”. While I have never seen a single Trump supporter defend America, when being bashed by Russian trolls and the // crowd who want to destroy America, because they also support Trump.
You want to play a game? You come up with a single quote from this forum, were a Trump hater talks about destroying America (not Trump and his support) and I will reply with 5 for each one, from people claiming they support Trump because he is destroying the evil America (not democrats and liberals). This should be easy for you and impossible for me, remember that this is a Trump haters paradise and 1:5 is a hell of deal...
The simple fact is, if nation bashing was more strictly enforced, there would be less Trump supporters. Every time Trump shows corruption and his support claims its normal for America, that’s nation bashing. Strictly enforcing this, would result in more complaining about moderation, because Trump supporters don’t seem to get that bashing America, while defending Trump, is still nation bashing.
Folly and fakery have always been with us... but it has never before been as dangerous as it is now, never in history have we been able to afford it less. - Isaac Asimov
Every damn thing you do in this life, you pay for. - Edith Piaf
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - Orwell
No amount of belief makes something a fact. - James Randi
Only thing I can think of is a short clip where celebrities were reading twitter messages directed at them. Obama was in one of them. Trump tweeted that Obama would go down as the worst president in history, Obama responded by saying that at least he'd go down as a president.
https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/vid...l-792986691631
I was thinking more along the lines of a single 10-15 year term limit with no hope of re-election. But also after they serve, they have retirement and can't work in the private sector again to prevent from being bought.
Trust me, I don't want the re-election treadmill going with them, they already sell us out enough with the lifetime appointments which is why parties are so willing to screw the voters and the system to get the guy they wanted up there as evidenced by the new illegitimate justice we just had appointed by fucking with the rules and even had a republican politician mention during the election that if Clinton won he saw no reason to appoint a new justice for the next 4 years.
Instead we got this jackass in power who already ruled to screw the people of this nation along party lines with him being the tie-breaking vote in a case that allows companies to now violate their employees due process rights by making their arbitration clauses in their employment contracts legally enforceable so their employees can no longer sue them or engage in class action lawsuits against them.
Since we can't call out Trolls and Bad Faith posters and the Ignore function doesn't actually ignore it. Add
"mmo-champion.com##li.postbitignored"
to your ublock or adblock filter to actually ignore ignored posters. Now just need a way to ignore responses to them as well.
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Given that its presently of major focus, this is particularly true of immigration.
The dirty secret of the American immigration system is that the border was effectively sealed in 2010. The Obama administration stepped up border security as an enticement to create a bipartisan push for reforming the various systems of legal entry - visas, asylum, naturalization, etc - to make them more humane and less byzantine. Look through the stories of ICE agents seizing people who are already here, and the overwhelming majority of the cases involve unauthorized entry prior to 2010. The East German Stasi would be green with envy over the level of policing and militarization of our southern border.
Except the far right doesn't want border security; they want an ethno-state. They don't want to make lawful immigration less onerous and humane, they want lawful immigration stopped. Fewer family visas (i.e. what they now call "chain migration"), fewer naturalizations, fewer immigrants. And it isn't a policy, it's an election strategy. Combined with voter suppression, providing fewer pathways to citizenship is their mode of staying in power. And even then its foolish; if every American over the age of 65 dropped dead tomorrow, the American far right and the Republican party in general would be politically castrated. As they're not making enough far right younger voters to replace them, they're losing the battle of attrition.
The next Democratic administration and Congress should simply dispense with the nonsense of bipartisan engagement on these kinds of issues. Liberalize the immigration system, aggressively sue states that engage in voter suppression, and expand the total number of seats in the House of Representatives to erase the urban/rural disparity in congressional voting power; in essence, work to make a permanent center-left majority. They should also pack the everloving fuck out of the courts, too. Stop relying on passive demographic changes to just come along and fix everything.
Last edited by Slybak; 2018-06-25 at 04:33 PM.