POLITICS SCHMALITICS

[Motown Bombers]

21 hours ago, ewsieg said:

Dem's aren't putting up a candidate to run against Mike Lee.  Great move by them.

https://www.businessinsider.com/utah-democrats-support-evan-mcmullin-independent-senate-mike-lee-2022-4

That's the kind of pragmatic move I was told in another thread the American Left doesn't do. 

[chasfh]

Does The Week have a pitchbot account?

 

[Motown Bombers]

I don't know where to stick this, but this is quite the thread. 

 

[Crazy Cat Gentleman]

yeah, that was a wild read.

[Motown Bombers]

He was at it again. 

 

[CMRivdogs]

You know what else isn't in the Constitution? Political Parties. Maybe we need a movement to have them outlawed.

All elections by ranked choice voting...

[Tiger337]

13 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

You know what else isn't in the Constitution? Political Parties. Maybe we need a movement to have them outlawed.

All elections by ranked choice voting...

I brought that up a while ago and was lectured as to why it was impossible and would be a bad thing, but I am with you!

[CMRivdogs]

20 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

I brought that up a while ago and was lectured as to why it was impossible and would be a bad thing, but I am with you!

Realistically factions would always form so I guess having parties is inevitable in the long run (Thanks TJ)

Ranked choice is an interesting concept, keep "voting" until someone reaches a majority. But when a "Party's" nominee wins with less than 50% of the vote, especially when the "Party" in theoretically the "majority party" something is drastically wrong with the system. 

[gehringer_2]

3 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

I brought that up a while ago and was lectured as to why it was impossible and would be a bad thing, but I am with you!

I'm fine with ranked choice in primaries, but what I'd like even better is to require run-offs in generals if no-one gets >50%. Especially in Presidentials. Too many guys get to the WhiteHouse on minority pluralities thanks to 3rd party mischief.

Edited May 8, 2022 by gehringer_2

[chasfh]

19 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

I brought that up a while ago and was lectured as to why it was impossible and would be a bad thing, but I am with you!

It wouldn’t be a bad thing, but it is impossible.

[Motown Bombers]

 

[Tiger337]

On 5/9/2022 at 8:59 AM, chasfh said:

It wouldn’t be a bad thing, but it is impossible.

Nothing is impossible!  Let's have a 64-candidate field starting in the summer and do brackets through November.  Americans love playoffs and brackets.  Must see TV.  

Edited May 10, 2022 by Tiger337

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

Nothing is impossible!  Let's have a 64-candidate field starting in the summer and do brackets through November.  Americans love playoffs and brackets.  Must see TV.  

Add the execution of losers live on National TV, and we’ll run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it. 

[Mr.TaterSalad]

Just my opinion, but I think switching to a multi-party parliamentary form of government and adding more political parties, as they have in Europe, Asia, and South America, would be more conducive to progress and people working together than banning them.

First off, we need political parties because the average voter doesn't pay close enough attention to the granular details of issues and where candidates stand on them. So we need a way for people to better and more easily identify who aligns with them, who is batshit crazy, who is a danger to democracy, who is pro people versus pro corporate, etc. Parties help us better identify where a candidate might stand on the issues. Second off, I think a multi-party parliamentary would force more coalition building and people to work together more often across the spectrum. Third, every time we unilaterally and unlawfully topple a government in another country, we almost always set up a parliamentary form of government because the efficiencies of a parliamentary system. With the addition of a parliament we could also abolish land mass representation of the Senate.

If we had accurate party representation in America it might look something like this . . .

Democratic Socialist Party/Green Party - 1-5% or so of the voting base. On a federal level I don't believe there are any true socialists in the mold of a Eugene Debs elected to office, including Bernie, Rashida, AOC, etc. Rather, they are Social Democrats.

Social Democracy/Progressive Left Party - 15-20% of the voting base. Capitalist reformers, pro union, and proponents of strong regulation and robust social welfare, want big involvement on climate and social policy. Politicians that fit here include Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Presley, Sherrod Brown, Garlin Gilchrist.

Center-Left Party - 20-25% of the voting base Semi-progressive, pro union and pro business, pro social welfare but staunchly pro capitalist. Politicians that fit here include Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, Gretchen Whitmer.

Center-Right Party - 10-15% of the voting base. Staunch capitalist, pro business, pro life. This is where the old GOP and the Third Way Democrats meet, the Bushes, Doles, Eisenhower, Bill Clinton triangulate around capitalism, business, and some socially moderate policies. This is where the Never Trump Republicans, center-right independents, and New Democrats would coalesce.

Christian Right/Nationalist Party - 30-35% of the voting base. Ethnic nationalism and Christian identity are the pillars of this party. Being white, of European decent, and Christian are the most important aspects of belonging here. This is the MAGA universe of America. Politicians that fit here include The Trump Family, Rand Paul, Louie Gohmert, MTG, Lauren Bobert, Pat Buchanan. Most of your modern day Republicans probably belong here.

Libertarian Party - 1-5% or so of the voting base. These are your true get government out of my business and my bedroom folks. Free market and free choice on personal matters. Ron Paul and Barry Goldwater are the closest things we've had to true libertarians on a national stage.

[CMRivdogs]

Five months in and the Youngkin administration hit the trifecta of incompetence in one day. Once again proving that a businessman is not a great executive officer of a state or nation

Quote

Richmond, VA – Three major state agencies in Governor Youngkin’s administration imploded at once yesterday, making a mockery of another one of the Governor’s key campaign promises. Alcohol, rage, workplace misconduct, inappropriate sexual remarks, staff disgruntlement, and the mishandling of confidential records are at the center of three scandals rocking the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, the Virginia Employment Commission, and the Virginia Information Technologies Agency.

The Youngkin administration was forced to rescind its new hire to lead the Department of Motor Vehicles after a report detailed his appalling history of inappropriate behavior at an agency in Indiana. Peter Lacy resigned from the Indiana agency just last month, the day after appearing intoxicated during an executive meeting with 30 top officials where he reportedly “slurred his words, seemed confused” and made inappropriate sexual remarks to a female staffer — part of a pattern of inappropriate behavior that included crude sexual remarks to women, fits of rage, berating employees and throwing things. Despite his campaign promise to improve the DMV, Youngkin overlooked Lacy’s misconduct and recent resignation; now the DMV has no permanent leader.

The Virginia Employment Commission instructed employees to handle records while at home that contain people’s sensitive and personal information. The documents include social security numbers, birth dates, home addresses, workplaces, salaries, online passwords and other personal information. This is the second data privacy scandal at VEC in less than a week, following an incident where Gov. Youngkin’s VEC head “repeatedly dodged” questions from the press about the agency’s recent leaks of more personal information. The VEC has fallen apart since Youngkin took office, an especially embarrassing failure following his empty promises from the campaign to fix the VEC.

A third agency, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, lost its third high-level manager since Gov. Glenn Youngkin replaced its top executive in January. The fallout began when the agency’s COO resigned in response to Gov. Youngkin replacing the agency head. The new head resigned just one month later, and the new COO resigned yesterday. The loss of one of Virginia’s top Black leaders of a state agency comes at a time when the Youngkin administration is dismantling the role of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and failing to promote diversity in government and beyond.

 https://bluevirginia.us/2022/05/is-the-youngkin-administration-unraveling-three-state-agencies-implode-in-one-day

[Motown Bombers]

Well, this does seem more exciting than McAuliffe. No sympathies for Virginia. 

[gehringer_2]

Two stories from the NYT today make nice bookends. One about DeSantis, one about a fourteen yr old girl shot up in a confrontation with police in Florida.

Quote

For all the talk of how Trumpy Mr. DeSantis is, though, there is much about him that recalls the party’s pre-Trump era. He was elected to Congress as a Tea Party conservative in 2012, and he is fond of boasting that Florida’s budget is roughly half the size of New York’s even though his state is more populous. He’s proud and protective of Florida’s status as a low-tax state.

 

Quote

For years, Nicole had cycled in and out of mental hospitals, foster care and group homes, one of tens of thousands of children who are ordered each year into crisis mental health custody in Florida.

Her story is rife with red flags that waved for years, seemingly unnoticed. A review of hundreds of pages of police reports, case records and prosecution documents, along with interviews of Nicole, her family, group home employees and lawyers, shows that Nicole was placed in five group homes, one foster home and four mental hospitals in the two years after she was removed from her mother’s custody and made a ward of the state. She was committed to psychiatric facilities on emergency mental health holds dozens of times during the course of her childhood.

Yet she received intensive residential therapeutic care just once, state records show. It lasted for less than a month.

In a state still reeling from the mass murder of 17 people at a Parkland high school in 2018 — killed by a teenager with a history of mental health challenges — juvenile health advocates say Nicole’s case raises serious questions about how a child could have had so many repeated interactions with police officers, social service agencies and psychiatrists without ever getting the long-term therapy that might have broken the dangerous cycle.

The answer, many of them said, is Florida’s chronic underfunding of mental health services as the state’s population has soared. A state grand jury in 2020 called the mental health system a “mess,” noting that it provides less funding per capita for mental health care and treatment than any other state, and is managed by a patchwork of private agencies. Nearly 1,500 children at a time are typically on waiting lists for behavioral health services, according to the Florida Policy Institute.

 

[mtutiger]

Yeah, somehow I doubt this is why the deal is on hold.

[gehringer_2]

10 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Yeah, somehow I doubt this is why the deal is on hold.

Del posted about this in 'investing'. I don't even get what that tells you. Even 1% bots is enough to out volume real users - the question is not do you have a way to get the bot % low, but do you have a way to get close enough to zero to effectively solve the problem. I doubt 5% does.

[pfife]

lol

[Motown Bombers]

 

[chasfh]

I'm not sure where else to put this, so here it goes.

 

 

[Motown Bombers]

 

[Mr.TaterSalad]

WaPo: Christians are more than twice as likely to blame a person’s poverty on lack of effort

Quote

In the poll, which was conducted from April 13 to May 1 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, 46 percent of all Christians said that a lack of effort is generally to blame for a person’s poverty, compared with 29 percent of all non-Christians. The gulf widens further among specific Christian groups: 53 percent of white evangelical Protestants blamed lack of effort while 41 percent blamed circumstances, and 50 percent of Catholics blamed lack of effort while 45 percent blamed circumstances. In contrast, by more than 2 to 1, Americans who are atheist, agnostic or have no particular affiliation said difficult circumstances are more to blame when a person is poor than lack of effort (65 percent to 31 percent).

No Surprise, the same people who are allegedly, stridently pro life and also hold strident beliefs that being poor is less circumstantial and more based on your own lack of work ethic and laziness. Fox New Jesus sure must be proud. 

[Motown Bombers]

I'll just put this here. A tornado ripped through Gaylord today. I know this town well as my parents had a place there and my brother lived there for a brief period of time.